Win7Mac | # 201 | 2014-12-23, 17:41 | Report

I don't see the causality here.
As a reminder: if Council is integrated as being an entity of MC eV, like it is designed as of today, there's no requirement for councilors to become regular members.
The Board is bound to execute Council rulings only if Council is an entity of MC eV, otherwise § 7 (5) will be changed to "The Board of Directors executes the General Assembly's rulings." If Council is seperate from the eV, it could just have a deliberative role but no real power or responsibility (option #1).

Just like you quoted, only if a member offended the objectives and interests of the association and despite a written or electronic reminder repeated infringements were committed, the member can be excluded by Board majority upon providing objective reasons. This is the standard way for an eV and makes it not-so-easy as it sounds from your words. Have a better solution?

There is no such law. Everybody wanting to promote the purpose of the association is welcome and cannot be declined easily (by law).

Win7Mac | # 202 | 2014-12-23, 21:14 | Report

Please also see Gerbicks' and my following post over here.
Sorry for chross-posting but I don't know better for the moment...

wicket | # 203 | 2014-12-24, 00:58 | Report

An interesting proposal to establish a volunteers' working group but the problem I see with it is finding volunteers who would be willing to do the "mundane tasks" as you put it.

I don't really understand the cleaner analogy. Cleaners don't have the responsibility of keeping an organisation running. A more appropriate analogy might be one of councillors on a city/town council.

As I understand it, there is currently no rule in place would prevent volunteers from coming forward to help out the council but we don't seem see many volunteers outside of the council as it stands. By having a council, the community elects five volunteers who are willing to take on the responsibility of ensuring that the community will be in kept in good shape for the six months of their term.

---

Last edited by wicket; 2014-12-24 at 01:04.

Estel | # 204 | 2014-12-24, 10:28 | Report

IDK, I would be first to volunteer for doing "mundane" housekeeping tasks in Maemo, as long as it doesn't involve Council, elections, and all that fss-fuss

Neither Council have - keeping the organisation running is job of Board (BTW, this common misconception reinforces my theory about eternal power conflict if we keep Council).

Nah, housekeeping tasks of Council IS being the cleaners (mostly). Councilors on city/town (as we have ONE city here) is the General Assembly, with Board being the major

BTW, cleaning the "house" IS part of keeping organization running - try to work in town hall that wasn't cleaned for 2 year or live in a city where trash isn't disposed of (even for few weeks), and you will notice that in short term, cleaners are much more vital for organization survival than town council/major Italians would have some experiences with it...

Current Maemo Council IS for cleaning - including cleaning the toilets, if you pardon the comparison. Important task (no irony), but nevertheless miles away from city/town Council. When one toilet cleaner think he is head of city Council/major, we get what we had in past few months, and we *must* not allow it happen, again, ever. Ditching election campaign of room/toilet cleaners is a good step toward it.

Because if they're already elected, why you would need to? We have, like, 11 candidates. Last time it was 10. Still, the unelected ones were NOT volunteering doing mundane tasks after election, even if they were willing to volunteer BEFORE election (thus candidated) - which is another proof that the election circus around Council discourage people from doing real work.

Even though current time's Council is unpaid and meant to be house cleaning, there is too much involved with election in our "bigger" society, that (conscious or not) catalyst thinking like "they got elected, so it's their responsibility, why should I do this task if they got elected to do so?".

/Estel

wicket | # 205 | 2014-12-24, 17:25 | Report

I just don't see how it will be possible for the Board to represent the entire community. I've already expressed my concerns in the other thread regarding voting differences and personal data storage so the fact remains that not everyone in the community will want to become a member of the GA. This means that the Council (or a similar entity) is needed if you don't want to alienate anybody. For better or for worse, the MC e.V. is here to stay. The Board considered it to be the best way forward at the time and by all means it does have its advantages over its previous incarnation. I'd like to have faith (it may be blind faith) in the good will nature of the both the Board and Council that they can both settle their differences and avoid any future "power struggle".

peterleinchen | # 206 | 2014-12-24, 22:31 | Report

At this time I can assure you there are no fights/struggles/whatever between board and council.
I can not guarantee that this will stay (but would like) that way but would like to get 11 answers of candidates in the nomination thread or wiki page. So you (the members) can make your own decision.

