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

Thu Mar 13 15:32:16 UTC 2008

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>  It hasn't yet been determined what the council's scope will be, but
>  personally I wouldn't give them any power to micromanage individual
>  projects - projects should govern themselves for the most part. No-one
>  can keep up-to-date with the minutia of hundreds of projects.

You're right, and I should have been more clear in what I am talking
about. The volunteer council wouldn't micromanage projects themselves,
but would deal with the projects directly so that the board doesn't
have to. There are many issues that affect the projects that the board
has been hesitant to get involved with in the past. Erik pointed out a
few good examples of this:

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>  But there are challenges, both on the organizational level and in the
>  community. For example, in the community, we do not really have
>  clarity about
>  - how we decide that a certain software feature can be activated, or
>  that a particular partnership is OK,
>  - who the community actually is, and how we drive more participation,
>  - how to properly provide oversight for the use of the various
>  community privileges like "checkuser", "oversight", etc.
>  - what the relationships between chapters and communities will evolve into,
>  - what to do when a community becomes dysfunctional, and how to
>  resolve conflicts beyond the scope of a single project becomes
>  necessary,
>  - what the future of our smaller projects will be, what
>  reorganizations may be needed, and what new initiatives we may want to
>  focus on

Things like this, issues that affect the project but that the board
doesn't (or shouldn't) get directly involved with for any number of
reasons would be the perfect scope for the V.C. The V.C. would also
serve as an excellent mechanism to ensure that the voices of smaller
projects are heard by the necessary decision-makers.

--Andrew Whitworth