Talk:Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024

Questions

Hello! Does the "End of March - Early April" question period mean we can only ask questions in that period, or can we ask them earlier (like in steward elections)? Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 16:48, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Vermont:, I've added a clarifying note to the questions page, feel free to post questions at your leisure - candidates will not be expected to reply until the Question period later on. Thanks for the q, Patrick Earley (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Possibly missing info

According to the Charter, "no more than two members [of the U4C] can be elected from the same home wiki". Unless you meant to exclude that statement from the final draft of the Charter, I think it should be included on the 2024 Election page. You don't want people to be surprised after the election results come out. Tagging Olugold and RamzyM. Adrianmn1110 (talk) 12:35, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@Adrianmn1110:, fair point - I'll add that text to the main page. Patrick Earley (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@PEarley (WMF): Thank you very much. Adrianmn1110 (talk) 21:04, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Question by Colonelsnow

Hi, I'm User:Colonelsnow. I'm wondering if there are any public debates (by public, I mean public on Wikimedia) between the competing UCoC candidates. That would make the election easier and faster, while voters can make better decisions on whom to support on Wikimedia. Giving 2 questions for each user is an interview on its own which can be included, but I believe that a public debate can answer one's thoughts, without the person asking the candidate. This is just an opinion, so please answer if you agree or not. Thanks.

---

Colonelsnow (talk) 08:36, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Another Question

How do you break ties? Colonelsnow (talk) 05:01, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

It's clearly stated in the charter. -- Sleyece (talk) 13:43, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Banner

Can an admin please change the font size on the banners? Per the usage guidelines, they're supposed to be unobtrusive, but these are anything but. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 12:12, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

For the record the banners are exactly the same as the previously-used ones for the UCoC Charter Ratification vote earlier this year. But if they need to be adjusted I'm happy for somebody to do so. Joe Sutherland (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 18:26, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Who's running this election?

Since that isn't clear on the election page, I think for transparency reasons, if nothing else, this needs to be completely clear. All well and good that candidacies are being invited, but there are already two candidates who don't meet minimum criteria, and they need to be removed. A poorly-managed election process can have serious knock-off effects on the ability of the committee to function. Risker (talk) 01:05, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi Risker, thanks for your question. This election is overseen by the U4C Building Committee and administered by the Elections Committee (section 2.4 of the U4C charter). There will be a period between when the call for candidates closed and the question period starts where candidates eligibility will be checked and marked. Best, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 03:21, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

I'd suggest that it's better to remove candidates as soon as their lack of eligibility is clear. That way, other potential candidates don't make assumptions that there are sufficient candidates for the roles, and choose not to put their names forward. Those individuals aren't going to be any more eligible on April 1 than they are now. It's fair to give people time to fix up technical, formatting and completeness issues in their self-nomination; but if they don't already have 500 edits, they're out of the running regardless, and it's not best use of anyone's time to have their names there. Risker (talk) 03:32, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

That's a fair suggestion, I'll relay this to the team. Thanks, Risker. RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 03:35, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

One of the candidates has now 456 edits globally. It's quite possible they'll get the 500 in time. But even if they would have only 1 edit: How could I declare it'll be impossible to fullfill the formal requirements, when it is possible (but unlikely)? Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 03:48, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

One of the candidates registered their account less than a month ago. There is no way that they can meet the 365-day account age requirement. One candidate has fewer than 100 edits. The election rules are very unclear (as I have noted below, giving a different example) but in all previous global elections the minimum experience credentials have been applied as of the time that nominations are opened, if not earlier. Risker (talk) 04:15, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Hm, indeed it is common practise that the deadline for the formal requirements is the start of the nominations, not the start of the voting phase. I'll consult with my collegues. Sorry, committees are slow to respond. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 04:23, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Der-Wir-Ing, thank you very much for taking the time to respond. I appreciate your engagement here, and I hope others do as well. Risker (talk) 04:31, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Risker that ineligible candidates should be removed as soon as possible in order to prevent other users from falsely believing there are enough candidates and not running themselves.

And I don't understand why Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024#Call for Candidates doesn't mention that there additional criteria like Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Charter#1.4. Conflict of Interest. Therefore another one of the current candidates doesn't seem to be eligible [1][2]. Johannnes89 (talk) 06:39, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

If a candidate self-nominates as a regional representative, can they be elected in a community seat?

I am looking at the candidates (current as of this writing), and the rules for the election. The self-nomination suggests that people can be *either* a regional candidate *or* a community at-large candidate. In other words, if a region has 3 great candidates, and they all indicate they are regional candidates, then only one will succeed, whereas much less qualified candidates who choose to be "at-large" candidates will get seats. This is what is implied by the way the self-nomination document is set up. This should be clarified - either this impression is correct, or there is an alternate process for filling the at-large seats. (Example: candidate with greatest support from each region is selected, then the at-large seats are filled by the highest-ranked candidates regardless of whether they are running for an at-large or regional seat. All successful candidates must meet baseline support level.) This should be absolutely clear before voting starts, because many people will vote based on how the seats are distributed. Risker (talk) 16:28, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

As an Elect Com member I already wondered about this myself. I should have consulted with my collegues, but I was busy. Sorry. The written rules are not clear in this case, given I didn't miss something. As far as I see it now, even if a candidate fails getting elected for a regional seat, they can still get one of the at-large seats. But if certain candidates only run for a at-large seat, they volontarily miss the chance to get one of the regional seats. Well, maybe I missed something. @Taylor 49, SpringProof, and RamzyM (WMF): Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 04:16, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

The self-nomination document requires the candidate to select being either a regional candidate or an at-large candidate. While I can appreciate that some people may prefer the one-year term that at-large candidates will serve in this first election, the nomination process itself strongly suggests that a candidate can only run for one type of seat and will not be eligible for the other type of seat. Speaking personally, I'd prefer your interpretation, but it is contradicted by the nomination process. I'd encourage the Elections Committee to address this well before self-nominations close, because it really does have an impact on both the potential candidate pool and the ultimate outcome of the election (particularly if excellent potential candidates choose not to run because there are already several good candidates from their region). I know this is the first time this election has been run, so there are lots of fine points to clarify (including the date that candidate experience requirements must be met, as I noted above). The Election Committee already has years of history in dealing with a lot of these questions, and I urge them to apply that experience here. Having been a candidate in an election where the rules kept changing, I can tell you it's very frustrating from that side, too. Risker (talk) 04:28, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

As I read the Charter, there is no procedure for how regional candidates may be elected for an at-large seat. As such, it seems like it's an either-or situation, where candidates may only run for a community-at-large or a (much more limited) regional seat. Without additional voting procedure delineated, Risker is right; it's impliedly restrictive-in-scope. If it was supposed to be combined, then that's up to the Elections Committee to fix—and hopefully soon. SpringProof (talk) 00:58, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

The U4C charter only mandates that there are 8 elected candidates representing all of the regions, it doesn't say people can only run for a regional or community at large seat. I don't even know how selecting candidates for different kinds of seats would work via SecurePoll?

I think all candidacies should be both for a regional and a community at large seat. Then people just vote for all candidates and the election result will be determined by looking which candidates got the most support among all candidates from the same region -> those are the ones getting the 8 regional seats. Afterwards the 8 community at large seats get determined by looking which other candidates got the most support. Johannnes89 (talk) 09:42, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

So running for an At-Large seat was me volunteering to cut my chances of being elected in half? That was definitely NOT in the original charter. -- Sleyece (talk) 16:41, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

It just takes a brief analysis of the candidate pool to see that there's high chances for candidates with higher support to not be elected for just not making the "right" home wiki self-identification. MarioGom (talk) 09:58, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Are home wikis and wikis edited the same?

Are home wikis and wikis edited the same? Thanks, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:03, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I am also confused. It seems like many candidates edit multiple languages of Wikipedia. As only two seats can be from the same "home wiki", this question is crucial. SpringProof (talk) 02:46, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I'd suggest that "home wiki" is the wrong term, and shouldn't be used; maybe it should say "primary wiki". For better or worse, a user's home wiki is determined by the MediaWiki software as the wiki on which the user creates the account for the very first time. The potential problems with this were flagged up by the MCDC ratification subgroup, and we are aware that the WMF is working on this, but like many MediaWiki fixes, it's not just a simple change of code but instead has a lot of challenges. When the MCDC elections were held, each candidate had to *identify* which wiki they considered their "home" or "primary wiki" (whether or not it was the one identified by MediaWiki), and they had to meet the minimum experience criteria on that primary wiki. (In the case of this election, 500 edits, 1+ years active on that wiki, etc.) Perhaps the self-nomination form might be revised to specifically ask candidates to identify a single wiki where they meet the experience criteria; if they meet the criteria on more than one wiki, the candidate must make the decision of which one they want to represent at the time of nomination. It doesn't need to be a Wikipedia, it could be Commons or Wikidata, or even Meta. Risker (talk) 03:13, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

@Risker: That sounds like a fair interpretation. However, as of now, that distinction is not apparent. I take it that that will have to go into the hands of the Elections Committee? SpringProof (talk) 05:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Ah shi... I mean, we'll look into this. So, in Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Coordinating_Committee/Charter#2.1._Member_Eligibility it says Each member and candidate must: [...] Self-identify their home wiki(s) and the region they are from publicly.

And in Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Coordinating_Committee/Charter#5._Glossary it says The Community at Large group is the group of the U4C Community elected representatives being active on any Wikimedia project. However no more than two members can be elected from the same home wiki, this number including the members elected In the Regional part distribution group as well.

In the candidate form it says "active wikis", which is interesting info for voters, but gives only a hint for the (usually one) home wiki.

How is this done related to steward business? Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 05:56, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

What is the procedure if more than two users with the same home wiki are among those with the most votes? Feels strange that instead a candidate with lower support can be elected just because they happen to have a different home wiki.

So far enWikipedia and Commons appear to be the home wiki of more than two candidates. Johannnes89 (talk) 07:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I guess the vacancies are filled in order of percentage as long as other requirements are fullfilled (homewiki). Else the candidate is skipped and not elected. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 07:25, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is a problem in that (as I recall) more than half of all Wikimedia accounts are created on English Wikipedia, although a very large percentage of those accounts primarily work on other projects. Current candidates with an English Wikipedia account creation have far more edits on Commons, on Wikidata, and on several other language Wikipedias. It will be particularly problematic to ensure the required geographic representation. That is why I think it is worthwhile for the Election Committee to make a more liberal definition of "home wiki" to be the wiki identified by the candidate as their primary wiki, and for which the candidate meets eligibility requirements. Risker (talk) 07:31, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Agree. An extreme example is this candidate [3] who apparently registered on enwiki – which is therefore their home wiki according to CentralAuth – even though 90+ percent of their almost 50.000 edits are dewiki edits, which is obviously their „real“ home wiki.

By the way I hope the election committee takes to bold decision to postpone the election a couple of weeks if all of the important questions raised in the past days cannot be clarified in time. Johannnes89 (talk) 07:42, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Would it help to change "active wikis" to "home wiki" on the application template? The problem with the Charter is that "home wiki" is the word we have. The definition (as defined by ElectCom) is what needs to be clarified.

