[Osmf-talk] Membership Working Group and board interactions
michael spreng
osmf at m.spreng.ch
Sat Feb 9 00:01:02 UTC 2019
Hi
The release of the report has lead to some discussion about the
interactions between the board and working groups. Here a few additional
thoughts from me.
Working groups have some level of independency, while the board has a
supervision role. In this particulat case, we discussed the unusual
signups at our working group meeting, and found that we should
investigate. Our meeting was after the board already decided on the
acceptance of the members. So in the best case, we hoped to learn how to
grow the membership significantly also in other cases. And here is the
point where tension appears between board and working group. While the
board wanted to communicate directly with GL and wait for further
responses, we looked at the data at our hand, and prepared and executed
the questionnaire (sent to French and Indian new members, see the report).
After we finished the report and sent it to the board, it felt like it
takes forever until this moves forward. Meanwhile there were still
questions from the community which the report and we could answer, and
it was still not released. At some point we decided that we want a set
release date, to avoid dragging this on. I think the arguments for
urgency have already been mentioned in the discussion, mainly a desire
to enable the community to take actions before the next elections.
Independent of whatever intentions GL had. For me, this incident shows a
means of influence we should protect against.
In conclusion, even though I'm biased as a working group member, I think
the independence is a good feature of the working groups for the OSMF.
It allows for a bit of resilience by adding a second "safety factor".
(To make it clear: With the statement above I do not want to say the
board failed at anything. Yes we forced them to react with our deadline,
but that just means it would have taken longer. This safety factor is
meant purely hypothetical against a board dragging it out indefinitely)
Michael (part of the MWG)
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