[Foundation-l] "officials"

Sat May 8 20:45:00 UTC 2004

Anthere-
> I do not think that putting officially the
> responsability in the hand of *one* person
> specifically is the best option. It is not empowering
> people. Rather, people will tend to rely on the *head*
> to do things.

We also need to be careful not to let too many people speak in the name of  
the Foundation whenever they feel like it. This is after all a community  
of several thousands of members, and I think some screening needs to take  
place before we decide that person X can be an official press contact, or  
person Y can be a content partnership coordinator -- because our  
reputation may be hurt, because people may make deals which the Foundation  
does not want (and later has to undo), because people may neglect their  
position and fail to respond to inquiries (hurting our reputation),  
because people may fail to sufficiently communicate about what they are  
doing, and so forth.

I don't think our positions are that far apart, though, especially since  
you yourself mention that people would have an opportunity to object. So  
if they object, what happens then? Will the person be unable to hold the  
position they are interested in beacuse of a single objection? At this  
point the natural solution is again to have a vote. I believe that at the  
very least, any assumption of an official title needs to be prominently  
announced, with a certain timeframe to raise objections, and a defined  
process for resolving them.

I also tend to believe that such an assignment shouldn't cover very short  
periods of time, to avoid communication problems of the type "I'm not the
content coordinator, anymore, try contacting Paul." - "Sorry, I resigned  
last week, try contacting Amy." etc. If one only wants to assume an  
official title for a *single* transaction, it is better to contact  
whomever is currently holding that title.

I have no problem with multiple people filling a certain role, in fact I  
support it, but the number of people should be limited. For example we  
could say "one press officer for every country, or for every 40 million  
inhabitants of a country", so the US would end up with 6 press officers,  
Germany with 2, etc.

Regards,

Erik