@Risker: Although we don't have a candidate as an example, somebody's home wiki could have fewer than 500 edits, yet have an infinite amount on other wikis. Obviously, that person should be eligible to be elected. However, as "home wiki" is currently used, they could not be. SpringProof (talk) 08:08, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

@Risker: I'm actually really confused with how this is worded: "home wiki(s)" implies there could be multiple, so it seems like it also defines a wiki to be self-identified. Yet that still doesn't solve the problem with multiple "home wikis" and the restriction to only two seats per wiki. Ugh. SpringProof (talk) 08:19, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Bit of ancient history, really. Long ago, users had to create an account on each separate wiki. Then starting around 2008, Single User Login (SUL) started to be implemented. It was finalized by unifying the original user accounts from across multiple wikis; that project ended in 2015, and SUL was fully in force. However, for those accounts that had originally been created individually on multiple wikis, their central auth shows what appears to be multiple home wikis, not just the very first account created. That is so far back in history that I'm pretty sure that's not what was intended in this section, and that the term "home wiki" probably was intended to mean "wiki where one edits most frequently". Unfortunately, the term is so precise, and has such a specific meaning built right into Central Auth, that I think the Election Committee is going to have to make a decision which meaning should prevail in the election, and then modify the candidature rule if it isn't the Central Auth/MediaWiki definition. I hope they do that, and then require the candidates to select a single wiki. Risker (talk) 09:34, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

@Risker: Oh I see. Then yes, that definition will be up to the Election Committee to interpret. I don't think they necessarily need to petition an amendment to the candidature rule (although it would be helpful). Their decision can simply say, "For the purpose of candidature, 'home wiki' has a separate meaning from Central Auth". SpringProof (talk) 18:49, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to demand with my full chest that "home wiki" be accepted as 1) Go to the candidate's page, 2) click "Global User Summary", 3) Whatever is listed as "Home:" is the home wiki. Anything less is a violation of the charter and an exploitation of the unseated U4C. -- Sleyece (talk) 23:09, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

@Der-Wir-Ing, go ahead an get this demand to whoever needs to see it, too. For the record I'm VERY fed up with the rules changing and the charter being played with in ways the U4C is supposed to have oversight of. -- Sleyece (talk) 23:12, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

The software doesn't know about the homewiki of a user, as I've demonstrated above. And the charter doesn't say how to determine a user's home wiki, so interpretation of such details by the U4C Building Committee (which wrote the charter and oversees the election) and the Election Committee (which is tasked with administering this election) is very much in order. Johannnes89 (talk) 06:39, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@Johannnes89 The "software" is a cop-out and you know it. There is no option for a candidate to pick a "home wiki" on the candidate form. The closest I was allowed to do was to indicate that I'm running Community-At-Large which is incredibly misleading. I stand in direct opposition to your statement here. Take my formal objection back to the U4C Building committee that y'all are not acting as a "co-equal" branch, but Kingmakers of a puppet committee, and I refuse to accept it. -- Sleyece (talk) 09:56, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

There is no option for a candidate to pick a "home wiki" on the candidate form. Ah yes? I've the impression there is one Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 10:07, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@Der-Wir-IngI'm glad you found a single candidate who was able to figure out the goofy and obscure system you plan to choke the U4C with. Consider this an indication that I'm going to file a formal complaint directly with the foundation against the building committee and the election committee if y'all keep playing games with the candidates. -- Sleyece (talk) 00:46, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

@Der-Wir-Ing@Johannnes89; I hope my updated Candidate Page is to the satisfaction of all Committees more powerful than the U4C in defiance of the approved charter. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Coordinating_Committee/Election/2024/Candidates/Sleyece -- Sleyece (talk) 01:19, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Preload-Button

@RamzyM (WMF) fyi I transcluded the preload button from a subpage [4] so that it doesn't get changed all the time [5][6][7]. The last change led to two applications accidentally getting merged [8]. It's probably worth transcluding the whole „Submit your candidacy“ section if it's not going to be translated, as the description has been changed multiple times as well [9][10][11]. --Johannnes89 (talk) 17:08, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your help, Johannnes89! We currently do not plan to translate that section, so I think it would be okay to include it in the transcluded page. Cheers, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 18:28, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Header

Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024/Candidates and Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024/Questions should be added to Template:Universal Code of Conduct/Header in my opinion in order to make both pages more visible during the election period. Johannnes89 (talk) 06:18, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Good suggestion, I'll add them. Feel free to suggest improvements to the template. Cheers, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 06:08, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

For future elections: proportional representation may be better than geographical districts

This idea of course is too late for the current election, and may not be the best fit for the UCoC goals. But I'll suggest that in general, for most elections, Proportional Representation (as used in the Board of Trustees elections, and in much of the world) may be a more effective way of achieving our diversity goals than allocating seats to various geographical regions or adding "home wiki" restrictions. There are many reasons for this:

• Proportional representation is explicitly designed to ensure that all voices are heard and the best mix of diverse candidates are elected to form a representative committee
• Geography is often not a good proxy for the range of diversity in cultural and individual attributes that best serves the movement.
• Even defining a "home wiki" is problematic as noted elsewhere here
• The best candidates may not be uniformly distributed across regions (as noted in other topics here)

So we may want to revisit how to run elections in the future. ★NealMcB★ (talk) 15:57, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

@NealmcbAre elections being "revisit" in violation of the charter currently? It was strictly up to the U4C to organize that sort of thing. -- Sleyece (talk) 04:04, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

The U4C doesn't exist currently, as this is the first election. Therefore the U4C charter explicitly states that the U4C Building Committee and the Election Committee are in charge. Johannnes89 (talk) 06:40, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@Johannnes89 Excellent use of gaslighting. Do I need to email the Trust and Safety team or the Legal Affairs team? -- Sleyece (talk) 01:43, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

@Nealmcb what would be divided proportionally? I wouldn't be surprised if we see a proposal for a changed seating criteria but I don't understand how proportional would work here. It's not like there are "parties" who can be seated proportionally (and the number of seats here is a relatively small number to be divided). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:42, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Good question! But you don't need formal parties to run into issues with informal, undefined factions of candidates or voters. A great feature of the single transferrable vote (STV) method used via SecurePoll for Wikimedia board elections, is that, for each election, the preferences of each voter implicitly determines which candidates and issues are most important to them. It avoids the tendency in our current system, as in plurality block voting, for a set of similar candidates (a faction, whether explicit or implicit) to sweep most or all the seats, which is possible even if they are a minority, but the largest faction. Proportionality via STV thus minimizes the number of unrepresented or disenfranchised voters. ★NealMcB★ (talk) 00:22, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Discussing the candidates

Will there be any public discussion of the candidates? enwiki ArbCom elections use a dedicated candidate discussion page, where people can explain why they support a candidate, but also voice concerns and criticism. At Steward elections voting is public and points of concern can therefore be raised to other users while voting.

Given the importance of the U4C I hope there will be an opportunity to collect feedback about the candidates before voting via SecurePoll starts – it's usually not possible for voters who don't even understand the language of a candidates' homewiki to find out on there own if there might be any concerns about the users applying for U4C. Johannnes89 (talk) 09:07, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Coordinating_Committee/Election/2024#Timeline mentiones a questions phase. We still have to decide on the length, but I assume one or two weeks. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 13:14, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Deadline extension?

There are currently 19 candidates not marked as ineligible. 6 of them didn't even fill out their candidate page, offering no basis why to vote for them. Of the remaining 13 candidates some will cancel each other out because only two users per homewiki can be elected. Not to mention that only few candidates offer experience regarding U4C matters like dispute resolution, e.g. as (former) admin or arbcom member.

Given that some questions above are still not answered (What is regarded as a candidates' homewiki? Can people run for both a regional and community seat as suggested by the U4C charter or do they have to decide for one option as suggested by the nomination page?) and that we are way short of having enough candidates from different home wikis in order to really elect 16 U4C members, I think the application deadline should be extended. Johannnes89 (talk) 09:28, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

This process seems overdesigned. 16 candidates, restrictions on both region and homewiki (presumably as self-identified?), and clearly no buy-in from the more established community as we have no very few candidates with substantial on-wiki dispute resolution experience (zero current or former arbcom members, ombuds, even admins, etc). I think it would be sensible to go back to the drawing board here - figure out how to market this group in a clearer way, and make the membership criteria smaller and a bit more open (for example, you could have 8 members, of which 3 must be from underserved regions). – Ajraddatz (talk) 15:24, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Ghilt is a long-term arb. Nanör is admin on ar-wp. Taylor on several projects. Volstand is admin on Banja wp.

Anyways, ElectCom and the Building Committee will discuss all the issues mentioned here, tomorrow evening (euro time). Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 16:03, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Sorry yes, I missed Ghilt and forgot about Taylor for some reason (I think I mistakenly remembered them as one of the disqualified candidates). The other two you mention have very limited admin experience, one being a temp admin and the other being an admin on a small wikisource. My point is that the committee, as current constituted and based on the candidates self-selecting for its membership, will neither effectively represent the projects over which it will have jurisdiction nor contain the experience necessary for it to succeed, and I think part of the reason for that is the disproportionate amount of structure being imposed top-down. That isn't to say that the intent to represent the movement as a whole is a bad intent, I just think the current composition has missed the mark. – Ajraddatz (talk) 19:59, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

I expect only a certain number of candidates to get the necessary 60% support rate. Right now, I would expect that some of the 16 seats would stay vacant. We'll see what I can do about it. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 21:00, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

The draft charter doesn't allow ANY committee except the U4C to decide what to do with a seat that is vacant. -- Sleyece (talk) 16:48, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

See below. Denis Barthel (talk) 20:16, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

It seems to be a first time problem - i.e. annually it should be 8 seats but it is now 16 just because it is done the first time. 1233 （T / C） 11:41, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Candidacy

I cannot write my name in the place specified. সিতাংশু কর (talk) 19:16, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello, did you try following the instructions at Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024/Candidates? If yes what issue did you face? KonstantinaG07 (talk) 19:21, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Candidacy deadline extended

The Elections Committee and the Building Committee met for discussion and agreed to extend the candidate filing deadline by one week. I have already marked this change on the election page. There are some other updates based on decisions provided that will be shared out on Monday (including contacting Wikimedia-l about the extension). Happy editing to you all. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:15, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

There was nothing in the UCoC Charter to indicate the election would be extended in when I submitted my candidacy. For the record I'm saying this is unfair. The other committees are acting as the U4C in absence of it, so the U4C is being treating as an subcommittee currently subordinate to them for their random convienence. -- Sleyece (talk) 17:16, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

@Keegan (WMF) I am in direct opposition to being treated as a puppet by committees that are supposed to be Co-Equal to the one I'm running in an election to be on. The "co-equal" terminology was just a lie if the extension stands. -- Sleyece (talk) 17:24, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Keegan is not part of the committee responsible for that decision. I am. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 17:40, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Keegan made the announcement. @Der-Wir-Ing, my formal objection is now directed to you for further consideration. -- Sleyece (talk) 17:44, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

The U4C charter doesn't say anything about how long the nomination period is supposed to be / if it can be extended or not. That's entirely up to the committees which organise the election (which are U4C Building Committee and ElecCom for this election and U4C + ElecCom for the next elections). They have every right to extend the deadline. Johannnes89 (talk) 06:45, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

An "ineligible" Candidate with 519 edits ?

1. As of now, Candidate "Dorji" of Bhutan has 519 worldwide edits.

2. The Candidate filing deadline is April 1, 2024.

It appears to me that this candidate is now an "eligible" candidate. I do not know this candidate. Nor did I check if there are others candidates that are in a similar circumstance.

Am I correct?

If I am correct, then who updates this "ineligible Candidate" list?

Pinging @Keegan (WMF), @KonstantinaG07, @Barkeep49, @RamzyM (WMF).

Respectfully, -- Ooligan (talk) 02:51, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

So we're talking about

"Kheng Singye Dorji (KSD) (less than 500 edits globally)"

Who has now over 500 edits, but he hadn't at the time he created the page. The written rules don't say when you need to fulfill the requirements, but common practise is at the beginning of the nomination phase. Compare with #Who's running this election?. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 04:23, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

@Der-Wir-Ing, the "nomination phase" is still currently open.

If the "nomination phase" is this time period that ends on April 1st, then any candidate that has 500 or greater edits by the end of this period would be a qualified.

For example, if a candidate nominated themselves today with 501 edits (with all other qualification(s) satisfied), then they would be a qualified candidate. A candidate that self-nominated days earlier during this same nomination time period, but has obtained 500 or greater edits by today, would also be an equally qualified candidate.

You wrote about "common practise," however this is the first election for this new Committee. There is no common practice, yet, for this specific Committee's election.

If the rules do not specify about the exact time by which 500 edits must be obtained, then Kheng Singye Dorji (KSD), should be a qualified candidate. -- Ooligan (talk) 07:49, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

That's exactly what I wrote in #Who's running this election?. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 08:33, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

There is obviously no common practice for this election, but for other elections globally and locally. Voter eligibility is usually determined either at the start of an election or even at an earlier date, similarly candidate eligibility is usually determined at the start of a nomination period or at an earlier date.

The nomination period started on 5th of March which should therefore be the date to determine which users are legibly to run for the U4C – choosing the 1th of April doesn't make sense as the nomination period has just been extended for another week [12].

If ElecCom and the U4C building committee don't choose the 5th of March I suggest using the 17th of March for determining a candidates global edit count, as the same date is being used for determining voter eligibility. Johannnes89 (talk) 09:50, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Personally I would feel it to be important that the judgement of eligibility is done by a single date equal for all candidates instead of the individual creation date of the page. The latter might lead to inconsistencies as an early candidate close to the minimum edit requirement is ineligible while another with the same number of edits at that date works towards more edits first and being eligible then as they create their page later only.

