Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2009/Candidates/Questions/1

I've asked a question - but have no idea if I've done it correctly! I hope so, but many thanks to whomever may have to tidy up some idiocy or other. This is a pretty tricky system to get around, but I appreciate the efforts the various volunteers oiling the cogs are putting in. cheers, Privatemusings 00:32, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The new randomized, colorized template[edit]

So, do I correctly understand that now, with the "improved" template in place, when I want to answer a question, I have to edit from the "whole page" mode, since there aren't any section-edit links to click? That's rather annoying, and it surely increases the likelihood that candidates will encounter edit conflicts. -- Thekohser 01:20, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'll add my little voice to the 'not sure this is worth it' camp (if there is one) - seems like a good-ish idea, but doesn't really work for me - I don't think it biases the readership to have a set order, personally (hey, who's got the time to actually read any answers anyways?! ;-) Privatemusings 01:44, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The lack of section edit makers has nothing to do with the randomization, it's a result of the colored headings. As far as the randomization goes. For some of these questions everyone is going to give roughly the same answer. The first person may sound insightful, the Nth tired. That is... if you even bother to read more than a few of the answers to a given question. It would be unfortunate if the same folks suffered the same bias for every reader and every question, and it was trivial enough to eliminate.--Gmaxwell 03:38, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Section edit links are back. Sorry if I caused an edit conflict for anyone. --Gmaxwell 03:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Chat" back to Sarcasticidealist's answer[edit]

Moved here from Candidates Questions page:

Dear Steve, you point exactly to what I´d want to know. You say: "I'd much rather be beholden to our readers and community members and granting agencies functioning in the public interest". If I say to you: "last year's charity round was very very close if not scanty and would have been a disaster but for one single $3 mln grant", what do you think of the next round? I'd like to hear this from every candidate. Google owes us so much, that even with a doubling or tripling of our yearly budget, they wouldn't come close to influencing our policy. What I'm going for, is earning income that does not influence our policy, do you see any chance to do that? - Art Unbound 19:48, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I only just saw this today. Thank you for the follow-up. I'm not sure I follow why "Google owes us so much"; could you clarify that? As well, my concern with excessive reliance on a single funding source is not only that it could influence our policy (though of course depending on the source that could be a concern), but also that it could cause us to make our operational decisions around a single source of money that could disappear at some point. As long as we're reliant primarily on small-ish donors, we're exposing ourselves less to the risk of a single funding source disappearing. Sarcasticidealist 20:46, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Signpost Q&As[edit]

A note that the en:wp Signpost also asked 12 questions of each candidate; their answers are now published here. -- phoebe 15:30, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]