[Foundation-l] Provisional Volunteer Council - proposal sent to the Board

Tue Apr 1 17:48:02 UTC 2008

Andrew Whitworth wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 9:11 AM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Could I make one more suggestion then? Please try to get someone from
>>  Wikiversity on that council?
>>     
> Well, I'm from Wikibooks and I'm very much in tune with Wikiversity as
> well. I've got a lot of friends at WV, and am in regular contact. This
> may not be "perfect" representation, but at least WV won't be
> forgotten. Wikinews and Wiktionary are also conspicuously missing from
> this list, and I'll do what I can to ensure that they aren't forgotten
> either.
I think that most of the people on the candidates list have been around 
for a significant time.  I have not been busy in Wiktionary in the last 
while, preferring instead to devote my limited time to Wikisource,  
Nevertheless, I was one of the first persons to participate in 
Wiktionary, and I have not completely abandoned my hopes for its 
success.  I'm sure that all the candidates have had more involvement 
than what is suggested by the listing of a "Main project."

There were time constraints in relation to the resolution.  If the 
general idea was going to have any hope of succeeding, a reasonably 
functional resolution had to be presented to the Board for its upcoming 
meeting, and that had to include a list of first members.  If there are 
apparent omissions, it's not because we wish to shut out any opinions, 
but may simply be that the appropriate representative was not 
immediately apparent or did not wish to serve.  With the passage of the 
resolution in the present form, there will still be the opportunity to 
add more members, particularly where someone is found to fill one of the 
glaring holes in the group's membership.

The most important task for the PVC will be building trust across a wide 
range of projects and opinions.  The eventual Volunteer Council needs to 
be both small enough to be functional and big enough to ensure that the 
widest possible range of views is considered.  It needs to develop the 
confidence of the communities that it is not a cabal intent on 
overrunning hard-won rights, and the respect of the Board that it is not 
an assemblage of loose cannons about to bring down the entire WMF 
through reckless actions.

Ec