Re: Social Committee proposal
On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 14:45:35 +0100, Josip Rodin <joy@entuzijast.net>
said:
> On Sat, Jan 27, 2007 at 03:05:29PM +0200, Kalle Kivimaa wrote:
>> Why would an ad hoc body be less accountable than an elected body?
>> The body needs some kind of check to have any power, be it either a
>> DPL delegation or a direct constitutional power, but in either case
>> there should be a way to make the group accountable, even if they
>> are not elected.
> It would be inherently less accountable because people don't have
> any means to replace its members. Should we really let anyone join,
> and then have to convince the leader or do a general resolution vote
> every time we want to replace someone who's doing something wrong?
I second this. This does raise an interesting point, though.
This kind of accountability implies several tacit points: 1) the
committee has some power (whatever those powers may be), 2) members
of the committee exercise those powers, 3) that serving on the
committee is a privilege, and 4) that privilege can be taken away on
unsatisfactory performance.
What is desirable, in situations like this, is for the larger
community that is being served by a body like the soc ctte to be able
to remove underperforming members, and to prevent abuses; but this
also implies there is some commonly accepted measure of performance;
and those are the trickiest parts to implement.
One of the means people have taken to implement the "remove
under performing members" absent a clear cut MOP is to do it
proactive elections: instead of indefinite tenure, and largely
unpleasant disbarment proceedings, which, lacking a clear MOP result
in large amounts of bad feeling all around (and accusations of
persecution, etc) to the extent that the disbarment proceedings are
seldom undertaken, we have a proactive elections, where the burden
of proving value is shifted to the candidates periodically.
There is still potential for bad blood (one has t just witness
the negative ads and the vicious campaigns run by some politicians),
but elections are a process by which one is more likely to achieve
timely removal of undesirable elements on the ctte, with minimal
lasting bad blood.
If we refrain from term limits, we can avoid losing good
members due to hard coded rules.
The bad thing about elections, though, is that they do tend to
promote what we call politics; this is because if you do not have a
clear measure of performance, it is highly unlikely you have any
predictive MOPs either.
In case it is not clear, this is a friend-of-an-elected-body
brief.
manoj
--
Where there's a will, there's a relative.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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