I am really considering and thinking about Estel's words but do not see the necessity to frown council.
Any volunteer would be welcome to council meetings and tasks. How much did you see? And I do not think this is because of attitude of 'they got elected so why should I care?'. But more a general nowadays attitude.
How much volunteers do you think we will have on a Tuesday night meeting without those 5 members that got elected?

Estel | # 207 | 2014-12-25, 05:15 | Report

If someone doesn't *want* (!= can't, can't is when he isn't allowed due to law/residence/whatever) to become part of General Assembly, it isn't alienating her/him - it is self-"alienating", personal decision. Same situation with voting for Council - following your way of thinking, we have 90% of Community "alienated", cause, from those thousands of people, we get, like, 80 votes? BTW, I'm "alienating" myself, as I don't vote for Council for many, many terms (with the exception of voting *against* certain Councilor, who got elected nevertheless, and almost blew that place up), and I would be last to think that someone is "alienating" me.

As long as General Assembly is open to everyone *willing* to participate, I don't see problem, anyway.

I think that requirement for IRC meetings is broken by design, as it requires real-time presence (that, most of the time, is NOT required to do the actual work). CSSU suffers from the same flaw *shrug*.

I see it as front page+TMO thread+mailing list announcements what we need, what skills are needed for that thing, and what will stop working if we won't find anyone willing to participate in the work group. Otherwise, IMO, most people shrug it off, as we already have the elected people that should take care of "everything".

Well, anyway, we won't know until we try

/Estel

Ps.
Speaking about IRC - are there any plans for making the IRC moderator things more transparent and in-control of current organization? 3/4 of IRC moderators are inactive, one is sworn enemy of the current administration and known for notoriously abusing moderator powers, and I think no one knows who have grand-administrator privileges there. Time to contact freenode and reclaim #maemo channel? AFAIK freenode have ruleset for such situations, and de-hijacking should be trivial.

juiceme | # 208 | 2014-12-25, 13:28 | Report

We are trying to get this fixed. It just turns out is a bit difficult to get hold of the people who can do something about it.

Win7Mac | # 209 | 2014-12-25, 19:23 | Report

Just my thoughts. Being voted in puts some healthy pressure to deliver.
I think it's safe to say that a big portion of potential volunteers will be idling in the General Assembly (GA). But it remains to be seen how much they'll really engage beyond voting for Board once per year. MC eV is meant to be a receptacle for all active supporters and their members have all the power, by law. They're free to decide basically upon anything, unless some things are declared to be in the resposibility domain of council. Currently, for Council explicitly mentioned are only elections (incl. Board) and referenda.

Each entity of the eV really has to be perceived as a complementing part, with or without council.
As I see it, not everybody is ready for disbanding Council (yet) and as a result from recent discussion, I suggest to postpone such movement. If MC eV shows up fully functional and members find ways of promoting maemo communiy without the "need" for a council, the time may be ready then.
But nevertheless, there still stands the valid demand of a community representation, as any attempt to form an association has always been to give a home for our community (garage acccount) in th efirst place.

As a sidenote, General Assembly has the same potential problem as Council: if they strain board resilience too much, they may be left without any director at all which would ultimately lead to dissolving the whole association (by law, again).

We're already evaluating possibilities to use the voting engine instead. At least technically, it's possible to use it in another mode, other than STV- or referendum-mode.

Estel | # 210 | 2014-12-26, 04:12 | Report

I opt for referendum - let the Community decide, if we want Council or not. Also, if we randomly judge will (or not) to disband Council by input in this thread only, we're giving voice only to the vocal ones - not necessarily the best course of action.

/Estel