[OSM-talk] Unelected OSMF "advisers"

[Oleksiy Muzalyev]

There is a good Chinese proverb, "Wisdom begins with acceptance of
reality". If it is the reality, it makes sense to accept it and create a
transparent explicit OSM Meritocracy Technical Council (MTC), the second
branch of authority, in addition to the OSMF Board.

Merits could be clearly defined. For example, if a user has got more
than twenty thousand meaningful edits, or published say three articles
in main stream media  about the OSM recently, or works on significant
hardware or software OSM projects, etc. she/ he could apply for the
Meritocracy Technical Council membership.

Representative democracy (indirect democracy) is much better than a
tyranny, not doubt about it, but it is, probably, not the end of the
history yet. There are readily available tools nowadays to verify the
achievements (merits) directly and unambiguously (number of edits,
articles' URLs, projects' URL, etc.)

Both branches could be mutually reinforcing, especially if the roles are
clearly defined and harmonized. Not Meritocracy vs. Democracy (1), but 
Meritocracy and Democracy.

Best regards,
Oleksiy

(1) http://tildehash.com/?article=meritocracy-vs-democracy

On 17.11.2014 16:58, Steve Coast wrote:
> ... since almost all of the important roles in osm are unelected...
>
>> On Nov 17, 2014, at 7:41 AM, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemeD.net> wrote:
>>
>> I am a little concerned that the (already overwhelming) task of fixing OSMF, which has been entrusted to a board of seven good people, is being made still harder by people in mysterious unelected roles offering their advice.
>>