Seconding the motion
With regards to your concerns about the Executive Committee, a few points:
- The draft policy does not require the establishment of an EC -- it merely provides the authority for Council to establish an EC should it decide this is necessary as well as the minimum requirements to prevent against "stacking" of the EC. So the decision to establish (or not establish) an EC is by normal resolution of the Council, and no amendment to the draft policy is required should council decide against an EC.
- In the event that Council decides that an EC is required -- the draft policy has a number of clauses to prevent the Council from "stacking" the EC, including for example:
- A requirement for the full council to pass a resolution detailing the authorities ceded to the EC. This means the Council decides what the EC is allowed to do and what it is not allowed to do;
- The Council decides on the requirements for being eligible to serve on the EC -- therefore your concerns are addressed because Council can specify by resolution that only Elected Members may serve on the EC. In fact Council could apply additional and more stringent criteria for serving on EC (in the event that an EC is established). The draft policy makes a very clear statement that: "Members [of EC] must have demonstrated real and sustained contribution to WikiEducator to serve on the Executive Committee."
- There is a further protection in the draft policy in the unlikely event that the Council attempts to stack EC with non-elected members by specifying a minimum standard that requires a majority of elected members on the EC.
Yes, you are correct that nominating 4 people will achieve the minimum numbers for constituting the Council. That said, the intent of the draft policy was to constitute a Council of 25 members. The minimum requirement of 4 was designed as a mechanism to avoid a majority of nominated members in the event that the election only achieved 7 elected members (the minimum number of elected members required on Council). Doing a little math -- lets assume that we only achieved 7 elected members and council appointed 4 nominated members -- that would have resulted in a 57% majority for elected members. Now that we have achieved 15 elected members, the maximum number of nominated members is 10 which results in a two-thirds majority of elected members on the full council. There are a number of elected members who are in favour of nominating 10 members -- so we also need to consider their views as part of our democratic process in the constitution of our Council.
A closing thought -- looking at the folk that have been nominated so far, I see that many of the nominees in fact have significantly more edits in WE than a number of our elected members. So I would argue that our nominated members will in fact strengthen Council rather than dilute it.
I am not going to say much, except that The draft policy based on which the present elections were held, due to which we claim to be elected also allows for nominations without specifying that the person should have stood for elections. If we feel we are legally elected let us also legally nominate people as provided for in the draft. The body so formed can re-examine all issues.
Let us close the matter on that. savi 06:10, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
