Thread:Excellent set of questions (4)

First - I want to express my gratitude and thanks to the Interim International Advisory board for their dedication and commitment to the WikiEducator project - We have agreed to donate our time knowing full well that we may not survive the elections. True democracy in action.

My suggested answers to the questions:

'''How many people should comprise the board? The interim board has nine people. Is that a good number to keep?'''


 * I agree with Steve - nine seems reasonable. That said I'm a supporter of the organisational design adage that form should proceed structure - in our case that needs should inform composition of the board - and WikiEducator is putting these principles into practice. There are roles in the community governance structure that may be difficult to fill through a traditional electoral process. For example specialised technical knowledge as in the case of a CTO governance role, or a Gender portfolio in our governance structures.


 * Speaking from experience, WikiEducator has been very fortunate to have the volunteer services of Erik on our Interim board - I can assure you that WikiEd would not be where it is today without the technical advice I have received from Erik.


 * This raises the question of whether WikiEducator should distinguish between elected community representatives and predefined roles on the Board. I'll add this to the list of questions. Also, will the board have the power to co-opt expertise when it is required?

How long should a Board member's term of office be?

I like Steve's suggestion that the standard term of office for elected officials should be three years and designing for continuity. Namely that half the elected officials are "replaced" during the election time. We'll need to discuss the best way to do this the first time around. Steve has already suggested a way to do this.

How should we approach Commonwealth of Learning expectations that may modify the composition of the Board, e.g., gender parity, regional distribution?

I responded to this question in my reply to Steve.

What should the threshold be for nominations?

For elected officials I support the notion that there should be a minimum threshold to be nominated for election to the board. This must be based on some metric of existing contributions to the WikiEducator project (or potential contribution?) - I'm not sure how we will determine the threshold, but we need to think carefully about this.

'''Can anyone simply sign up during a nomination period? If not, why not?'''

Assuming that we determine a threshold for nominations, and that the threshold is met - I think that we should accept nominations from anyone. We could think about the requirement for an endorsement from an "established" and "recognised" WikiEducator. I don't think that this requirement is unreasonable since our project is based on a web-of-trust model. In other words, I feel that it is reasonable that WikiEducator would require an endorsement for nomination from a community member we trust.

What qualifications should nominees have?

I would be uncomfortable with specifying minimum qualifications. Nominees would always be able to present their qualifications during the election process. For me, demonstrated commitment through real contributions to WikiEducator carry more weight than qualifications.

Any particular citizenship?

Difficult question. I have alluded to these issues in my reply to Steve's contribution. On the one hand WikiEd infrastructure is funded by COL. On the other hand this is an international project - we welcome content contributions from non-commonwealth countries. So I think that we need to think carefully about the what the Commonwealth values of democracy, good governance, human rights etc mean in a digital world aiming to develop a free curriculum by 2015.

Minimum age?

We may be treading dangerous ground here. While still in its early stages of collecting data, the new account survey shows that the average age of a new account holder is 49 years. I'm pretty chuffed with this outcome - because it's not only the "geek" teenagers that are taking this technology seriously. More importantly - I'm below the average age!

'''Should the entire Board be elected at once, or should terms be staggered? If staggered, how will the initial elected Board be selected?'''

Personally, I'd prefer a model which is staggered - how we achieve this the first time around must still be determined.

'''Once a set of nominees are finalized, are they all selected at once? Will voters have one vote, or will they have more than one so as to support multiple nominees?'''

For our first democratic elections - we will need to think carefully about the continuity challenges. I'm all for the one-person, one-vote model - this will encourage the community to think where they cast their vote. The question is whether we will require a minimum number of edits in WikiEducator, before an individual is eligible to vote?

I do think that its valuable to restrict voting to active members of the community. We have many ghosts in WikiEd who created an account out of curiosity - but have contributed nothing since. We could pose two requirements:


 * A completed User-page and
 * a minimum number of edits.