View source for Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2008/Candidates/Questions/1

== Wikicouncil / Volunteer Council ==

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 |question = Recent weeks have seen engaged and sometimes controversial discussions on the topic of a Wikicouncil / Wikimedia-wide Volunteer Council. Would you approve of such a council? If no, why not and would you suggest an alternate way of changing 'Wikimedia governance' and community representation? If yes, could you summarise your thoughts on how much decisive influence (i.e. 'statutory powers') this council should have?  [[User:Mbimmler|Mbimmler]] 16:11, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

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 |Huikeshoven   = The current path the Foundation is following is to gradually increase community involvement in Foundation issues. The board has three community elected seats and two chapter seats. What I would like to see is that anybody in favor of a volunteer council would become an active member of a chapter. Community involvement structured through a global network of chapters will be far more effective than setting up parliamentary like institutions.
 |Bakharev      = So far WMF projects were trying to avoid work by committee unless it is absolutely necessary. We do not have a volunteer committee on AFD nor on RFC nor on RFA, etc. The idea is that anybody can participate in any work without beeing formally appointed for the job. I will be happy to discuss any contentious issues (assuming I am not bound by confidentiality agreement, etc.) with any number of wikipedians and then communicate their ideas to the board. I am sure this is true for all board members selected by the community. If the members selected by the community were the majority of the board members I would not support the idea. 

On the other hand, it looks now after restructuring the majority of the board is not elected by the community. I think for this case as an additional safeguard mechanism a volunteer board with a veto power might be a good idea. 
 |Spurrier      = I strongly support the principles of the volunteer council, though the existing proposals have a few unresolved issues. The community is what makes the projects function, and by extension the foundation. The community needs to have a way of ensuring that its voice is heard and its will is done.  I would like to see more direct representation in the form of additional community held board seats. A volunteer council however could be an effective substitute. We need to ensure any version that we adopt is allows for fair representation and is not overly bureaucratic. Overall, I think it is a worthwhile idea. Once we have a proposal that is acceptable to the community, I would support adopting it on an experimental basis as an advisory council. If the experiment is successful we can look at given the council a formal role in the operations of the foundation.  
 |Rosenthal     = The community deserves a formalized voice TO the board, in addition to community members who are voices ON the board. To support this, an organization such as a volunteer council, which defines (for the purposes of that voice) what the community is (or a representative subset of the community) is '''theoretically''' a good thing. Note the bolding. I support the theory of a volunteer council. The problem is the execution. All of the ideas that have been floated so far have severe problems. Some are solutions looking for a problem. Some are completely undeveloped. Some look like people who want a cool title, and a new power-clique. Some don't give the organization enough power. Some give too much. If there were a well thought out, well developed organization that did not have the above flaws (or any others), I would tentatively support it (but would require significant review). With regard to how much decisive influence the council should have, that will obviously depend on the nature of the body and its size, but a balance must be struck between having some kind of influential power to ensure the board does not ignore the community, weighed against the board and the office's need for freedom to conduct their own affairs without excessive interference, and both of those carefully scrutinized for legality, undue influence (internal or external), and transparency.  If the council can have a) the right goals in mind and b) do its job reaching those goals, then we should be OK, but if either a or b fail to occur, I cannot support yet another layer of inefficient bureaucracy.
 |Kohs          = 
The community has had over seven years to bring about the dramatic safeguards that are needed to promote a respectable level of accuracy, excellence, and ethics in media.  In my estimation, the community has mostly failed to do that with Wikipedia, but it's hardly the community's fault!  Rather, blame rests with the Foundation and Staff who have, to date, mostly hidden behind Section 230 allowances to reject ultimate responsibility for almost all of the garbage that is allowed into the Wikipedia system.
I sense a community that is tired, frustrated, and exasperated with a lack of leadership at the highest levels and a general failure of the Foundation to show appreciation for all the work that the volunteers do.  Endless IP address vandalism reversion should not be sidetracking good editors hour after hour, day after day on this project.  Once the Board starts showing respect for building encyclopedias, dictionaries, news gathering systems, quotation libraries, and the rest (rather than adhering foolishly to the notion that the "wiki process" is more important than the output), then we should discuss a Volunteer Council.
 |Cain          = 
* I understand that devoted volunteers want to be "in the know", become involved, have influence, make a stand. It's natural in any organization based on volunteers, especially with a kind of hobby in its core. 
* I think the most natural venues for this desire to be involved are the local chapters and meta. It's more natural and even more rewarding to be involved in your local chapter or community or project. 
* I tend to think that a formal global council with formal authority, in a huge and complex community like ours, is bound to be a bureaucratic nightmare. Contrary to popular imagination, WMF is not a country, and I'm not sure we need a parliament or a representative council with dozens or hundreds of members.
* People who want to be involved at the global level are welcome to make a difference on meta and the mailing lists. These are wonderful opportunities to make a difference. Meta currently leaves much to be desired. 
 |Heiskanen     = 
I am going to answer this pretending I live in a world where nobody elses opinion matters at all. In the real world I would probably listen to what other people have to think, and try to think of ways to fit the differing vies to something that would still be functional.

