[Foundation-l] Volunteer Council - A shot for a resolution

Thu Mar 13 03:55:36 UTC 2008

effe iets anders wrote:

> As many of you probably already know, one of the major returning 
> discussions, both on this mailing list as on meetings, is the 
> one concerning a representative body for volunteers, the 
> Volunteer Council (a.k.a. the Wiki Council) - being discussed at 
> least since may 2005.

I see two issues, that your proposal would benefit from 
addressing.  The first is the relationship between the council 
members and their constituency.  Who is their constituency, these 
"volunteers" or "the community"?  Who is included and who is 
excluded?  Perhaps council members, once appointed, can just 
ignore all volunteers and represent nobody but themselves?
Won't the new council be just as remote from everyday contributors 
as the current WMF board is?  What mechanism will make the 
difference?

The second is the task of the council. Exactly what practical work 
is it going to perform?  If the creation of the council gets 
delayed by half a year, what actual harm does that do?  If we can 
delay it, maybe we don't need it at all.  Is the approval of 
changes in the WMF bylaws really any urgent business?

As long as the task is to improve communication and mediate ideas, 
perhaps an improved Wikipedia Signpost can do that, which is not a 
power base that pretends to represent anybody else, only a 
newspaper that tries to keep an eye on things that are going on. 
That work can start tomorrow and doesn't need any formal approval 
or appointment of committee members.

-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se