[Foundation-l] "officials"

Mon May 10 10:09:52 UTC 2004

Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

I've already stated, several times in the past, that the roles of trustee and
the roles of corporate officers should be divorced from one another. This is
needed in order to provide proper checks and balances (the board oversees the
officiers and the foundation membership oversees the board). 

Ant : I agree

> I view this as fairly loose. Let's have a page on
> meta. People interested list themselves there. The
> community then approve or does not approve to give
> this "official" title. Finally, the board approve or
> not.

I strongly feel that it should be the other way around; the board appoints
officers and the foundation membership either approves or disapproves the
appointees. This provides a check against merely popular people being appointed
to positions they are not qualified to perform. The board members themselves
are the ones that are directly elected. Thus they are the ones legally
responsible for their appointees. 

Ant : 

I admit that the legal responsibility and qualification is a major issue. 

However, I must say I would be troubled that the management would be done in such a top down approach, as I feel it could raise issues of fairness and transparency. In particular if those “coordinators” are a mandatory path for subsequent activities.

 Situation 1

   a candidate makes himself known to the board
   the board checks the candidate credentials (or whatever is thought necessary to guarantee the candidate suitability)
   the board then appoint the candidate (or rejects it)
   the nomination is announced to the community

Potential issues
* Fairness issue : another candidate might have been suitable
* Transparency issue : the community does not know on which credentials the candidate was chosen
* Possible other issue : the community might generally not approve the candidate.
In such case, do we consider the board has last word or do we consider the community could reject an appointment ? 

Situation 2 : What I understand you propose is

   a candidate makes himself known to the board
   the board check the candidate credentials (or whatever is thought necessary to guarantee the candidate suitability)
   the board then appoint the candidate (or rejects it)
   the nomination is announced
   the membership votes to approve or disapprove the appointed.

 Potential issues
* Fairness issue : another candidate might have been suitable
* Transparency issue : the community does not know on which credentials the candidate was chosen
* Lack of efficiency : in case the community rejects the candidate

Situation 3

   a candidate makes himself known to the board
   the board then make a call for more candidacy for the position
   the board check the candidates credentials
   the board then appoint one (or several) of  the candidates, reject others
   the nominations are announced
   the membership votes to approve or disapprove the appointed.

Potential issues
* Lack of efficiency : in case the community rejects the candidate

Situation 4

   a candidate makes himself known to the board
   the board then make a call for more candidacy for the position
   the board check the candidates credentials
   the board propose some of  the candidates, reject others
   the approved candidates are announced
   the membership votes to approve or disapprove and nominate people

Potential issues
* The board is more an organ of screening than decision, it mostly ensures that no bad decision may be offered to the community. Some may regret this.

Situation 5

   a candidate makes himself known to the community
   the membership then make a call for more candidacy for the position
   the membership approve or disapprove candidates
   the board check the approved candidates credentials
   the board appoints one (or several) of the candidates
   the approved candidates are announced

Potential issues
* The membership may exclude some people, and base itself more on popularity than on ability as Mav pointed out. 

Are they other options ? Are they other potential issues ?

Perhaps the question is
what is the role of the board ? 

*To take decision for the community (and consider that the decision is good since people were elected for this, hence relieving some pressure of some decision making from the community)

*Or to guarantee that good decisions are taken by the community (and have a sort of veto when the decision appears to be bad).

Typically, the first case is the model of the current arbitration committee, and the second case is a lot of what Jimbo is doing in many cases. 

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20040510/ccb6c37d/attachment-0002.htm 