I would like to see the EC to set up such a fixed date. And even if it is unusual in Wiki-terms, I'd prefer the nomination deadline as the best date. My reasoning is that a) it equalizes everyones chances because it is a date in the future (thus everyone can work toward it still) and b) there has been a certain tendency in yesterdays EC/U4C-BC conversation towards the deadline as a good milestone for other questions (at least I perceived it as such). Denis Barthel (talk) 20:02, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree there should be a fixed date, therefore I proposed either choosing the start of the nomination period (5th of March) or the 17th of March (consistent with the voter eligibility criteria).

Choosing the end of nomination period doesn't make sense to me: By that logic a user who registered their account on 3rd of April 2023 wasn't eligible last week (because they were not registered for 365+ days), but now they suddenly are eligible because the nomination deadline has been extended from 1st of April to 8th of April 2024?

„Everyone can work toward it“ is wrong, because the date is not just important for determining a user's edit count but also for the 365 days account creation criterion. Whatever date you choose it offers equal chances for everyone, people could have started working towards 500 edits weeks ago (e.g. while voting for the U4C charter in January which states these criteria). Johannnes89 (talk) 07:42, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Note that the account eligibility tool for candidates now checks if 500 edits have been made before the 17th of March (example [13]) just as it does for voters (example [14]) per voter eligibility criteria. --Johannnes89 (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

A note that the EC is yet to decide on the eligibility date; we will ask to update the tool once a date is decided. RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 07:05, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@RamzyM (WMF) @Der-Wir-Ing you've apparently decided on the 5th of March [15] but RamzyM is only mentioning the 500 edits in his request to Pathoschild, does this apply to both criteria („Be a registered member of at least one Wiki project for at least 365 days and have a minimum of 500 edits“)?

If so, there is one candidate who is not eligible [16] as the account was created on March 25, 2023 [17]. Johannnes89 (talk) 11:35, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Community-At-Large Wikipedia

There is a major issue that wasn't clear in the charter. Am I in competition for At-Large seats with all of the candidates who's home wiki is Wikipedia no matter what, or is it only I'm being challenged if their home Wiki is en.wikipedia.org? -- Sleyece (talk) 16:45, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

In my understanding of the policy people can apply for either a regional seat or a community-at-large seat or for both seats (that is still for the U4C Building Committee + ElecCom to clarify).

But no matter how this is interpreted, it's different from the additional home wiki rule: Per Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Charter#5. Glossary „no more than two members can be elected from the same home wiki, this number including the members elected In the Regional part distribution group as well“. Johannnes89 (talk) 06:51, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@Johannnes89Be sure to make note of my above objection related to this statement. -- Sleyece (talk) 10:02, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Decisions from 29/3 EC-U4CBC meeting

Hi all,

The Elections Committee and the U4C Building Committee met on March 29, 2024 to discuss clarifications requested regarding some parts of the call for candidates. The following decisions were adopted:

• Regional vs at-large seats: candidates are allowed to choose whether they’re running for a regional seat only, an at-large seat only, or both seats.
• Home wiki: pursuant to section 2.1. of the U4C charter, each member and candidate must self-identify their home wiki(s) and the region they are from publicly. Candidates must choose 1 (one) home wiki. It doesn’t have to be the wiki they first created an account on or the wiki they have the most edits with; it can be the one they identify as their “home”.

The EC are deliberating on the questions around cut-off date for candidate eligibility and updated timeline for the election process. Please wait for the decision very shortly.

Please note that the deadline for submitting a candidacy has been extended to April 8, 2024.

On behalf of the committees,

RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 16:39, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@RamzyM (WMF)I'm requesting to know where to send the objection to. Do I email Trust and Safety Team or Legal Affairs Team? The "Home Wiki" rule is not an eligibility requirement as defined by the UCoC. Random additions of moral relativism as to what feels like "home" is not in the charter. -- Sleyece (talk) 01:55, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

"Self-identify their home wiki(s) and the region they are from publicly." The Region a candidate is from is directly linked to the Home Wiki they are from in the charter in the same eligibility requirement. It's not an opening for everyone to pull a Regional Dolezal as the Elections Committee and Building Committee claim. Sleyece (talk) 02:30, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

It's in U4C's Charter, Section 2.1. I think common sense prevails (i.e. this seems to be a common sense rule). 1233 （T / C） 03:34, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I disagree that the region is directly linked to any definition of a home wiki. We have tens of thousands of contributors who would consider their home wiki to be Wikidata or Wikimedia Commons, both of which are global projects that have no geographic base. English projects are edited by people from every single region on a daily basis, many of whom do not consider English their first language. French projects are edited primarily from Europe, Africa and Canada. Spanish projects are edited primarily from Europe, Latin America, the United States, and many other diaspora countries. Portuguese projects are edited from Latin America and Europe, plus some African countries. There is no reliable link between projects edited and geographic location.

The "home wiki" is mentioned in section 2.1 of the UCoC Charter. I support the Election Committee in determining that candidates should self-identify their home wiki. MediaWiki automatically assigns the home wiki to the project on which a user's account has been created; however, that's not representative at all of where people actually choose to contribute. Hundreds of thousands of accounts list the "big wikipedias" as home wikis, while the account owners actually contribute primarily on other projects.

As to users who do not meet the criteria at the time of their self-nomination, but subsequently achieve it....well, there is a very longstanding practice of expecting candidates to meet criteria when they self-nominate, or they are disqualified. Given the very low bar for self-nomination, I'm not sure that practice should change. But I will leave it to the Election Committee to determine that. Risker (talk) 03:55, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

@Risker@RamzyM (WMF) Are we negotiating or are you just pre-emptively drawing lines in the sand to indicate this is an issue for Legal to deal with? An Elections Committee that allows other candidates to attack each other by switching their "home wiki" and effectively flood the zone to make sure opinions they don't like are kept off the U4C is literally insane. -- Sleyece (talk) 09:24, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

• I'm saying the functions of the Committees have gone off the rails here, not that any one individual is "insane". I know someone will try to get me banned for that, but I chose my words carefully, and I'm not backing down. -- Sleyece (talk) 09:46, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

@RamzyM (WMF) I said "opinions" they don't like, but I'm accusing the "home wiki" policy of being a potential tool to exclude races, ethnicity and religion or any other minority voice other candidates or committee members recruiting proxy representative candidates decide to cleanse from the process. I'm assuming I'll be one of them since I've been acting as a proto-member of the U4C in the absence of it. The "home wiki" policy allows for ACTUAL discrimination. -- Sleyece (talk) 10:19, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Sleyece, I am really sorry that you feel this way. The reality is that most people who spend most of their time contributing to smaller projects (including most of the non-Wikipedia projects) started off on one of the largest Wikipedias. Only a small percentage of contributors who contribute mainly to non-Wikipedia projects had their first edit on those projects. It may be reasonable to create a few rules around the candidates' choices of home wikis: for example, a requirement that they have actually contributed to that specific project; or that it be the project on which they have their highest number of contributions; or that their home wiki must be the one on which they have the highest percentage of contributions in the last 12 calendar months. (Those are all just suggestions, although I hope everyone would agree with the first one, at least.) Bottom line, this isn't the place at which to try to change the content of the U4C Charter, so we are stuck with the "home wiki" requirement; however, given there is no definition of what constitutes a home wiki in the U4C Charter, it's reasonable to consider the different ways that could be interpreted, and advocate for one or more of those options. I'd very much like to hear how you might want to apply the "home wiki" rule.

According to my (very basic) research, 11 of the current 27 candidates (about 41%) created their accounts on English Wikipedia, although 7 of those have significantly larger edit counts on other projects they likely may consider their home wiki. As well, 10 of the current candidates have a very significant contribution count on Wikimedia Commons, 9 have very significant Wikidata contributions, a couple have significant MediaWikiWiki contributions, and a similar number have significant contributions on Meta and the Incubator wiki. It is to the advantage of candidates whose primary contribution project is English Wikipedia for other candidates with significant contributions on other projects to select one of those other projects as their home wiki. (It's also likely to the advantage of those English Wikipedia candidates with significant contributions on other wikis to consider identifying the other wiki as their home wiki.) This is the reality of our projects; the 41% English Wikipedia account creation statistic is even higher than I would have anticipated, but it has always been the portal through which the largest portion of accounts has been created. Risker (talk) 12:17, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi all, for the record, the EC will do a sense check pass on candidates selection of a home wiki so that it make some of sense, and that the selection is not clearly and simply to evade competition given the rule in the Charter allowing "no more than two members can be elected from the same home wiki". By that we mean if you have advanced userrights or position on one or more wiki (sysop, crat, arbcom, ...) we would normally expect that selection be from one of those wiki; likewise if you have say 10,000s (over many years and recent) edits on one or more wiki, we would not expect you to select a home wiki where you have less than 500 edits/365 days activity. Candidates would be expected to have reasonable justification to depart from common sense expectation. Regards -- KTC (talk) 21:40, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Candidate pages and questions

Currently, candidate pages do not link to the candidate's question section. With a long series of questions provided by the organizers of this election, and the fact that the community-asked questions are not linked from candidate pages...it seems unlikely that any concerns raised there would actually be seen by passing voters.

In some elections, like the steward elections, candidates' question sections are linked below their statements and in bold. SE votes are also public, helping voters gague how other community members have evaluated a candidate.

In this election, voting is private and questions are hidden. The only thing that passing voters see is how the candidate describes themselves. Could we add question section links above candidate statements? Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 20:20, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

ElectCom will discuss this. Soon. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 20:40, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

see #Discussing the candidates as well, I would still favour having an actual discussion on the candidates (just like at enwiki ArbCom elections), but if its just the candidate page + some questions, at least those questions should be linked prominently. Johannnes89 (talk) 13:43, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion, Vermont! Candidate's question sections are now linked to {{U4C election candidate}}. Cheers, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

AI use in responses

I have put one of the responses at Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024/Candidates/Patriot Kor and one of the responses the candidate had for the questions to AI detectors. I have went to multiple online tools and they all report 100% or very high confidence that these responses have been AI generated. I think this reflects badly on their candidacy, when they have failed to produce responses on their own. 0xDeadbeef (talk) 16:26, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Almost certainly AI generated. The answers are so nonspecific, it's like the AI was given nothing but the prompt. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 20:00, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Hello @0xDeadbeef and @Vermont, I categorically refute the assertion that the responses and answers in question are solely generated by AI. There are several reasons why these responses may resemble AI-generated text. Firstly, due to my advanced proficiency in my native language, I occasionally rely on Google Translate and Chat-GPT to translate unfamiliar English words and sentences. It's understandable that my English proficiency may not match that of Azerbaijani. Secondly, is it not possible for me to possess profound knowledge on the subject matter? Can't the ideas presented be entirely my own? Therefore, the presumption that the answers were entirely generated by artificial intelligence should not be considered definitive evidence and should not be used as grounds to discredit my qualifications as a candidate. Lastly, why would I even require AI? After all, wasn't it created by humans like us? :) Sincerely, Patriot Kor (talk) 07:11, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Machine translation is more appropriate. LLMs are not just translating, they output their own editorial bias which, in this case, is very obvious. There is certainly no rule against that, but I personally consider it good input for voting decisions. MarioGom (talk) 10:18, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Since I've provided the most comprehensive information regarding my activities and promotion among the candidates, as well as offering highly detailed responses to inquiries, my estmed colleagues have likely speculated that I utilize AI technology. However, it's worth noting that AI typically responds to queries within seconds. I invite you to scrutinize the time intervals between my rsponses to questions. You'll observe a consistent 10-minute gap between each response. Have you ever considered this? Is 10 minutes not too long for an AI system to formulate a reply? Conversely, it's ample time for a human to contemplate and articulate a response. In conclusion, I hold no hard feelings if you suspect that my entire campaign is based solely on AI, and I would understand if my candidacy was cancelled as a result. And I will continue my activity. Patriot Kor (talk) 10:48, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the time gap has to do with anything. Of course I know this is not a bot autonomously posting answers. The time gap for a candidate posting a reply can be minutes, hours, or days, and it has nothing to do with whether an LLM is used to compose them or not. I did not claim you relied solely on AI. It is obvious, however, that at least one answer is just the kind of answer ChatGPT writes. U4C is a high judgement position, so I expect members to be able to exercise their own independent judgement. MarioGom (talk) 11:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

NANöR also appears to have used a LLM to compose their responses: the start of their reponse to the professional experience question, Certainly, here are three situations demonstrating my involvement in complex conduct or policy issues, and how I collaborated with others to address them is a classic ChatGPT turn of phrase. I wholeheartedly agree with Deadbeef that undisclosed LLM use is an extremely bad look and really just makes a mockery of this whole process. – Teratix ₵ 16:47, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Candidate pages

Several candidate pages lack basic information like the seat they are running for, languages, projects, any questions, etc. Are these a requirement before voting starts? MarioGom (talk) 14:49, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I was asking myself the same question. If candidate pages are completely empty the candidates don't meet the requirements of Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Charter#2.1. Member Eligibility („Self-identify their home wiki(s) and the region they are from publicly“).

