Let me chime in here. Starting at the basic sentiment: >At the end of the day, things have moved on without incident but lets not >simply ignore this issue. I think that there is something to be learnt and >its that care really does need to be taken when repeating a venture like >this.
That's kinda how I feel. This particular appointment has been explained to me to my personal satisfaction, but I know it had the potential to erode community trust in the foundation leadership. The board seems like they were aware of this issue in 2009 but decided Matt's skills were worth the risk. I think the board has hit upon the correct solution with the Board Visitors concept. The way to 'defuse' Matt's appointment in the eyes of the community would have be to give him everything but a vote, until the community could 'get to know him' or whatever. And I think what we needed was his voice, not his literal formal official binding voting status. Think about it-- if a majority of the board felt Matt's skills on the board were so positive that they outweighed the risk of creating an appearance of impropriety, then surely that same majority of the board would have continue to 'heed' his advice. I think Matt as a Board Visitor would have been 95%-150% as effective as Matt the board member. But I don't think that would have generated nearly the same amount of controversy, even though he would might have had the same exact pragmatic positive effect on our foundation's future. -- The general part that's controversial here is that the board's vote can, in practice, bindingly affects the community in very big ways. And the community is very scared of being affected by 'negative outside influences'. Thus Matt wasn't as valuable to us as he could have been, simply because of the nature in which he came to the board. An alternative roadmap would have been for Matt to have been appointed as a Board Visitor, Acting but non-voting member, or some other 'sign' that recognized his role posed a certain liability. Let Matt do whatever he needs to do, and then, at an appropriate point, let the community 'confirm' him or something. Let each sitting board member write a full endorsement, let the board in total write a statement if it wants, require a very high threshold for a community-veto if you want. The point is, there is a way to 'sanitize' controversial appointments-- by just running them past the community. Then, instead of a dirty, backroom-deal in a smoke filled room, I think you'd wind up with near unanimous community support for a talented individual volunteering his time and money to help lead us. -- All this isn't meant as a criticism of Matt's appointment-- his specific appointment involved a lot of very complicated interlocking and novel problems and issues, many specific to him (most notably Wikia, which is simultaneously our ally and our competitor). But going forward, the idea that a "stranger can ride into town" and instantly lead a global movement-- that's not gonna be sustainable, I don't think. I'm, it's sustainable for me personally, but I speak English and I 'kinda know' nearly half the board, and thus I know what great people they are. But looking forward, consider this: 1. We have chapters in lots of countries, we're going to have chapters in lots more. 2. They are going to care about their projects as much as we care about our. 3. The foundation hosting already requires a limited amount of foundation control over projects. 4. The foundation is going to the chapters and the subprojects 'pay into' the global movement via donations Now, if I'm a small-language project editor, a passionate wikimedian who cares a lot of about 'my' project, what is my connection to an edict issued by an English-speaking businessman I don't know who was appointed by a group of strangers I also don't know that was itself appointed by a community of people only a minority of which I know? If I cannot directly communicate with Matt, if I have never had the chance to get to know him in some way-- why should I possibly look to him as a valid 'leader'? And if his vote could be decisive, why should I look to the board as a valid authority either? Now, when that same group of people comes to tell me about how laws apply to my project, or how much of my chapter's resources they're going to get to keep-- how likely am I to trust them? Remembering of course that I've never been to the US, I've never read English, I've never directly communicated with the board? If I agree with board's decision, great. But if I disagree with it, there's a chance their words will have ZERO weight with me beyond what they can actually enforce. (again, a reminder-- for the past several paragraphs, "I" was not myself. I personally am deeply 'sold' on the foundation) -- So-- global trust. That's the problem. Not that Matt's a bad choice, not that it was the necessarily the wrong thing to do at the time-- but if we keep doing this sort of thing, the board will be very limited in the amount of global community trust its decisions have. Our current system isn't bad at all-- but there is a minor flaw, and there is still room for improvement without losing the basic framework. Alec _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
