On Saturday 15 January 2011 16:23:59 Administrator wrote:
I do disagree that EVERY matter will have to be publicly voted for - it would make sense in some situations to instead choose a few people from the membership to audit a decision by the board. There are cases where a NDA is in effect, or financial matters make disclosure hard. For example, sponsorship deals are usually under NDA and if say the Board decides to accept sponsorship of Oracle and the membership disagrees or isn't happy with/sure about the terms, it is something we can't handle in public. So a commision of members should audit the decision.
This makes no sense. We vote people onto the board, and we either trust them or we don't. If we don't then we MUST demand a new board (i.e. elections). Add more (voted for) people who check on what our voted for board members are doing just makes things more complicated without adding any more democracy.
If the members' board members didn't support this action, then they should have voted against it at the board decision.
Separate from any specific action, it IS possible that people feel that the board made a bad call but that it's too much to make them resign over it. I think having at least a way to let a committee audit the board would be good. That way the members can select some people they trust can judge if the board did the right thing. If those ppl say it is so, it is so and the discussion should stop. I agree I'd rather not see it used (and I think it won't be) but having it is not bad.
Anybody who was directly connected should have recused themselves from this decision, and only participated in the discussion to clarify their personal experience.
There are two aspects outstanding at present:
1) the precedent / the correct practice: how things like this should be handled in future.
2) the decision: was it made correctly.
I would suggest the second item is best addressed by suspending the decision and putting it in front of the new board after the elections. Then there is no possibility that the elections are compromising the decision.
If you're talking about the decision that was recently taken (and which is NOT the subject of this thread) then please do what the board asked for and talk to them about it, not in public. Doesn't matter how valid your suggestions are. We've done enough damage to our own community (many people HATE discussions like this and rightly so) and our image (we've already made it to 2 major news sites with this).
The first item may benefit from further discussion, but I would suggest that this needs be done rationally and from principles rather than on the basis of a single case and what outcome we would like for that case.
Agreed.
David