Many candidates have stated their home wiki and region, but not filled out anything else. It's not explicitly stated, but I would think of it as an implicit requirement that candidates need to fill out their application page. Johannnes89 (talk) 15:11, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Also some candidates have filed their region, but not whether they are running for the regional seat or not. MarioGom (talk) 15:52, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

What is the seat assignment methodology?

Is there any documentation about how the seats will be assigned? The charter is not really clear on the methodology. MarioGom (talk) 17:11, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

No. Yes:

No, there is no documentation.

Yes, the charter is not clear.

ElectCom will publish details. So far we're dealing with more urgent matters. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 17:23, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Will it be clarified before voting starts? MarioGom (talk) 18:29, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Just to be clear, my concern is about how seats and home wiki interact when assigning. Depending on the resolution order, results can be wildly different, and this is important when considering when to oppose vs abstain. MarioGom (talk) 18:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

This is also a first time question - can candidates that choose to run for both categories choose their first preference, and fill the seats accordingly?

i.e. for candidate getting highest support but choose to fill the community seats instead of regional, then he/she will fill the first seat... and onwards accordingly. 1233 （T / C） 04:50, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Every voter will be presented one list with all candidates. You can choose for every single candidate between support, oppose or neutral.

Assigning candidates to seats will be done the following way:

Regional seats are filled first. Then the at-large seats.

More precisely: All the candidates that run for a specific regional seat are compared. The candidate with the best result will get the seat. Then all the candidates for another region are compared and the process repeated for every regional seat.

Once all the regional seats are filled with candidates (or left empty for a lack of candidates with the necessary 60% support rate or other formal requirements) the 8 community-at-large seats will be filled with the remaining candidates, as long as they run for a at-large seat.

The best 8 candidates will get a seat. (As long as they fullfill the other requirements like 60% support rate. If not, the next best candidate will get the seat.) Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 19:03, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Can you tell us how this interacts with the home wiki rule? There may be a chance where 3 or more candidates get regional seats but are from same wiki. How will that be resolved? I understand that we don't know exact legality of 2 per wiki limit, so happy to wait until that is clarified as well Soni (talk) 19:47, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

quote from the charter (Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Coordinating_Committee/Charter#5._Glossary):

The Community at Large group is the group of the U4C Community elected representatives being active on any Wikimedia project. However no more than two members can be elected from the same home wiki, this number including the members elected In the Regional part distribution group as well.

For the section about the regional candidates, there is no mention of a home wiki rule. So it doesn't apply to those seats. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 19:58, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Got it. So regional seats will not be under any restriction. But candidates for CAL cannot be elected if 2 or more members from their home wiki are already seated. Soni (talk) 20:19, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

You can thank @KTC for that detail. I would have missed it. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 21:07, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

„this number including the members elected In the Regional part distribution group as well“ -> the home wiki rule applies to all seats (if you apply the rule at all per #Home wiki rule history and question), therefore the regional seats will be under the same restriction. Johannnes89 (talk) 05:12, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

The North America seat will go to an enwp homewiki (all NA regional candidates have enwp as homewiki). If another regional seat goes to an enwp homewiki, that means no other candidate with enwp as homewiki can be a member of the U4C? C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 06:34, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

The NA seat will only go to an enwp home wiki member if one of them gets 60+% support. Personally I will be opposing at least one of the two candidates, probably both (per similar reasons as User:Giraffer/U4CE2024 / User:MarioGom/Voting guides/U4C2024).

In my opinion the problem is not the home wiki rule but the seat assignment method: Why is it, that regional seats get filled first, giving them an advantage towards the home wiki rule, even if they have a far lower support ratio than users running for community-at-large seats?

All seats should be filled by first of all looking at who has the highest support ratio -> those get a regional seat or a CAL seat (if the regional seat is already taken or if they are only running for the community seat). Once the home wiki limit is reached with either regional or CAL seats all other candidates from the same wiki are skipped.

This way CAL seat candidates with a high support ratio can't be denied their seats just because some regional candidates with lower support (but still above 60%) happen to be from the same home wiki. Johannnes89 (talk) 07:33, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) So, for clarification: EC has discussed and agreed on "my" above statement about the general election. Concerning the home wiki rule: KTC pointed out that it aplies only to the at-large seats according to the charter and nobody responded. Even I didn't explicitly agree or oppose.

Anyways, to me it seems possible that out of the 8 regional seats, four could go to people who have en-wp as their home wiki (ESAP, South Asia, North Am. and MENA have candidates with en-wp home wiki). As the home wiki rule does not apply to regional seats, all those candidates could get a seat. For the at-large group, no more candidates with en-wp would be allowed then.

@ Johannes: The regional seats are filled first, because they will have a term of two years in this election, whereas the at-large seats will have only a one-year term (this election, in future elections it'll be 2 years for both).

The U4C is also clearly designed to have regional diversity and filling the regional seats firs, is the best way to make this happen.

And lastly, filling at-large group first, has a higher risk of leaving regional seats empty which will lead to a more complex election next year. And future-me doesn't want to deal with that. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 07:40, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

How did @KTC come to the conclusion that „this number including the members elected In the Regional part distribution group as well“ somehow means regional seats are exempted from the home wiki limit?

If you apply the home wiki rule (and not remove it as suggested per #Home wiki rule history and question) the chapter's wording doesn't give the option to exempt regional seats.

I don't want to fill community the at large group first, I want both groups to be filled at the same time by looking at the candidates with the highest support ratio. There would be no risk for having empty regional seats without the home wiki rule. Johannnes89 (talk) 08:04, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

@Johannnes89: Because the rule only appears once in the whole Charter, under the glossary definition under "Community at Large group". A plain reading of the rule, which in this case is also reading and applying the restriction as narrowly as possible so the fewest candidates are affected means it only applies to CAL. Applying it wider mean the EC will be unilaterally expanding its scope beyond what's stated in the Charter, which no members of the EC proposed to do during its discussion.

The home wiki rule will be applied, because it's in the Charter that was presented to and then ratified by the community. The EC and for that matter the U4CBC or the U4C when it's seated is not empowered to change the Charter unilaterally. If the newly seated U4C wants to remove the home wiki rule because the U4CBC didn't actually meant it to be there in the first place, now that the Charter has been ratified by the community, the U4C can and would be required to follow the process set out under 4.3.2.

If we're going to have a restriction, one that people is suggesting shouldn't be there in the first place per other discussion, let's have it as narrowly as possible. And incidentally, not that it occured to anyone at the time I don't think when the discussion was taking place in parallel, applying the home wiki rule to CAL only does result in having to fill all the regional seats first before CAL is seated. But since that was the option the EC was going with anyway, there wasn't a problem. -- KTC (talk) 08:38, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Because the rule only appears once in the whole Charter, under the glossary definition under "Community at Large group". Speaking of that, will we get clarity on the Home wiki rule legality? The question raised in the below section, where U4CBC members said the homewiki rule should never have been added in the first place.

If the U4CBC members did not want the rule added and it was just there because of a single person's unilateral decisions (and mistakes from everyone else), maybe the homewiki rule should be removed. It's very much an unclear/underbaked statement based on this discussion. Soni (talk) 11:14, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

We are discussing this. Not everyone has responded yet, but it seems likely we will aply the home wiki rule as written in the charter. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 11:34, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Home wiki rule history and question

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Building Committee (U4CBC) adopted the Chatham House rule for its deliberations and it is under that rule that I share the following. On 25 October, during a committee drafting session the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Building Committee (U4CBC) added the following language to the draft charter to the Community at large section "However no more than two members can be elected from the same home wiki, this number includes the member elected as regional part as well." On 29 October, an individual member of the U4C added additional language about this limitation to multiple places in the charter. This included the "Glossary" entry for "Community at Large group". This addition to the glossary was never discussed by the U4CBC (to the best of my memory, notes, and look at the revision history). On 25 November during a committee drafting section the language limiting to two members from the same home wiki was removed by the U4CBC from the draft charter. On 2 December during a committee drafting section, the two member homewiki language was removed from multiple other sections including quorum and resignation. It was not removed from the Glossary.

This failure to remove the restriction from the glossary represents a failure of every member of the drafting committee, including myself. It also represents a failure of the WMF staff who were facilitating the process and who had assumed responsibility for copyediting the document. During their copy editing, staff introduced other changes, contradicting decisions of the U4C, which had to be reverted. Unfortunately, no one noticed this unauthorized addition, introduced by a single U4C member outside of process. This lack of intentional rule around homewikis is evident. As evidence one can see that the elections committee and the remaining U4CBC did not even properly require disclosure of the homewiki until after I inquired about it on 30 March. I find it unfortunate that the two groups did not take that moment to decide that a drafter's error - and one that internally contradicts other parts of the U4C charter - should not create a new binding rule. That is not the path they choose at that time though I understand the difficult place that this U4BC and WMF staff failure placed the two groups now. I am wondering, given the current discussions about how to seat candidates, whether the elections committee and the U4CBC are considering the history of this clause when deciding how to seat candidates. Sincerely, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:00, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

I voted on the charter on the understanding that the two-per-homewiki limit had been taken out, having discussed the matter before voting with U4C members. I did not realize that it had survived in the glossary only. I am deeply concerned about this issue and would welcome an official response to Barkeep49's question. KevinL (aka L235 · t) 22:56, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Official response by whom? The BC, staff, the one unnamed member, EC, Board,....? Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 08:05, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

My question is "whether the elections committee and the U4CBC are considering the history of this clause when deciding how to seat candidates" Barkeep49 (talk) 15:00, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

EC is discussing this. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 15:19, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

an individual member of the U4C added additional language about this limitation to multiple places in the charter. Can you clarify what this means, as the U4C have not been seated? Do you mean U4CBC, or a member of another committee? Soni (talk) 12:07, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes Soni, I meant an individual member of the U4CBC. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:39, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Someone privately asked me why I am not fixing this myself since I am on the U4CBC. The answer is that I stepped down from the U4CBC once the charter was approved knowing that I was considering a run for the U4C. However, this question did make me wonder if the U4CBC is even aware of this issue - obviously the EC is but they have less authority here than the U4CBC - so I will ping @Keegan (WMF) as one of the staff liaisons to the committee. Barkeep49 (talk) 13:34, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

My question to anyone who do not think the rule should apply for this election as written in the Charter is on what grounds do you think the U4CBC or the EC has to disapply a part of the Charter that's been voted on and ratified by the community? The Charter explicitly says "Changes to the Charter ... require community approval". There's room for intepretation sure, but completely ignore what's clearly there, not so much. I don't know how much clearer it can be. -- KTC (talk) 15:46, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

It was a scrivener's error tucked into the glossary. I don't think the community had it in mind when ratifying. Indeed, personally, as I said above, "I voted on the charter on the understanding that the two-per-homewiki limit had been taken out". KevinL (aka L235 · t) 15:51, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Let's consider this a lesson for our movement and let us read more carefully what we (propose to) ratify. As an Arb, I've made similar mistakes myself, while reading the Charter draft, I missed the part in the glossary and now I have to deal with it while being in ElectCom. I doubt that the home wiki rule will have much impact on the outcome of the elections. Maybe two members will be different but not more. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 16:35, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I doubt that the home wiki rule will have much impact on the outcome of the elections. Maybe two members will be different but not more. 2 out of 16 is pretty significant. It's a full quarter of the quorum of the committee. And even if it wasn't, EC should not be making decisions based on "I think this will not have impact" over questions like "Which is more accurate to our Rules as Written/Intended".

This impact is worse when you consider the real instead of the theoretical. I am currently considering withdrawing from the elections, simply because the later reveals of this process (Placing candidates region > CAL as opposed to by support thresholds, as well as this discussion) risk making me a "spoiler" candidate for more qualified ones. This should never be a consideration for candidates ("Better candidates get more votes -> They get elected" should always hold) but the current process is flawed enough to cause it. Soni (talk) 16:58, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Don't worry: It is scientificaly proofen that all elections are shitty. Proofen by en:Arrow's impossibility theorem. All you can choose (as organizer) is the specific type of shittyness.

