Le 18/02/2013 20:35, Nathan a écrit :
Cyrano - I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature
of the Board. It is self-perpetuating in every respect; the elections
are advisory only, and the actual appointment of Board members is
executed by the existing Board. The organization has no members, and
no one who is not on the Board has any power or authority to exercise
over the Board or the WMF. This merely describes the legal reality of
the WMF and the Board.
Nathan, you misunderstood me. We agree on the legal reality that you
describe. I'm discussing two points: 1) community's majority is not
guaranteed in the Board of Trustees, and 2) relying on paid third
parties for the process of appointing one of the five "expert" seats is
not neutral. Handling and filtering the candidates, and thus the list to
choose from is a form of influence. Allowing such influence when you
don't have the majority is a risk for the community.
Le 19/02/2013 04:42, James Alexander a écrit :
On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:14 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede <
jdevre...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
I simply don't agree.
a) Chapters are part of the community
:-/ To be honest I don't particularly like this meme that the chapter are
part of the community either. The chapters may be part of the community
(and so the statement not false) but we use the phrasing in such a way as
to say that they are more then they are. There may be a part of the
community but they are really a very small part of it overall.
Yes, in the best of cases, they are a tiny subset of the user and editor
community with a strong bias towards political organization,
administrative responsibilities, decision taking, vote collecting, power
assuming. Maybe they're needed, I'm not discussing that, but they can't
impersonate the community as if they were the community.
Their voice is their own. They won't give up their two seats to the
community because "they're one with the community". They won't, and it
means that they're different from the community, no matter how you try
to think about this fact.
They have their own agenda, which may coincide or not with the interests
of the community at large. There's no guaranty of an alliance. There may
be conflicts.
Saying that "the community has 5 seats" is thus misleading. It has 3
seats. Saying that the community has "an absolute majority guaranteed"
is simply false. Trying to analyze the Board of Trustees and its process
with the belief that the community's interests are guaranteed is a mistake.
Objectively, the Board of Trustees cannot guarantee a majority to the
community. Its design makes it vulnerable to other influences, and
possible schemes, alliances, power struggles and political moves. Maybe
it's not bad, I don't know. I just think that things should be clear to
the community, since they're the one being tricked by the words.
My claim is that in a context of no majority guaranteed for the
community, injecting third parties (which are layers of opacity) and
money in the process of appointing new board members is a risk for the
community.
There is no guaranty that a third party understands or shares the values
of the community; there is no guaranty that giving it influence over the
candidatures for five seats will serve the cause of the community.
That's a risk. I'm not to say if it should be taken or not, but we
should be aware of that risk. It sounds reasonable to engage the
scrutiny of the community when such risks are about to be taken.
I would also like to underline that paying someone doesn't necessarily
make things better done. A professional mercenary has skills, but
doesn't necessarily share internally the cause of the community, or
understand it, or even care to know it. In fact, giving money - or any
other form of power - to someone to execute a task creates money-driven
goals, which can be in conflict with the ideal-driven goals of the
community.
That's why in think that the more you rely on third parties or paid
professional, the more you need to reinforce your control over them. The
community's control through the Board of Trustees is too weak to
guarantee its interests, too weak to relinquish power as it's currently
done and planned.
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