If I had everything my way, I would constitute a council consisting of each foundation committees head, or person from the committee designated by the head to act as their proxy, (perhaps two attendees from the more significant committees, such as the advisory committee, added to those committee representatives, I would take one or two from each chapter (depending on if there are two available who have time for it), adding to that, moreover, 5-6 people chosen by vote in the identical fashion we are now selecting a board trustee; board trustees I would give free rights of attendance in the councils deliberations (whether of the electronic or the fleshy kind), and the option to voice their views, but no vote. I would not give this council the right to expand it's own number except should the Board of Trustees so decree. That way people on the council would not vote to perpetually increase it's size, in an attempt to keep their own seat, thus providing some measure of accountability. Additionally I would set a cap on the number of chapter representatives and committee representatives, so as that when the number of chapters and foundation committees inevitably increases, at some stage some more restrictive manner of electing representatives from those sources would have to be employed, rather than taking one or two from each. I would give it the power to issue solemn proclamations, which communities would have a *moral* but not an actual responsibility to heed to, and sofar as applicable to their own cases, try to implement. The Board of Trustees would have their choice of immediately ratifying such proclamations into bylaws (when applicable to the foundation bylaws), vetoing them (when applicable, and not concerning matters that are purely community matters), or waiting to see if communities take the proclamations intent favorably or revolt against them, and choosing which part to take in such an unfortunate state of affairs - which of course we would hope never happened.
 |Weber         = 
 |Bisanz        = Hmmm, that is an interesting proposal.  The idea of encouraging cross-wiki coordination is one I strongly support.  As is the idea of encouraging more community participation at the Foundation level.  However, in its current form, I see some issues with the proposed Council that might make me disinclined to support it.  The biggest being it has a closed membership that is elected to office.  Really, I'd prefer an open membership or [[en:wikipedia:RFA|RFA]] style method to keep the organization fresh and vitalized.  

Some alternate ways I could see the foundation governance being issued might be Ballot Resolutions similar to those used in American corporations or through term limits on the members of the Board.  Also, the idea of parallel advisory councils in specific areas is something that would appeal to me. 

As to the third point, I would be against bifurcating the Board's power.  At the end of the day, there needs to be a final "desk" where all problems stop at.  Splitting up the Board's responsibilities by granting a Council statutory powers would not be something I favor at the current time.   
 |Williams      = I would approve of such a council, only if it can be demonstrated to include our Wiki values. I do not believe the creation of such a council to exist above the communities, alongside (or below) the board is a good idea, and that will lead to even further problems. However, the creation of an Advisory board, consisting of people from within the communities, would be a good idea if fleshed out correctly. I leave it to the interested parties to flesh out these ideas, rather than the Board impose a policy or resolution regarding this.
 |Saintonge     = I believe that I have supported the idea of a Wikcouncil longer than anyone else.  I first bruited the idea when suggestions were being sought about the very first bylaws of the WMF.  Wikicouncil should not be a rival to the Board; it should work in co-operation with the Board with primary responsibility in different subject areas.

It would be pointless at this stage to pretend that we can draft up a list of responsibilities where we can say that these are the beginning and end of what Wikicouncil will do.  The first responsibility of the Wikicouncil will be to build trust, and we can't do that by repeating the governance errors of the past.  Building trust is best done in an environment where the Wikicouncil has minimal powers.  It gains the trust of the community by showing that it pays attention to what the community says.  It gains the trust of the Board by being responsible in the policies that it adopts.

The current fact is that Wikimedians have NO rights in their relationship with the Board whatsoever.  They may be preparing to elect a representative to the Board now, but there is no legal impediment to the Board someday deciding that there will be no community members The Wikimedia Foundation is not a membership organization.

Assuming, however, the best intentions on the part of the Board, how much can it do?  Its mambers only have limited amounts of time that they can devote to community issues.  The communities still need to find ways to figure it out for themselves, while still taking into account that we are a community of autonomous communities. 

 |Postlethwaite = Whilst I greatly appreciate the idea of a volunteer council, I don’t think that should be at the expense of having members of the community on the board. Given that the community are the people that understand the projects better than anyone else, and are the people working at the ground level making the projects what they are today, they should have a big voice in the running of the board. I’d actually like to see a volunteer council (made up from representation from various projects/chapters) run in conjunction with a community voice on the board. The volunteer council could deal with the day to day community foundation issues and make proposals to the board (and I seriously hope the board would listen to them).
 |Klein         = The current arguments about the Board's response to a proposed Volunteer Council miss the point.  It is not up to the Board whether an effective volunteer council is set up or not; {{anotcat}}.  If an effective body is set up by and for the communities, it will not need the ''approval'' of the Trustees; it will advise and address them.
 |Smith         = This might sound odd coming from the candidate who wants to impose policy committees on the Foundation's largest projects, but I think the Volunteer Council concept is ridiculously bureaucratic.  Creating new bodies makes sense when there are either specific powers that need to be apportioned (which there aren't here) or responsibilities that need to be discharged and are not going to be without a committee.  We're an online community; such communities are bad at some things, but one of the things they're extraordinarily good at are breaking down communication barriers.  Editors have the means to communicate with the board as it is; either the board will listen or it won't.  If it listens, then we don't have a problem.  If it doesn't listen, the creation of this council won't solve the problem.
 |Chen          = This discussion remembers me of another conflict that we have since the being of Wikipedia: The conflict between administrators and users. Administrators are users, but many user don't trust them. And my feeling is that this is the same conflict, but on the highest level. A part of the community don't trust the foundation and the board and they want to have an institution that can control and supervise the foundation and the board.

This is a serious conflict and we must take it serious, because it matters our root.

For my opinion such a concil is not neccessary because the board should be the control and policy making instance of the foundation. But the conflict remains, perhaps even intensifies because of the recent restructure decision. My opinion to this conflict is, that it shows we need even MORE transparency in the board working and decision making. Most people are reasonable. It is the best way to meet people who don't trust you by tell them why you decided to make this choice and not the other.

For that I think we should publish all board decisions in a more open and effect way. I also advocate for publishing all board meeting protocols and activities. The board and the foundation should be accountable and absolutely transparent for the community.
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