Re: Number of representatives

On May 3, 2014 7:28 AM, "Charles McCathie Nevile" <chaals@yandex-team.ru>
wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I like the idea of the representatives, but I think there are a few
things that we should consider.
>
> There isn't a clear linear comparison between number of AC reps and
income - the difference is more than an order of magnitude between very big
and very small members already. But that is somewhat balanced by the fact
that big members *generally* have far more effective power, by having more
employees who can participate than smaller organisations.
>
> The number of "webizen representatives" should probably be capped at some
fraction of the number of overall AC representatives.
>
IIRC the current proposal does provide both a representation formula  (more
or less linear i think) and a cap that seemed kind of reasonable (20 i
thought it was).

> Getting this perfect isn't as important as it seems. The AC advise,
rather than being able to do anything useful in a strict up/down vote. So
numbers matters far less than the quality of your representative - and for
that matter, your ability to determine "facts on the ground", since W3C
doesn't have any procedure to require following its decisions.
>
> Rather than taking a straight line approach, I suggest we allocate a
number of potential representative places on a sliding basis. I
specifically propose:
> - a minimum of 3 for up to 1000 webizens
> - adding 2 representatives for every doubling of the number of webizens
up to 100k
> - 23 representatives at 100k, and
> - adding 4 representative for every doubling thereafter
>
A linear formula + simple cap also works pretty well though and has the
benefit of meaning the same thing until you hit the threshold which seems
kinda nice to me.  The cap/formula can always be revisited, right?
Personally speaking, i think getting something in place that can be further
tweaked is way way more important than fiddling too much over what a max
might be if a zillion people join or the optimal formula...  It's got to
get to where we can elect a few reps and get it started imo.

> This would mean 103 million webizens would have 83 representatives.
>
> Before we reached such a point I think we would consider changing the
nature of the organisation more seriously.

Yes, me too :)

Probably Long before such a point. If each of 100M people paid $*1* / year,
the W3C budget would be massively different. Although unless we get some
sensible mechanism for web-based micropayment, with current technology the
most likely outcome of all that new income is a major overall deficit :(
>
> cheers
>
> Chaals
>
> --
> Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
>       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com
>