WikiEducator:Community Council/Meetings/First/Bron's motion

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MOTION

I move that, for the purposes of forming the full Council and to ratify the Draft Policy, four Nominated Members, being people who campaigned in the Council Elections and obtained the next highest votes in the election, be added to Council as the minimum number of Nominated Members needed to constitute the first Council. Once the Council is established on that basis, the draft policy is reworked by the Council and reopened for consultation with Wikieducator Users and a final version of the Policy developed for the Council to ratify.--bron 06:59, 22 October 2008 (UTC) (UTC)

Second the motion

--Leighblackall 06:26, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Discussion of the motion

Some discussion at: http://wikieducator.org/Thread:Seconding_the_motion_(1)

Hi Bron, In your view, what is the rationale for restricting nominated members to those who contested the elections? How will nominating members who did not contest the elections constrain or restrict WikiEducator in the realisation of its vision of creating OER and sharing knowledge as a social good? We're turning the digital divide into digital dividends -- What's wrong with bringing people on board who can help us in achieving what we set out to do? --Wayne Mackintosh 04:44, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

  • I hope this is appropriate to jump in here and answer your question directly Wayne. I guess the intention behind only nominating 4 people from the existing list who campaigned for Council, was due to the concern some members have with adding nominated members to the Council. I felt that this would be a compromise position until we have an opportunity as a Council to discuss the draft policy.
  • As part of the Council discussion about the draft policy we could then vote for the need to enable further nominations from outside the wikiEd community. The motion I have put forward will also ensure that everyone on Council is happy with the draft policy before it is re-released in its modified form to the wikiEd community for discussion. Hence Wayne your first objection to the motion is not going to occur as community involvement is to also be sought on the next version of the policy. In response to Pankaj - I am not suggesting that we do not nominate further members to Council later on. Once the wikiEd community consultation process is completed - we should set a date - the intention would be for the Council - 15 elected members and 4 nominated, non-elected members to ratify the final policy.
  • At that stage we will have made a decision whether to nominate more than 4 members to Council. This appears to be one of our sticking points with the draft policy - whether to have nominated members and if so how many. That is the reason I believe it is in our best interests to discuss the draft policy more fully before ratifying it. I picked the four top non-elected candidates from the campaign list as this seemed to be the least contentious approach. I am not fearful of foreign influence either White Eagle, and will be all for it when we settle the issue of whether to enable nominations as laid out in the draft policy. --bron 03:13, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you Wayne. There were Wikis who opted out from contesting the elections in favour of other members and to give judicious regional representation in the Council. These Wikis are contributing a lot at almost all the fronts in the development, knowledge sharing and policy of WE. (See thier strengths at Nominations). I think they should also get a chance to share their inputs to the community through the Council. --Pankaj 07:48, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm not afraid of "foreign influence" on WCC by non-community members. We are a heterogeneous group anyway. And: those will most likely open an account here soon :-). But seriously: Our policy is called "Draft Open Community Governance Policy", because we still want to optimize it. Let's constitute our full council according to this policy and then we are authorized to do so.--White Eagle 10:24, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
Obtaining nominated members this way,does not only beat democracy but also negates the spirit of tapping skills that may be lacking among the elected members...which in my view is the reason for their very existence.--Vkizza 15:33, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
Wayne's reasons for voting against this motion. (Moved to the discussion area as per request from Victor -- thanks, much better layout :-)
  • Council does not have the authority to rework policy -- policy is developed by the Community. Council's role is to approve policy that was developed transparently and democratically by the Community. Therefore the wording that "draft policy is reworked by the Council" is not within the ambit of Council's authority. However once constituted, Council can move to open the policy for amendments by the Community.
  • The number of votes cast in the election is not necessarily an indicator of commitment or potential contribution to our WikiEducator project. For example, there are a fair number of nominees proposed as nominated members who have significantly higher edit counts than some of our elected members.
  • There are potential nominees who for legitimate reasons could not have contested the election. For example, our Chief Electoral Officer, and for instance two members from India who agreed at a national level that they would not to contest the elections. Nonetheless, these individuals are valuable members of our community and would add tremendous value to our work on Council.
  • There are elected members who support the notion of nominating 10 people to Council and we should afford all elected members the opportunity to exercise their judgement on the number of elected members, rather than specifying the number in the text of the motion. --Wayne Mackintosh 18:45, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
I will suggest an alternative (which really isnt new), that since we have ALREADY nominated members for consideration and possible appointment unto the Council, lets stick to it. The debate as to whether we should COMPLETLY fill all the positions, i beleive can be considered. Filling all the available positions, while having a lot of merits may also have some contraints if "there appears" in future a candidate we almost absolutly beleive needs bringing on board. I will want to hear what members think about the issue. --Victor P. K. Mensah 19:05, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Victor -- I think that it's also appropriate to ask elected members whether they would like to propose additional nominations -- I'm sure that there are worthy candidates who may not be listed under the current nominations --Wayne Mackintosh 22:49, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
In addition, for members who are not comfortable with voting the maximum number of nominated members under the draft policy -- this can be reflected in the actual voting of individual nominations. For example, if a member does not feel it's appropriate to have more than 4 nominated members -- they can abstain on any nominations above the number they feel appropriate. This way they will communicate that they are not "against" or "disapprove" the individual nomination -- but that the have a substantive objection to nominated members in terms of our draft policy. --Wayne Mackintosh 01:44, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Can someone please point me to where in the draft policy it says we CANNOT as an elected Council revisit the draft policy prior to reconsulting with the wikiEd community to determine the number and type of nominated members. Perhaps if this is resolved first, we can get somewhere with this or do we need a motion re the number of nominated members - on which we vote first. The whole thing is a little confusing.
  • I take your point Wayne about the fabulous and talented people who did not contest the election and the reasons for this. However, would they still have been happy not to contest the election, or support the election with their service (and no offence intended to anyone here) if they did not believe or were assured they could be nominated to Council following the elections? In my opinion, whether people took the time and made the effort to campaign, whether people have higher editing counts, whether people have exemplary skills which are sought after globally is all beside the point. An elected Council is an elected Council and if this process was not fair why did we undertake it? If the Council is only going to be any good if we have 10 more nominees why did we do it? would it not have been better to open up elections more widely beyond the wikiEd community? Just askin! --bron 03:13, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Bron, that's a good argument and I would have agreed with this myself until attending PCF5 in London. During PCF5, I learned that WikiEducators from India consulted among themselves as to who should campaign for the elections. There are different cultural protocols that are observed in different regions of the world. These elections were contested on the basis of the draft policy - which provided the opportunity for nominated members on council. What we don't know is whether any individuals would have decided to contest the elections assuming that the draft policy stated that there would be no nominated members. I agree -- an elected council is an elected council. This council was elected on the basis and understanding that there would be the opportunity for nominated members. The difficulty is that we can't change this after the fact. For me -- I want to honour what we said we would do. I have no issue around amendments to any policy formulated by the Community. But, wiki communities are built on trust -- I do not wish to betray the trust with the community by doing things in a way that is different from what we said we would do. --Wayne Mackintosh 03:44, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi bron, excellent argument. This brings out a lot of points for consideration and re-consideration. I beleive there are several questions we can raise about so many things, top of it will be on the policy. For me, the policy should have been termed POLICY instead of it being a "draft" taking into consederation all the processes it went through. Perhaps the whole community should have voted in a refrerendum (like our election) to either accept or reject it, before our election into office. This was not done. So what do we do now? We start by using ONLY the powers/authority we have currently. There is absoluntly nothing wrong in we tacking a look/relook at the current policy but we currently do not have the power to even propose ammendments for consideration by the wider community. Proposals for change can only come from the council, which is a composition of both elected and appointed memebrs. So as suggested by Wayne, above, why dont we do our community assigned job by making a credible proposal for policy change to the community -- something we cant do without the bear minimum of a full council. Lets at least appoint some members and make it our first business to reform the policy. At the end of the day, if it means that we all step down and encourgae relection based on a new policy, we would at least have done a JOB. --Victor P. K. Mensah 16:56, 25 October 2008 (UTC)