The building committee decided to enforce a minimuns of regional diversity. But this necessarily comes at a cost of something else. If the 16 persons with the highest support are all from the same region, then you can't have maxium support and regional distribution at the same time.

Maybe there would have been a better way, but we are also preparing the board elections, our main occupation and we didn't have time to look for the very best option. We would have risked running out of time, making no decision in time and causing an even bigger mess.

Btw. We don't agree on all decisions. Sometimes I'm part of the majority, sometimes not. That's how it is in a committee. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 19:57, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I do not think a strawman's argument really helps resolve the questions of "this" election. As wikimedians, we are fairly used to consensus and conflict; that's the job description. I am suggesting specific ways this could have been handled better (and still can!). Even leaving the entire "Did the building committee want some wikis to be limited" question aside, the decision to strictly favour regional seats in priority (as opposed to based on support thresholds as a whole) was made by the EC. The community suggested alternatives and explained why this one was flawed. I'd appreciate if the EC at least considered ideas instead of giving roundabout adages that do not apply here.

To be specific, I was suggesting -

1. Go through all candidates in order of Support/(Support+Oppose) threshold
2. If they are eligible to be seated (Above 60%, seats remaining in CAL/their region, does not clash with already seated candidates for "home wiki"), seat them. Prefer Regional seat over CAL if possible.
3. Repeat 2 until all seats are full or no eligible candidates remain.

The principle is same (Regional seats cannot be filled unless no eligible candidates, home wiki restrictions if needed will still apply) but without the largest confusions of strategic voting. Soni (talk) 21:49, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I think a charter that is clear would have have listed this restriction in sections one of "2.1. Member Eligibility", "2.2. Distribution of Seats", "2.2.1. Regional Distribution", or "2.2.2. Community at large" and perhaps also in "2.6. Vacancies". Which were the places that that the 2 wiki restriction was known to be added and intentionally removed from. Notice that the Glossary repeats what the 8 regions are from the text of the charter. Because it was intentional. I don't think it unfair KTC for you to say that "this is what we think the charter says and are acting accordingly" but that is not at all the same thing as the idea that charter is as clear as it could be on this matter. I also think a charter that was as clear as could be would have meant that the election committee wouldn't have had to add a field for "homewiki" to the application form after applications had already opened. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:26, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

As a member of the U4CBC I'd like to clarify some stuff:

• The aforementioned additions by one of the members were clearly marked by color as mere suggestions to be discussed later, which they were. This method of making suggestions was a standard and well known to all the members of the U4CBC. These were not unauthorized additions by a single member in the sense of non-transparent or even unrecognizable changes to the text. It was not out of process. I would have appreciated it if Barkeep49, as a former member of the U4CBC, would have checked with his former colleagues to reassure himself before making such serious accusations.
• The need for such a policy arose after U4CBC, in response to community feedback, introduced the Community at Large group and wished to prevent large projects overwhelming future U4Cs. Unfortunately, I don't recall anymore what discussions and decisions the U4CBC made at its last meeting to remove this policy from many sections except the glossary.
• But: What is in it, is in it. There has been a vote and neither the U4CBC nor the EC is allowed to drop things that are decided in the charter, neither by debate, nor by assumed common sense, nor by an edit history of any kind. The only way to change it is for the new U4C to make a proposal to change the charter when the next review comes up. The charter still has many flaws, most of them minor, fortunately, because the U4CBC simply did not have enough time and resources. This is a foundation that contains all the important ideas that need to be refined and clarified in the future by the U4C.

Denis Barthel (talk) 12:14, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Dennis I stand by my statements which I carefully wrote to be accurate. I did not say they were unauthorized. Any member could add suggested text. I said instead they were added by a single member outside of a session and that I could find no record of the discussion being approved in the glossary. My original post was carefully compiled from notes I made contemporaneously to the various live meetings and the revision history of the document itself and so I stand by the statement that they were not discussed. Further 9 December not 2 December was the last live drafting session so it was not removed at the last meeting but the second to last meeting. Further I can find no record in the revision history that it was highlighted and will privately send you the link to what I am talking about so you can see how certain text was clearly highlighted while that change was not. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:57, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

SecurePoll issue

Going to Special:SecurePoll lets you vote in the U4C election, albeit with a blank ballot (screenshot). I just tested this and my vote went through. Looks like someone forgot to postpone the election by a week? Giraffer (talk) 15:08, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Hey Giraffer, Thanks for pointing it out. You are right. We actually set it up to test run and as you have mentioned forgot to change the dates :) – NahidSultan (WMF) (talk) 15:14, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

@NahidSultan (WMF)

I think there's still an error in the election setup. It allowed me to go to the vote page, but when I tried to vote I recieved this error -

Sorry, you are not in the predetermined list of users authorized to vote in this election. We apologize, but you do not appear to be on the eligible voter list. Please visit the voter help page for more information on voter eligibility and information on how to be added to the voter list if you are eligible.

I can't tell if this is a timezone issue or something else. Soni (talk) 00:14, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for flagging it. I just tested myself. I do not see an error from my staff account but seeing the same error from my volunteer account so it seems there is indeed a technical issue. Apologies for that, we are investigating. --– NahidSultan (WMF) (talk) 00:37, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Resolved. – NahidSultan (WMF) (talk) 02:11, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I can confirm. Just had my vote go through. Thanks for the help! Soni (talk) 02:24, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately it does not appear resolved for me. I'm still getting the "Sorry, you are not in the predetermined list..." message referred to above by Soni above. Any ideas how to fix this? AFAIK we should still have just under 24 hours remaining to vote, and according to the voter eligibility tool I should be eligible to vote. Thanks in advance!! Dash77 (talk) 00:10, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

SecurePoll 2

when I clicked on vote, and after changing to the securepoll site, I got to "SecurePoll < SecurePoll You must log in to vote in this election. Please try following the link from Special:SecurePoll on your local Wikimedia site."

And the login there doesn't work with my username and password on my cell phone. And i am not in the list of registered users. What do i do? --Ghilt (talk) 14:25, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

It worked on my laptop. --Ghilt (talk) 17:26, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Hey Ghilt, Thanks for confirming that you were able to vote. It sounds like you were trying to vote directly on the votewiki. The Votewiki is just used to host securepoll extension that runs the election, As the message displayed, one needs to use a local Wikimedia project to vote (for example, Metawiki, xxWP, etc.). – NahidSultan (WMF) (talk) 17:52, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

But both were via the button on meta... --Ghilt (talk) 18:26, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I mean if you were logged in to your global account on your phone when you followed the Meta-wiki vote link, it should have been worked. In that case, I am not really sure what happened. But if you can reproduce the issue (in case you see it again) and kindly email me, I can look into it. – NahidSultan (WMF) (talk) 18:53, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

When i change between language versions of articles or to meta on the cell phone i am still logged in, as on the laptop. Ghilt (talk) 21:37, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Could this be phab:T315974? Ghilt, were you using the desktop site on your phone? (cc NahidSultan (WMF)) --Rchard2scout (talk) 09:49, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely, thank you! Ghilt (talk) 09:51, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Overburdened question

@RamzyM (WMF) I have been checking the questions page once a day for new questions. I see that there was a question added after I checked at about this time yesterday. Am I truly not allowed to answer? Thanks. Barkeep49 (talk) 14:31, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I am confused why some candidates are still answering questions on a "discussion has closed" page. Either the questions should be allowed to answer; or they should not, and those edits being undone. I personally do not mind either, but prefer it be clear. Ping @Der-Wir-Ing @RamzyM (WMF).

I am currently still monitoring the page twice a day simply because some questions are still being added. So it's not yet clear to me when I as a candidate should stop following the page Soni (talk) 18:34, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I have the same question - as a voter, this matters since candidates answering (or not) questions plays a significant role in my decision. Leaderboard (talk) 04:18, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

If i may, i would recommend to allow candidates to answer. --Ghilt (talk) 05:51, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with @RamzyM (WMF). There should be clarification very quickly as to whether questions can still be asked and answered (then remove the archiving) or whether this is not the case (lock the page and cross out late edits). It has an effect on the election if questions continue to be asked which are then not answered by candidates because the page is archived or which are answered anyway. both can be seen as positive or negative by voters. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 08:24, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

A few minutes ago i wrote a message to a member of each committee (EC and U4CBC) and asked for swift clarification. --Ghilt (talk) 19:00, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I have now removed a question that has been added after the end of the question period. I do not see any problem with users now answering the questions that have already been there. --Ameisenigel (talk) 17:04, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

@0xDeadbeef, 1233, 787IYO, Akwugo, Barkeep49, BHARATHESHA ALASANDEMAJALU, Borschts, Chinmayee Mishra, Civvì, C.Suthorn, Danotech, DeBolsillo, Ibrahim.ID, Iwuala Lucy, J ansari, JogiAsad, Justine Msechu, Khunou S, Leaderboard, Luke081515, NANöR, Nskjnv, Ozzeon, Patriot Kor, ProtoplasmaKid, Ruby D-Brown, RXerself, Sleyece, Superpes15, Soni, SpringProof, Taylor 49, Tiputini, Ugwulebo, Volstand, and Ybsen lucero: dear fellow candidates, for your information. --Ghilt (talk) 22:26, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Why are there still some candidates going wild with answering questions after the period closed? -- Sleyece (talk) 23:19, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Got it, but I didn't get the impression that this was possible from the closed message. Leaderboard (talk) 04:09, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

There are candidates continuing to answer questions as well? Do I also have this special privilege or are candidates that complied with the date ranges not allowed to revise answers because they followed the rules? -- Sleyece (talk) 23:23, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

because it is allowed. That's why I notified all candidates, so you can all fill in missing answers. Ghilt (talk) 05:35, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I already answered all the questions. I'm not allowed to revise answers or post anything, so I don't know why I was notified. Also, some candidates have apparently been answering questions with Chat GPT. -- Sleyece (talk) 23:57, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

While this gets sorted (the question I'm looking to answer was added before the deadline so no issue there) I'll answer @User451819913's (Paradise Chronicle) question here: I definitely feel I will have the time for the U4C. I also have a track record of being high activity. In terms of enwiki, if elected, I will either go inactive on enwiki Arbcom or resign. It's more likely that I resign. As evidence of my being response you can be seen on the page you linked to, I actually was monitoring it and responding prior to voting opening. After that I felt it more important for people to have a chance to give their say without comment from the U4CBC. Barkeep49 (talk) 23:19, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I feel like you can just go on the closed questions page and post your answer there if it's going to be de facto allowed for other candidates. -- Sleyece (talk) 23:25, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

An improvement to this process would be to have different questions and answer periods. The answering period would be largely the same as the questions period but extended to end one or two days after the questions period.

That way we can properly encode the expectation of when people are allowed to ask questions and when candidates are allowed to answer them. 0xDeadbeef (talk) 02:37, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah the first time running issue, and it seems to be something that can be improved on. Last minute questions adds unnecessary strain if you can't answer it because you saw it after the questions period ended.

Definitely an issue to bring it on how to improve the election next time. 1233 （T / C） 04:03, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Or just have it the way steward elections work, where users can ask questions till the end of the voting period. Leaderboard (talk) 04:10, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I feel like most of these solutions will be fine, but we need an Electcom or U4CBC member (if they apply here, I'm not sure) to actually resolve this in due time. I did not feel comfortable enforcing the rules myself (by changing any archive/later edits) because of being INVOLVED.

All it needed was one person to promptly reply so the questions page could either be kept open, or closed. That would have been easily enforced by any steward or similar. Every year will have some anomaly or the other coming up late, but it does need someone to actually keep an eye out. Soni (talk) 05:06, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Ameisenigel is a member of the EC. Dear fellow candidates, please be nice to him. He is the only one in EC or U4CBC who answered here in this section so far. Ghilt (talk) 05:46, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Oh I didn't realise that. My apologies Ameisenigel, I'd read it as just a global sysop steeping in. Probably the "This page is archived" instructions should be changed too, that's the main reason I was confused. Soni (talk) 07:46, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I just added a notice. Does that help? --Ameisenigel (talk) 07:50, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

In the charter it seems that there is no overlapping of the Question and Answer period and the voting period, and in the timeline the period for Community questions for candidates has from and to dates (April 10, 2024 - April 24, 2024) so I think we should stick to that and that as a matter of fairness to candidates and voters the page should be reverted to the last version of the 24 april.

There may be plenty of good reasons why a candidate did not have time to answer in that two weeks, it would have been sufficient to ask for an individual extension.

I also think that if a person asks a question on the last (working) day of a two-week period, they have probably already taken into account that some candidates may not be able to answer.

