On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 12:40 PM, Risker <risker...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Two board members are selected by chaptersl however, the board has certain > rights to refuse the selected candidates. Chapter-selected candidates will > be appointed in 2012. > > The WMF-wide community holds an election in odd-numbered years to nominate > three candidates. Again, the board has certain rights to refuse the > candidates with the most votes. > > The remainder of the board members are selected for their expertise, with > the exception of the "Founder" seat which is approved on a regular basis. > > The primary responsibility of Board members is to the Foundation, not to the > community or the chapters or to any other external agent. > > This is all available for review in the Bylaws.[1] > > > Risker/Anne >
Thanks! To your last point; that's of course true for any corporation. Yet, it seems clear and obvious in this case that the Board can't serve the Foundation without also serving the Wikimedia community. If the Board loses the support of the community, not only will that have election repercussions (despite the ability of the Board to determine its own membership), it will also be strongly detrimental to the interests of the corporation. I'm sure the Board understands that you can't please the readers at the expense of the editors, particularly when we're at a point in project development where editors are not so easy to replace. Just like editorial decisions happen in the real world and have real world consequences, so also will Board decisions have consequences. Now all this is not to say that the Board has already lost the confidence of the community, or that any specific members should be turned out or anything like that. But it's worth remembering, for folks on both sides of this issue, that there are methods of addressing any truly schismatic decisions on the part of the Board in the hopefully very unlikely case that any are taken. Nathan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