Well it looks like the vote is against the motion although not everyone has voted. I guess the silence in the discussion means that people agree with Wayne and Victor's viewpoints and wish to honor the draft policy of nominating 10 people to the Council. Although some people have not voted does this mean this motion is thrown out? --bron 22:03, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Looks like it Bron. I am pretty disappointed with the discussion above and the voted outcome obviously. It seems to me that the point of your motion was lost in repeat talk about how we must implement the Draft Policy, ignoring the compromise your motion offered. Your motion was in fact to IMPLEMENT the policy - but to do it very cautiously. To me this was a good middle ground in the issue, but evidently only a few of us saw issues. For some reason, the other members either do not see the risk in implementing the Policy, or are keen to participate in the nominations process. Oh well.. this one is lost, but at least the record is here. Thanks for offering the motion, it was a welcome surprise to see :) --Leighblackall 08:57, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Votes

Approval

  1. --Leighblackall 07:29, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Disapproval

  1. --Günther Osswald 10:13, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
  2. --minhaaj 10:21, 22 October 2008 (UTC) I disagree because very nomination of these nominated members is against the democratic wiki process as the draft policy itself.
  3. --Wayne Mackintosh 17:48, 22 October 2008 (UTC)--Wayne Mackintosh 17:48, 22 October 2008 (UTC) I vote against this motion as per reasons stated above.
  4. --Victor P. K. Mensah 18:38, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
  5. savi 19:00, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
  6. -- --Pankaj 05:06, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
  7. --Randy Fisher 16:50, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
  8. --Kenudas 09:20, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
  9. Vincent Kizza 17:55, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Abstention

Result

A majority of the Council has voted to disapprove this motion. This motion has been disapproved. --SteveFoerster 22:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

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