I agree that the whole process needs some improvements and clarifications, but, in my opinion, this is not the right time to go beyond the literal interpretation of the charter.--Civvì (talk) 07:59, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

While I agree with Civvi, if the EC interprets this as allowing candidates to answer already-asked questions, that's fine with me. The clarification is the important part here. Leaderboard (talk) 11:12, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

What hasn't been clarified is why candidates who answered on time are locked out, but late candidates can answer questions as if the the time period didn't matter. I would have just waited until today to answer all the questions if I knew these were the rules. -- Sleyece (talk) 08:59, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Who was "locked out"? --Ameisenigel (talk) 09:16, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Anyone who answered all questions before the period closed is effectively locked out by the decision. No one who followed the original rules can add or change anything to the questions as far as I'm aware. -- Sleyece (talk) 13:08, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Changing answers might not be a good idea, but I do not see a reason why you should not be allowed to add something to your answer. --Ameisenigel (talk) 15:01, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you; that does help some. I'll just leave it to the voters. -- Sleyece (talk) 16:30, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Yep, looks good to me. Soni (talk) 17:50, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

The notice violates the charter as Civvi pointed out. The decision is very unfair to candidates who have operated in good faith and been punctual throughout. -- Sleyece (talk) 01:30, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

That it is unfair is only true if you assume that the voters are not able or willing to look when a candidate has answered a question. I do not think that many people will change their vote because of a late answer. The timeline says "Community questions for candidates" and does not indicate when the candidates should answer the questions (altough the charter is more precise here). The main problem with this election is that it is the first U4C election and so we discover multiple points that need to be changed or at least precised for future elections. --Ameisenigel (talk) 09:15, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

2.4 states specifically Question and Answer period – Candidates answer questions from the community, so it definitely says in the Charter that the Q&A period is closed and candidates can't answer questions after that time. It's unfair because it's a direct Charter violation. -- Sleyece (talk) 09:27, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

The charter doesn’t say anything about start/end time of each period. The question period was already open during the nomination period, I see no reason - based on the charter’s wording - why it shouldn’t continue during the voting period. Johannnes89 (talk) 12:02, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

ELECTCOM has unlimited power over the first election; the only power I have it to make it known that I do see a clear systemic problem with it. -- Sleyece (talk) 13:03, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Question period

A late question has been removed from the closed questions page, but without a note, that there was a question and answers and why it was removed. Some candidates do stil add answers in the closed page. I ask for a clarification, if candidates are supposed to answer questions (and be informed, that they may add and change answers in the closed page), and I ask for the information added to the page, that there was a late question and there are late answers. More than hundred voters have voted after the removel, more than 300 have voted before. May be voters should also get informed after the EC made its decision, about the (resolved) issue, so that they can make changes to their votes according to this issue. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 03:24, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

The removal was mentioned at 17:04 yesterday, one section above. Ghilt (talk) 05:34, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

It is the first time that we have U4C elections and because of this some aspects of the election are not absolutely clear and also not perfect. Since the question period has ended you are not allowed to raise any new questions to the candidates (I guess that this should reduce stress and workload for the candidates). Unfortunately we have not specified a time for answering questions. If you just accept answers within the question period it would be quite difficult to answer questions that arrive shortly before the end of the question period. Since we are all volunteers people might as well not be able to answer questions within the last days of that period because of real-life duties. This is why I believe that it makes sense to allow candidates to continue to answer questions that have already been brought up. It is also a benefit for the voters if people answer the questions at least late. --Ameisenigel (talk) 07:41, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

It's not fair to candidates who answered all the questions before the clock struck 25 UTC because we can't go back and revise questions, but late candidates can say whatever they want. Also, there are some people that are mentioning in the Wikimedia listserv that there are candidates failing Chat GPT checks in their responses. I don't know what's allowed anymore, so it may not even matter. -- Sleyece (talk) 01:03, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Voter guides from community?

Have any Wikimedia community members written voter guides for this election? I want to read any individual's ranking and evaluation of the candidates. Please link to any if they exist. Thanks. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:02, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

User:MarioGom/Voting guides/U4C2024 and User:Giraffer/U4CE2024. Johannnes89 (talk) 17:10, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Request to extend voting deadline

The schedule for this election was posted on 5 April. Voting is 25 April - 9 May. The short notice for this election is contrary to Wikimedia community needs for outreach. Since the schedule was just posted anyway, I propose that it be extended by two weeks to give more time for outreach.

I am an editor for English Wikipedia's community newsletter, The Signpost. We typically publish monthly and get thousands of readers a month, all of whom are highly engaged Wikimedians who share news with their communities in other social media platforms and social networks. Having election dates confirmed with less than a month notice does not give our monthly publication time to prepare news reporting.

This election is supposed to conform to Wikimedia community needs. There is no need to rush this. Please extend the deadline. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:37, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I have forwarded this request to the EC mailing list. --Ameisenigel (talk) 20:26, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

@Ameisenigel: Thanks. Is the EC mailing list public? Is the email contact published anywhere? Bluerasberry (talk) 20:45, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Good question! I am not sure about the list settings but board-electionslists.wikimedia.org is the address. I can add that to the EC'S Meta page. --Ameisenigel (talk) 02:58, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Personally I oppose this, rather strongly. This seems to me as a strange request to bend to one community's preference, and I don't know of an election that's 4 weeks long? Leaderboard (talk) 05:31, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Leaderboard: I do not want a long election either, but also, I think it is unfair to publish the schedule 3 weeks before the start of the election when there is so much burden on the wiki community to get the word out to voters. There is a history of Wikimedia Foundation administrative schedules pressuring the volunteer election committee to meet deadlines which match with WMF internal scheduling goals. For other elections which are in the control of the Wikimedia community, like Commons Picture of the Year or English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, the election schedules are published much farther in advance because the schedules are designed for the benefit of Wikipedia community conversation and organization.

Leaderboard, I acknowledge that long elections are weird and unwanted. I also acknowledge that bending to English Wikipedia would not be fair, but I am giving a practical example that this community publishes notices like this monthly and we got less than a month notice. Honestly, many wiki communities do not have a monthly newsletter, and they need even longer notice to have a legitimate chance of election participation. Can you share your feelings about my complaint that 1) short notices cause problems and 2) while voting period extension is not desirable, it is legitimate to consider it as a remedy for short notices?

Thanks for talking this through. Bluerasberry (talk) 13:43, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

The U4C elections were announced on 5th March 2024. We had 3 weeks of candidate phase, and another two weeks of questions period. Why did the signpost publish nothing in the issue from five days ago? Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 14:41, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry:,

1. I do not share your feeling that sufficient notice was not given. This was announced long ago, and even before April 5th, there was a tentative guide on when voting would take place (which was actually earlier in mid-April). In fact, an extension was given in the candidates phase (i.e, we were given more than four weeks to register, not three). Der-Wir-Ing's question is also valid - at least on Wikibooks, we got an automated message when voting started (and similarly for the call for candidates for U4C) - doesn't en.wiki have a similar place?.

2. Depends on how short the notice is. I'm not sure on how much notice is given for Commons Picture of the Year. Leaderboard (talk) 15:03, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I can respect a decision to not extend the deadline. I wish that the election committee would react to my request though.

Also I wish that the election committee would make a strong commitment to forbid that any election ever proceed without posting the schedule and giving notice two months in advance.

I believe that this schedule has come from request of staff at the Wikimedia Foundation, and not as a result of Wikimedia community members deciding a reasonable election schedule that matches Wikimedia community needs. I have participated in a lot of wiki community organizing decisions, and it is challenging for me to think of circumstances which would lead to wiki community members wanting to have an election within a month of posting the schedule. I have fear that the election committee is not sufficiently resourced and organized to be independent of staff of the Wikimedia Foundation and advocate for the community it represents.

I am with Wikimedia LGBT+ and we get a lot of reports of crazy anti-LGBT+ harassment. Every step of the development of the Code of Conduct has been a lot of community labor and a challenge to participate. I am grateful for the progress but this has been so hard, and it continues to be really difficult. We are a lot better organized than most demographics which will need code of conduct support. There have not been surveys of how the stakeholders are doing, but I feel that I know people who would say that participation in this process has been weird, confusing, and desperate. I am really grateful to the electing organizers and all the volunteers for what they are doing. I just want to believe that they have freedom and resources to run the election as they want. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:16, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Two persons of ElectCom have already responded: Ameisenigel and me. But that is not a "Committee's decision". We need to wait til others have responded on the mailing list.

-

ElectCom usually only runs the board elections. This one is a exemption. We cannot forbid (or allow) other projects or groups to announce their elections less then 2 months ahead.

-

Responsible for the schedule is partially the charter and partially EC, but if staff tells us that they need 2 days to finalize secure poll, then this is a technical requirement that EC cannot just ignore. The script for voter eligibility is also more time consuming then I had expected, and that is also a technical restriction that EC should rather take into consideration if we dont want to mess up the election.

-

I'm sorry for any harrassment you guys receive. I did quite a bit against harrassement during my time as an admin and arbcom member, but on a global level we should do more. That's one reason, why I put quite some effort in organizing these elections. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 20:48, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

The EC has decided not to extend the voting deadline. We have already extended the period of the call for candidates and do not want to delay the voting further. The Communities have been informed via mass message and via central notice about the election. --Ameisenigel (talk) 15:44, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Y @Ameisenigel: Thanks for considering my request and making a decision. I trust and respect the committee process. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:19, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Internal error

Hello @RamzyM (WMF), I'm getting a message that says internal error whenever I try to vote, it just says "Fatal exception of type "RuntimeException"" cheers Scann (talk) 00:21, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

I am also getting an internal error when I try to vote. I was asked to log in when I was already logged in. WordwizardW (talk) 04:03, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

For me it just says "Sorry, you are not in the predetermined list of users authorized to vote in this election." despite my having already voted. Leaderboard (talk) 05:20, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

We're working on this. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 09:50, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Der-Wir-Ing, can you let us know here when the issue is resolved? Thanks! Ciell (talk) 10:47, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

I hope so. No idea how long this takes. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 11:00, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

another contributor received the message he was not among the allowed recipients although he is we checked. I was not able to change my vote receiving the sane message. Nattes à chat (talk) 11:59, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

@Leaderboard @Ciell @Nattes à chat @Der-Wir-Ing @Scann @WordwizardW. Hi, sorry for the (mass) ping. It seems it was phab:T364538 and it should be fixed now. Can you try again and let us know? Thank you! ASarabadani (WMF) (talk) 12:52, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi @ASarabadani (WMF):, seems to take me to the right page now. Leaderboard (talk) 13:02, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Amir, it worked! Ciell (talk) 20:01, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Nice one. Meta voting is not only for me tricky it seems. This is now the third vote I observe issues. Is there a wiki that does not have such issues? In the English one for example I did not observe such problems. But there the votes were also not secret. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 19:43, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Voting is now closed; thank you for participating in the U4C election process

Hello all,

We want to thank everyone for your participation in the U4C voting process. The scrutineers are now reviewing the voting process. Once they have completed their review, the results of the election will be announced.

Thank you to all of the candidates who volunteered to participate in the U4C and support our incredible community in improving community health and safety through overseeing the implementation of the UCoC and Enforcement Guidelines.

We will follow up with more information in the coming weeks.

Best, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 17:23, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Is there any realistic chance that a full 16 candidates met the voting threshold of 60% support each? -- Sleyece (talk) 03:08, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

What happens if none of the candidates get over 60% of support? Adrianmn1110 (talk) 09:29, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

It's not stated in the Charter, so ELECTCOM would just make something up that wasn't agreed upon by the community. -- 10:17, 16 May 2024 (UTC) Sleyece (talk) 10:17, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

From the charter, Section 2.6 (Vacancies) -

If there is an empty seat, whether because of resignations, removals, or no candidate was chosen for a regional seat in an election, the U4C may leave the seat empty and temporarily fill it during the next election, or the U4C may call a special election. An additional option in the case of resignation or removal is that the U4C may appoint a member who ran within the most recent election and received at least 60% support.

From the charter, Section 3.4 (Quorum) -

The U4C can seat with any number of members, but no decision or vote can be taken by the Committee unless the quorum of 50% (8 members) of the voting members (16 members) is attained. When there is no quorum, the U4C will continue to work on matters where no vote is needed and call a special election if needed.

