[Foundation-l] Voting requirements for community selected seats (Was: unable to vote)

Wed Jun 4 02:05:37 UTC 2008

Lars,

The distinction is that the community board members will represent the  
community, of which you are a member, but you are not the sole member.  
To my knowledge, no board candidate has said that they represent Lars.  
Rather, they wish to represent a community of which Lars is a member.  
That is a key difference. There is an intervening layer there.  
Consider the following:

Lars hypothetically believes that the sky is blue and the earth is  
flat. The community, of which Lars is a member, believes many things,  
but the majority of the community believes that the sky is blue and  
the earth is round. A board member in a community seat represents the  
community, and believes that the sky is red, and the earth is round.  
However, in his role as a board member, he votes in favor of the sky  
being blue, and the earth being round. In that vote, he has  
represented the community as a whole, which includes you as a member,  
while not representing you in one particular aspect of your views.

Representation does not mean that actions are done on your personal  
behalf, or even with your personal approval. It means that there is a  
representative to whom you can offer your voice and have the  
opportunity to be heard, and his authority is derived from the voices  
of the people he is representing. It means that actions are taken on  
the collective behalf of the community, which may result in actions  
being taken that you don't support. Such is the way with membership in  
any community. I don't agree with actions taken by the the U.S.  
Government. That doesn't mean that I am not represented in the U.S.  
Government. It means that the actions taken are not my preferred ones,  
but (in theory, not that this happens in the U.S. Government anyway)  
they are the preferred action of the community that the taker  
represents.

-Dan
On Jun 3, 2008, at 9:33 PM, Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Dan Rosenthal wrote:
>
>> Lodewijk, it's worth noting that several of the board candidates
>> (myself included), have interpreted "community selected seats"
>> as inherently being "community representative seats", meaning
>> that they carry with election the responsibility to represent
>> the desires of the community. There's no written rule that says
>> it has to be that way, but rather a moral obligation towards the
>> community, even beyond that of the electorate.
>
> Dan, you might be of the opinion that this kind of representation
> and moral obligation is something good.  But I have bad experience
> of other people claiming to represent me against my will.  People
> who feel that they represent me do things and claim that they do
> it on my behalf.  When I protest, they say I have no right to do
> so because they are elected by people like me, and thus have a
> right to act on my behalf.  I'm totally allergic to people
> claiming to represent me.  So please refrain from that language.
>
> In particular, we have many people who could be counted as our
> community, but who aren't currently allowed to vote for the board.
> For example teachers who instruct their pupils on how to use
> Wikipedia, without ever contributing to articles, never get the
> edit count necessary to vote. If you're voted into the board, you
> cannot claim to have been elected by these teachers.  You cannot
> claim to represent them, because they were excluded.  It wasn't
> your fault that they were excluded, it was just the way things
> went.  The same goes for old time contributors who were passive
> during the last year, and whole categories of other people.
>
> I suggest that the people who are elected or appointed in various
> ways see this as a strike of luck, and once on the board they only
> claim to represent themselves, as best they can, for the good of
> all mankind.  I don't mind the WMF being undemocratic.  I think
> that is a fact, and one I accept.  What I don't accept is an
> undemocratic body claiming to be democratically elected or
> representative.
>
>
>
> -- 
>  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
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