[Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring

Tue Apr 29 07:58:34 UTC 2008

At 21:51 -0700 26/4/08, Michael Snow wrote:
>Nathan wrote:
>>  I'll be curious to see how the various chapters determine amongst
>>  themselves, without guidance for the board, how to select the two board
>>  members allocated to them. Will they use the existing inter-chapter
>>  structure, the Chapters Committee, to coordinate discussion? I'm also
>>  curious as to the rationale for this change -- have the two chapter seats
>>  been created because it was felt that the non-English project participants
>>  have been under-represented in past elections? Do their members vote at
>>  lower rate of participation than the English project members? I'm assuming
>>  that all the folks who might participate in local chapters continue to have
>>  a vote for the community seats, so will the net effect be that their
>>  individual votes are the equivalent of some multiple of a vote from a
>>  community member without a representative chapter?
>>
>The chapters, or at least those that are able to attend, have a
>previously scheduled meeting coming up in May.

What meeting in May?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee

>  Hopefully they'll be able
>to get a start there on figuring out the process to pick the two board
>members they will select. Delphine as the Chapters Coordinator, along
>with Jan-Bart on behalf of the board, will be there to help as well.

They will indeed.

>As for the rationale, I would say that it's primarily a sense that the
>connection with the chapters needed to be stronger. The chapters are
>valuable partners for the global Wikimedia Foundation, but haven't been
>integrated into its governance as well as they could be. Sometimes this
>created the impression that the chapters are dependent organizations
>which can do things with the foundation's permission, without a way for
>them to have independent input. Giving chapters an explicit role in
>selecting board members recognizes them as stakeholders who rightfully
>should contribute to governing the foundation.
>
>That also ties in with my comments on the Volunteer Council proposal.
>Rather than create a new foundation-level structure and figure out what
>it might be good for, I think it was important to work better with the
>pieces that are already in place. By that I don't wish to discourage
>development of a council as a community-level structure.
>
>I don't think the issue of representation played a big factor in the
>restructuring, at least in the sense you're asking about. The elections
>have resulted in board members like Florence and Frieda; if anything the
>last election had people concerned that the rate of voter participation
>from the English projects was too low, until a "get-out-the-vote" drive
>materialized and presented its own issues. We are of course an
>international organization and I'm sure board selections will continue
>to reflect that somehow. The chapters can consider this along with other
>issues - the point is for the chapters to choose whom they believe to be
>the best available people, rather than falling into a trap of "we have
>to pick somebody from Portugal this year because we picked somebody from
>Japan last time."
>
>--Michael Snow
>

I sense a big change in the Foundation in the past few months (maybe 
since the end of last year). The Foundation exists as a single body, 
Wikipedians exist in their thousands. If the Foundation is trying to 
listen, then maybe they should change the tune, since it does not 
resonate.

Gordo

-- 
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///