(Emphasis-es mine) It looks fairly clear cut from the Charter. There can be special elections if we have vacant seats, especially if there is no quorum. Are you discussing the same charter? Soni (talk) 10:29, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

It says the U4C will call a special election. ELECTCOM has been clear that this is the first election, and they won't abide by those rules throughout the campaign. They'll just say for the umpteenth time that this is the first election so they can do whatever they want. -- Sleyece (talk) 10:50, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You are throwing serious aspersions towards ELECTCOM. Do you have any proof or diffs to back up your claims? Soni (talk) 11:09, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

It's in the charter that they can do what they want with the first election. -- Sleyece (talk) 11:19, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Accusing me of "throwing aspersions" and not reading the Charter is unhelpful. -- Sleyece (talk) 11:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

For the record, since I'm operating in good faith here; I'm once again being accused of all sorts of stuff. I'm stating a matter of fact. I'm not accusing ELECTCOM of any impropriety. They've been quite helpful throughout the campaign, actually. I'm saying that many candidates, and probably a sizeable number of voters did not understand that ELECTCOM would be empowered to operate with impunity throughout the first election. The committee itself has shown remarkable constraint. -- Sleyece (talk) 11:32, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

This was a bit of a messy election but I think scrutinizers are doing their jobs, and the result will reflect who the community trusts in this role. 60% is a very low margin imo. Charter is quite complex and I think with time the practices will come into place which will refine the election process. BRP ^ever 09:42, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Results probably announced at end of May

Just to keep everyone somewhat up to date: The scrutinizers are still doing the scrutinizing thingy. Then ElectCom will get the results. I hope they'll be clear, but maybe they'll need some interpretation (ties beteween candidates, other unforseen thingies). Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 17:28, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Does the WMF know of "unforeseen thingies" and/or when should I reach out to them? -- Sleyece (talk) 05:27, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Why would you have to reach out to the WMF? Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (talk) 18:26, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Well, I don't know. It depends on what thingies were unforeseen, and I'm not privy to that information at this time. -- Sleyece (talk) 03:40, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Then why bring up the WMF at all? By definition, no one knows what unforeseen things are, even ElectCom, which is why DWI said "unforeseen". Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (talk) 04:57, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I was only asking if there's a need for such a thing. My assumption was that ElectCom would respond with next steps when they had more information. I was asking (paraphrasing myself) "under what circumstances that could arise would the WMF need to look into it?" -- Sleyece (talk) 05:12, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

We'll publish the results probably within the next days. So my guess "end of May" was probably about right. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 10:56, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Results

Are announced here (difflink) or or on Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024/Results#Elected Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 20:40, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. Can the results please be linked or copied over to the main elections page for greater accessibility/transparency? I see that it is linked from the navbox, but navboxes unfortunately do not display on mobile and people on desktop may not think to look there. Sdrqaz (talk) 22:29, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Once someone mark the changes to the headers for translation, the result page should be linked from the top twice. Hope that helps. -- KTC (talk) 23:02, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Ah, okay. I was hoping for something in Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024 § Voting. Perhaps (this is straying into the evaluation territory, of course) the header can have the results link before the results are announced? Sdrqaz (talk) 00:17, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Only 7 people elected

Since I learned about the results, I've been giving a lot of thought about why only 7 people could get elected. Especially because the 7 of us elected only represent 4 out of 8 regions and only 4 projects. Questions I'm trying to think through (among others): Did we go about recruitment the wrong way? Are regions the wrong way to try and obtain diversity? Is 60% the wrong minimum to set? Are elections the wrong way to find certain kinds of qualified people? I have some thoughts about all of these but I am very curious what others in the community think. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:50, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The problem of not being able to recruit qualified folks to positions of higher access is not restricted to the U4C: we've seen it on multiple wikis requests for adminship/admin backlogs, and in other election processes. A lot of people are burning out at the same time, and others just aren't interested. I think COVID is at least partially to blame, but there are likely other reasons. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 01:05, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

@AntiCompositeNumber thanks for these thoughts. It's an interesting perspective and one I've expressed about stewards, enwiki Arbcom/check user/oversight, and the proposed global council but hadn't given as much thought to since these results (but I should have). I certainly believe there are capable people in the movement from the 4 regions who didn't have anyone elected so it's not that they don't exist. But maybe this format didn't allow them to show their qualifications and readiness. I am guessing, however, that you're more likely to suggest hat maybe they're already committed to other things and had no extra capacity. And if that's true I don't know how to solve it. Have the Stewards take on some part of what the U4C is supposed to do and then just have the foundation do the rest? What do you (or others) see as the right next step if your premise is true? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:31, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I had a few thoughts on this:

1. I think the primary issue was that there were too many candidates (or voter fatigue). There were 37 candidates running for 16 seats all at once. There could have been people who intended to vote but did not due to the sheer volume of candidates to evaluate. There could also be lower quality votes because of this, where people might vote Neutral/Oppose for candidates they haven't had time to evaluate, or people will just not spend much time evaluating the candidates. A part of this problem will be resolved automatically now that this election is over. If we call a special election (as per the charter to fill quorum), I foresee getting fewer candidates, and then we could get better voter turnout. Because the length of the terms for CAL seats and regional seats are different, there will also never be an election in the upcoming years to fill the whole 16 seats again.
2. On minimum support: I thought it made sense to require 60% support because of the trust needed to do the work for U4C. I would probably want to keep that for the normal annual elections, but for the special election (if we do decide to host one) we could lower it.
3. On elections: I think it is an okay way of obtaining community support for the candidates. I'm not sure of any alternatives we could try to use. One idea I had was there could be a process/requirement to filter out candidates instead of allowing everyone to stand, if having too many candidates continues to be a problem.
4. On recruitment: I became aware of this election through the community Discord. I habitually ignore banners, so finding candidates through venues like en:WP:AN on enwiki might be nice given the people who usually watchlist those pages on their own local projects.
5. On regions: you pose a valid question. Putting people into different regions is nonetheless arbitrary, where the term length distinction also doesn't have much reasoning behind it. Diverse representation on the U4C is obviously necessary, so I'm trying to figure out what kinds of restructuring we could explore while keeping requirements on diversity. The hard part is drafting rules that would be both reasonable and fair.

0xDeadbeef (talk) 03:25, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

For the term length, both are 2 years but there needs to be someone serving 1-year-term at the first election. 1233 （T / C） 07:18, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I see, had forgot about this part. 0xDeadbeef (talk) 10:03, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

• I have a few thoughts, too. First off, I think 0xDeadbeef is right about voter fatigue, and it is only going to get worse this year. There's the Movement Charter vote starting in a few weeks, and then the Board elections a couple of months later. There isn't a window for a "special election" for U4C to start any time before October. Second, active recruitment and appointment of qualified candidates is the usual method for finding the best members for a very large number of committees (and subcommittees); however, this can be pretty ineffective in ensuring a mix of experienced and less-experienced individuals, and can really mess up concepts like diversity. Third, I suspect that many people chose the individual they thought was the "best" candidate in a region and, for regions that had several good candidates, this split the vote; this was especially true if people were voting "strategically" (i.e., opposing their less-favoured candidates in order to "boost" their most-favoured ones).

  Finally, I think any time that there is an attempt to fill this large a number of seats in a single election, we are going to see this situation repeat itself. We should not be trying to do this; there was not what I would consider an excess of candidates for the number of seats available (it works out to about 2.3 candidates per seat). It is unreasonable to expect community members to invest the significant number of hours required to review all of the candidacies, especially if the community members need to start by translating those candidacies to a language they understand (and hoping that the translations are at least semi-accurate).

  I cannot recall if the U4C charter allows for appointment of members; if it doesn't now, then it should be updated to do so. Several of the candidates from currently unrepresented regions are perfectly well qualified to serve on this committee; they just didn't have enough name recognition to make it through the voting. Risker (talk) 04:03, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  Appointing members sounds like a good idea to me as well. Because elections can be quite overwhelming and take a lot of time. 0xDeadbeef (talk) 04:07, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  Calling a run-off election and filling the vacancies until the new election is over is a good idea. Updates to the charter can be proposed in the meantime. -- Sleyece (talk) 04:41, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  A run-off election would only include candidates who didn't get a lot of support, and I'm not sure I'd want to see any of those get elected. And I did try to look at least some of the essays etc about each one. Doug Weller (talk) 07:11, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  "the U4C may leave the seat empty and temporarily fill it during the next election, or the U4C may call a special election." Currently the charter only allows for either calling a Special Election or holding an entirely new election and filling vacancies during the election process. -- Sleyece (talk) 04:40, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  The Charter allows members to be appointed if, and only if, vacancies result from "resignation or removal". It would be possible for the U4C to call a special election and fill the regional seats using a plurality, rather than majority, vote. Obviously, that method has its own problems, and the U4C will have to decide whether the pros outweigh the cons. Adrianmn1110 (talk) 05:52, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  „only if“? The charter clearly mentions „no candidate was chosen for a regional seat in an election“ as another reason for temporarily appointing members. Johannnes89 (talk) 06:13, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  @Johannnes89: Please look at the context of the conversation before replying.

  I think User:Risker is suggesting that the U4C should appoint members without calling for a special election.

  The Charter clearly specified that, if "no candidate was chosen for a regional seat in an election", the U4C may "temporarily fill it during the next election". The implication is that there must be a next election, and appointments can be made only during that election, not before, not after. Adrianmn1110 (talk) 07:08, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I am confused on whether the U4C can vote right now. On the charter it says that "no decision or vote can be taken by the Committee unless the quorum of 50% (8 members) of the voting members (16 members) is attained" but that assumes that all 16 members are elected. What happens when less than 16 are? Leaderboard (talk) 04:50, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

That's in section 3.4 of the Charter, in case anyone's wondering. @Leaderboard: To answer your question, the Charter allows the U4C to call a "special election" if there's no quorum. Adrianmn1110 (talk) 06:03, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

@Adrianm1110: I know that they can call for a special election, but I'm wondering more on the lines of "can they vote on things with 7 members, if at least 4 support?". Leaderboard (talk) 06:08, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

@Leaderboard: You may have to ask the Building Committee since they drafted the Charter. Perhaps User:Denis Barthel and User:Barkeep49 can answer your question. Adrianmn1110 (talk) 07:31, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

@Leaderboard - 8 members was meant to be an absolute number, not relative to the elected number. The latter would be against the spirit of that rule, which was introduced to avoid a very small number of people making important decisions. Denis Barthel (talk) 08:47, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

In my opinion, many voters did not realize that the 16 seats can only be filled if they themselves give at least 16 candidates a pro vote. On average, voters cast 20 neutral votes, 7 pro and 7 con. If they had cast 16 pro votes and only 18 neutral or con votes, all 16 seats would have been filled. 4 of the elected candidates come from projects that have good ways to inform the community about the project via the Signpost and the Kurier. C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 05:28, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The U4C does not have a quorum, so the seven members can discuss this in any capacity that does not require a vote. Currently that's about it. -- Sleyece (talk) 05:30, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

my 2 cents: I was a bit surprised that no one got more than 68.8%. So, we should keep the election process, but lower eligibility to 50 % (as in de.wp arbcom elections) since the candidates at 50+ % in the results list seemed perfectly fine to me. We definitely will have to ask the community to change the quorum for decisions to a purely relative quorum of 50% (i.e. remove the 8 out of 16 part), and maybe even also add an inactivity rule as proposed in the questions to the candidates. I am curious about what the community thinks on the regional seat approach - removing it would motivate additional candidates from larger communities albeit at the cost of reducing regional diversity. --Ghilt (talk) 06:05, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

It's not like we have any meaningful diversity right now. Leaderboard (talk) 06:08, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

we'd have a little more diversity with the 50 % cutoff. Ghilt (talk) 06:21, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Lowering the cutoff to 50% would require a quorum. -- Sleyece (talk) 06:50, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

yes, any changes in the charter need community confirmation. The imho most important change is to remove the '8 out of 16', because we cannot decide anything until then. Ghilt (talk) 07:06, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Personally I would suggest not to remove the "8 out of 16" as this might lead to small numbers of people in sessions making decisions later. That seems to me a pretty dangerous way to solve the current problem. I would rather think about lowering the cutoff to 51%. That would bring in more people, which still have a sufficient amount of trust in the community. Denis Barthel (talk) 09:00, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Even if we lower the cutoff to 50 % for elections (which i like), we still wouldn't have reached 16 elected people. If the community wants less than 16 in the U4C, whaddowedo? If the cutoff had been at 50 %, there would have been 3-4 more people elected = 7 + 3 or 4 = 10-11. 8 necessary votes out of 10 then means that there has to be a quorum of 80 % for decisions, which makes deciding much more difficult than the intended 50 %. Ghilt (talk) 11:28, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that electing the U4C as a whole with up to 16 people, resulting in the troubles to find enough candidates and requesting voters to go through so many candidate material, is a one-time effort. I am pretty confident that future votes will be better, as only up to 8 seats are open then and former members might run again, seeking only confirmation from voters.

