What does governance mean to me?

I am known to be a die-hard fan of any product or service i find useful and empowering. I see a lot of people on their profile in the streets of twitter say ‘RT not endorsements’. Well, in my case they mostly are. If it isn’t, you can be darn sure it will be a quoted tweet with my opinion accompanying it.

A lot has been going on in the world of WordPress (the open source project) for the past one year. If you happen to see any of my WordPress tweets or retweets, know that i am a big fan.

So I recently volunteered to take part in the WordPress governance project proposed by Morten and Rachel. The first question we all asked ourselves in the slack workspace is ‘what does governance mean to us?’

Or rather what is the first thing that comes to mind when you think governance?

For me, the first thing that comes to mind when I think about the word ‘governance’ is ‘good and responsible management of something or someone under your care’. Ensuring that their best interests are catered to.

I asked a friend of mine and he did note that the first thing that came to mind for him is ‘strict’, in a misnomer way. He further stressed that perhaps ‘strategy’ is what I am looking for, after I explained the supposed context of ‘WPGovernance’.

On a second thought, I want to ask. Can any community survive without governance? It’s a known fact that you can’t satisfy everyone. So, what happens when those best interests the community wants are not best interests for them?

I want to say, in the context of WPGovernance or any community whatsoever. Governance to me, will be having a good strategy (with convincing whys) that is clearly communicated, by all the leaders in charge, who should master the ability to listen to understand, and be slow to speak.

So that when they do speak, they would do so from an empathetic point of view on what the community is going through, and constructive ways in which almost everyone (not everyone) can benefit from the strategies put forth.

What do you think? What does governance mean to you? And if you are a WordPress (the open source project) fan, what does it mean in that context? What do you expect it should mean?