[Foundation-l] Voting requirements for community selected seats (Was: unable to vote)

[Lars Aronsson]

Dan Rosenthal wrote:

> Lodewijk, it's worth noting that several of the board candidates 
> (myself included), have interpreted "community selected seats" 
> as inherently being "community representative seats", meaning 
> that they carry with election the responsibility to represent 
> the desires of the community. There's no written rule that says 
> it has to be that way, but rather a moral obligation towards the 
> community, even beyond that of the electorate.

Dan, you might be of the opinion that this kind of representation 
and moral obligation is something good.  But I have bad experience 
of other people claiming to represent me against my will.  People 
who feel that they represent me do things and claim that they do 
it on my behalf.  When I protest, they say I have no right to do 
so because they are elected by people like me, and thus have a 
right to act on my behalf.  I'm totally allergic to people 
claiming to represent me.  So please refrain from that language.

In particular, we have many people who could be counted as our 
community, but who aren't currently allowed to vote for the board.  
For example teachers who instruct their pupils on how to use 
Wikipedia, without ever contributing to articles, never get the 
edit count necessary to vote. If you're voted into the board, you 
cannot claim to have been elected by these teachers.  You cannot 
claim to represent them, because they were excluded.  It wasn't 
your fault that they were excluded, it was just the way things 
went.  The same goes for old time contributors who were passive 
during the last year, and whole categories of other people.

I suggest that the people who are elected or appointed in various 
ways see this as a strike of luck, and once on the board they only 
claim to represent themselves, as best they can, for the good of 
all mankind.  I don't mind the WMF being undemocratic.  I think 
that is a fact, and one I accept.  What I don't accept is an 
undemocratic body claiming to be democratically elected or 
representative.



-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se