Thread:Excellent set of questions (5)

At this moment, I am having a variety of thoughts ranging from the need of having a board to what is going to be the future of WikiEd. I can see the COL's objectives of having a WikiEd Board. But what is that the Board will do? How they will do that are being planned to do? Is WikiEd is going to be separated from COL in future? At present it is launched as an activity of COL. How is it going to work by having a different Board. Suppose in future the WikiBoard and COL do not agree on something, what will happen? I am having so many questions in my mind. Also, WikiEd is an Open Platform, and the "Commonwelath" notion does not work any more, at least here. So why to restrict governance (if any) to Commonwealth alone?

I think, we may consider to clarify the roles and responsibilities of the Board Members as well. Let me give my suggestions, point-wise:

1.Number of person on Board should be finalized after identifying major stakeholders. So, you have 4 regions in the commonwealth, to that add 'rest of the world'(2), and add representations from other stakeholders (COL, UNESCO, any other funding agencies, etc)+ Executive Director. The Chair of the Board should be elected amongst the Board Members. As for Gender Parity, the Board should have power to nominate 1-5 members if the elected representation is not 50-50 parity. Thus, I am proposing a Board that is definitely more than 9. But, it is flexible.

2. The term should be for 3 years for elected members and 2 years for nominated members. On this Steve's suggestion of 1st Board having members for one year, 2 years and 3 years also sounds interesting.

3. Elections should be open, and left to only registered members having a completed User page (in a specified format. Members may be allowed to self nominate, and everyone should be voting for all constituency, and not just their region. Roles and responsibilities of members be clearly defined, and WikiEd members should have the right to re-call the elected representatives, if they do not perform satisfactorily. Am I sounding too complex?

4. COL President should be patron of WikiEd Board, but, ideally he/she should be the Chair of the Board and the Executive Director as the Member Secretary.

5.Elections should be open for a specified period, and for all positions all votes should have one vote only. Is is possible to add a field to WikiEd registration process to identify whether a memeb is willing to be a "Full Voting Member" or "Associate Member"? If so, we can send email to all users and ask their option. This is to give preference to all users to participate in the election. Many may not want to particiapte in the lection, even if they are doing edits regularly.

So much for now...

Sanjaya Mishra