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

Fri Mar 14 15:03:44 UTC 2008

> Translators for what?

There is no way a body like this can do anything without communicating
with each other. If they don't all speak the same languages, they
cannot communicate with each other without everything being
translated. It doesn't necessarily have to be real time, but it needs
to be pretty quick if genuine discussion is going to take place.

> Again, I have yet to hear a requirement for this body that can't be
>  satisfied by the coherent efforts, information-gathering, and
>  organized communication of "at least a hundred people" with time to
>  dedicate to the global community.  Where does "making [binding]
>  decisions for others" come in?  Please provide a specific class of
>  situations that you would like to see such a closed group address.

That's a decision that still needs to be made. Opening and closing new
projects and determining partnerships with 3rd parties are two things
that have been suggested (there are plenty more, but you can look them
up in the archives as well as I can).

>  >  consensus of the entire Wikimedia community. If you let anyone in,
>  >  then it's precisely equivalent to having the entire community.
>
>
> Or at least a self-selected open subset of the entire community that
>  is interestd in willing in participating in a specific forum.

Which is equivalent to the whole community, since that's how decision
making at the community level works. We never have compulsory polls or
anything of the sort, we just let those that are interested discuss
the matter and try to reach a consensus.

> How are the people in this discussion random?  If you define aspects
>  of randomness that keep this group from being more ideal, we can reach
>  out to more groups and make the discussion better.  So far I see no
>  way in which what we are talking about now would not be improved by
>  the collaboration of many more interested nad devoted people.

You simply cannot have a proper discussion on an issue and allow 100s
of people to express their views. It's just not practical. If you're
going to have that many people involved they'll just be reading the
statements of a few more powerful people and voting, that's all.

> Can you name one or two similar bodies that work well and do
>  approximately what you have in mind?

Pretty much every council or committee in the history of human
civilisation? (Baring those that are just advisory.)

> Please list specific examples, indicating how inability to establish
>  consensus underlies a standing bottleneck.  I claim that, to the
>  contrary, most bottlenecks exist because no sufficiently good solution
>  has yet been suggested, or because some people are unhappy with a
>  reasonably good status quo and there is a lingering debate about
>  whether to switch [or switch back].

The key situation where a council can help is where there are 2
possible options, neither of which is the status quo. We have to
decide between them since keeping the status quo would be very bad,
but there's no obvious consensus for either option. In that situation,
you need someone that can step in and just decree something to be so.
I'm sure there are plenty of examples, but they don't really matter -
such situations are sure to occur at some time and we should have a
system in place to deal with them.