Furthermore, the U4C does not require 16 people to work. It was always intended to offer up to 16 seats, but will work perfectly fine with less than 16. Denis Barthel (talk) 12:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

How do you interpret the 8 necessary for a vote as written in the charter? And will any number less than 16 mean that we only need 50 % for a decision, or more than 50 %? Ghilt (talk) 13:04, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

1. 8 means that no decision can be made, if there are less than 8 persons participating in a decision. Even a fully seated U4C wouldn't be able to decide upon anything, if less than 8 people cast their vote (pretty similiar to the German ArbCom, where at least 5 (resp. 3) persons need to vote to decide upon a matter).
2. No. If the U4C consists of 12 members, it still needs 8 to make a vote, that's at least what I recall. Maybe @Barkeep49 can add his thoughts on this?

Denis Barthel (talk) 13:44, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

• If the community voted to add my example system here to the U4C Charter, then a unanimous vote would allow Ruby and I to agree to break the tie, and the U4C could do whatever it wanted to fill the other seats immediately. -- Sleyece (talk) 07:04, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  In this hypothetical... why would it be you and Ruby to break the tie? The community is not better served by filling a seat just to fill it, especially if the community does not support the person that's supposed to break said tie. Hey man im josh (talk) 11:00, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  Well, my example system was placed as a hypothetical on April 5th without knowledge of this event. If the community voted on it Ruby D-Brown and I would have to break the tie because I did not know to account for other scenarios. Also, I defeated 6 other candidates if you're going by support, and I defeated two others by percentage. There are some in the community that support me. Ruby did better than I did. -- Sleyece (talk) 13:30, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  I'm just going to be blunt: You have the highest opposes, the lowest support-oppose ratio, and the third lowest percentage. There is no chance in you having any role at all in U4C voting matters. ferret (talk) 13:55, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  My example system would fix the current predicament. I would be derelict in my duty as a candidate if I didn't mention it as an option. -- Sleyece (talk) 14:20, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  Bluntly speaking, I don't think anyone understands what your suggestion even means. It is impossible to parse. Even you later admitted the thought process you had on 5 April was mistaken. Please do not bring it up again. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (talk) 13:54, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  I was under medical restrictions not to talk publicly about my new medication at that time. My thought process was affected by my regulating emotions in a new way, per here. I could still read a document at that time. We need some solution. -- Sleyece (talk) 15:20, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  Sleyece, you received the third lowest support rate and lowest net votes of any candidate. There is no system in which you'd be breaking any "tie". Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 14:00, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  Currently, there is no system in which there could even be a tie. -- Sleyece (talk) 15:14, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

• I've put most of my thoughts on the Evaluation page, but I genuinely believe a lot of it came down to "There's no clear 'Guides' people can read, most people didn't want to do homework". Had the already made guides been highlighted properly (and a general space given for "general discussion") and securepoll having some easy ways to "sort alphabetical" and "support/oppose all"... Most voters would be more encouraged to actually engage with the elections. With so many barriers to voting effectively, I suspect a lot of them deferred to "Only support people I know" which does not lead to good results. Soni (talk) 07:59, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

• I think the results reflect a lack of qualified candidates interested. The results lined up with the voter guides, and elected people with significant experience (usually some combination of arb, steward and/or functionary experience) which seems an appropriate barrier for the (in theory) highest conduct enforcement body in the movement. It's also worth noting that the job itself isn't exactly fun - the main job of this committee will be to handle the endless small-wiki admin abuse cases at Requests for comment and similar.

If I were to improve the process, I would do a few things: reduce the number of seats, 16 is very high for a high-level body that does boring work. Will always be hard to find that many qualified candidates. Make it 10-12 with a quorum of 50%. Reduce the number of rules in the vote. Ditch the homewiki rule, and consider replacing the regional rule with either reserved seats for underrepresented communities/regions (maybe 3-4/12) or simply allow the U4C to appoint 3-4 members for any number of reasons, to include representing underrepresented regions. This way voters don't need to worry about voting strategically - they know they can just vote for their preferred candidates, and then the U4C itself can work out the details after the election to ensure appropriate diversity. Add flexibility to the charter. Wikis don't usually have such rigid processes, and IMO the charter - especially the first iteration - should be more of a living document than a set of strict rules. I think the failure to elect enough members to fill the quorum reflects the rigidity of this approach, and leaves us all scratching our heads with what to do next. Though I have thoughts on that I will include in a following section. – Ajraddatz (talk) 13:33, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

• I think 60% is good and changes to it just to fill seats might result in unsuitable candidates being elected. The election process was lengthy, the candidate pages and overall layout was poor. It was hard to navigate through candidates and I had to open several tabs just to get the details on one candidate. Honestly, I don't think expecting 16 competent candidates to be elected from first election is realistically possible. Also, I would like to point out that UCoC itself only passed with ~60% support, so it is likely that there are many who opposed the candidates as opposition to U4C as a whole. Maybe if the U4C is able to establish itself and resolve issues they were created to resolve and as a result gain community trust, more community support and participation can be expected.--BRP ^ever 15:42, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Prequalfication before appearing on the candidate list

I notice that the two voter guides given above under that heading, closely corresponds to the end result. In the first one all green + one yellow was elected, in the second none of the red or yellow was elected. So if the red ones in these two had been taken off, the list to look through would have been reasonable. And I believe this would have lead to more people to participate in the voting, and more people elected Yger (talk) 05:00, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The issue seems to be how they define the red list, as it is represents a much higher barrier. It also carries and considers only edits and contributions on-wiki where off-wiki activities (where the U4C are also supposed to work) are not decided at all. There are always reasons why people decide not to run for administrative posts. If communities are large enough and working, it is completely fine. However, for communities that are not working until recently (read: zhwiki), there are little to no incentive to run for these admin/functionary posts.

I think the issue seems to be the inability for the list to be flexible, but the current lower limit is technically also too low. I support the idea of increasing the lower limit, but not too much. Another solution is to limit the candidates to 24, though everyone can nominate themselves, only 24 people (who may be ranked through number of edits / roles that they hold, etc.) will appear in the final list. That may also be one possible solution. 1233 （T / C） 07:17, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

U4CBC yet not dissolved

Just as a reminder: the charter says "After the first session of the U4C, the U4CBC will be dissolved and the U4C will begin work as soon as possible." - That means, if the U4C would unanimously reject to meet and begin it's work, the U4CBC would be in charge again to modify the charter properly. It's up to the designated members of the U4C to make that decision first. Denis Barthel (talk) 09:24, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The U4C does not have a quorum, so this is moot. -- Sleyece (talk) 13:32, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Appointment seeking confirmation in a RfC

The problem at the moment is that the U4C is unable to make any decisions due to its small size. At the same time, the realignment of an election is only possible very late in the year. Proposals that require a change to the charter cannot be implemented in the short term either.

What is needed, therefore, is a solution that can be implemented quickly, does not require a full election in the narrower sense and is within the rules of the charter.

I would suggest creating an RfC in which the U4C proposes the appointment of those three additional persons with more than 50% approval for one year and has this appointment confirmed by the community in the RfC? In this way, the U4C could quickly become operational without violating the charter and its spirit. Denis Barthel (talk) 09:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to this in principle, another alternative would be just appointing an additional member to reach minimum quorum. Here would be the seats to fill for the three people with approval >50% but <60%:

• RXerself for CAL seat for one year
• ProtoplasmaKid for CAL seat for one year
• NANöR only ran for Middle East and North Africa and did not choose CAL, and the MENA seat is already filled, so I'm unsure if they can fill any vacancy.

0xDeadbeef (talk) 10:18, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Appointing a very small number of candidates to reach the quorum is the best solution I've seen so far. I would be more in favor of appointing only one (RXerself), not because of any personal judgement against the candidates, but because that's the minimum needed to make a functioning U4C, and as Deadbeef points out it's not clear where we would put NANöR. Toadspike (talk) 11:55, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Having just 8 is very much sub-optimal - means the committee is just as dysfunctional if one of the members goes inactive for any reason. Leaderboard (talk) 11:58, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

My former suggestion actually was flawed, I am sorry for this. Appointments are only possible for persons who ran and received more than 60% approval and not for vacant seats. ("If there is an empty seat, whether because of resignations, removals, or no candidate was chosen for a regional seat in an election, the U4C may leave the seat empty and temporarily fill it during the next election, or the U4C may call a special election.An additional option in the case of resignation or removal is that the U4C may appoint a member who ran within the most recent election and received at least 60% support.")

There is only the option to call a special election for the vacant regional seats, which are North America (USA and Canada), Latin America and Caribbean, Central and East Europe (CEE), Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

If a RfC fits the definition of a "special election"(?), the U4C could suggest to include the most successful candidates of these regions there and ask for their confirmation. That's what is possible. Denis Barthel (talk) 13:04, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The U4C would need a quorum to decide what counts as a special election. -- Sleyece (talk) 13:36, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes. That is why the community discusses it here. And asking for the validity of a RfC is pretty much a standard question in their texts. Denis Barthel (talk) 13:46, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Noted below that I suggest an RfC to allow the U4C to appoint 3 members to a one-year term at their discretion, but fine to go with three-four runners up instead. I don't think we need to be worried about fiting in the wording of the U4C charter for this, consensus-based decision making is a general wiki principle and at worst, this seems like a good IAR situation. – Ajraddatz (talk) 13:45, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Suggestion what to do next

I strongly object to not respect the outcome of this election. I see the setup of the election as fair and reasonable, including the limit of 60%, also there have been enough voters to make it a viable election. And the solution to it being elected too few is clear and stated, start a new election. And because of vote fatigue, I suggest waiting a year until March 2025. And to get the body operative, I would suggest asking the community to accept it could work with a quorum of six until nest election. Yger (talk) 13:18, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

While I fully agree with you concerning respecting the outcome of the election - if you ask the community to accept working with a lesser quorum then before, you'd have to run a vote as it requires changing the charter (or break the rules). Wouldn't it be easier then to call a special election for the vacant regional seats as the charter says? North America (USA and Canada), Latin America and Caribbean, Central and East Europe (CEE), Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are still vacant, even one seated person would be sufficient then. Denis Barthel (talk) 13:30, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

As I noted above, we are really backed into a corner here with the very rigid and inflexible charter - this should be avoided in favour of a more living and iterative document in the future. I think the best path forward here is a community RfC allowing the U4C to appoint 3 members to a one-year term, at their own discretion, to fill this immediate need. From a wiki-legal standpoint that would still respect the principle of consensus-based decision making and would take much less time than a special election to fill possibly more seats than the actual election filled. – Ajraddatz (talk) 13:36, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

This is not in the Charter. The U4C would need a quorum to decide that a RfC fits the definition of a special election. The RfC would have to also amend the charter, or the 1 year term you propose would have to proceed a full election. So, by your proposal as the Charter is written, the RfC would result in the vacancies being filled one year from now. The appointments would serve 1 year preceding an election of all members. So, your system leaves the U4C without a quorum for nearly 1 year. -- Sleyece (talk) 13:43, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The U4C charter is a policy document, it should always be subject to revision or supplementation by community consensus. Section 4.3.2 even explicitly says that modification is possible with community consensus - it only lists an annual review, but there is nothing in the wording restricting it to just that. And regardless I think you could make an IAR argument here - the charter wasn't intended to prevent the committee from working, and given the circumstances another election does not seem to be the ideal solution. – Ajraddatz (talk) 13:50, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Respectfully, I have to say your suggestion would violate the spirit of the Charter. If the Charter could be amended by RFCs, nothing would stop any small group of people from bypassing the U4C annual review. They could just hold an RFC, intentionally tell as few others as possible about said RFC, and vote to adjust the Charter without engaging with most of the Wikimedia community. As Dennis said below, global RFCs usually don't have a lot of participators.

I favor Dennis's suggestion for the U4C to create an RFC that serves as a special election. That way, we wouldn't be touching the Charter. Adrianmn1110 (talk) 20:15, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

@Sleyece - As above: That is why the community discusses it here. And asking for the validity of a RfC is pretty much a standard question in their texts.

@Ajraddatz - having that said, I would prefer to have a question in the RfC that stays within the limits and rules of the charter. Global RfC's rarely have a strong participation and a low vote count would probably damage the institution of the U4C a lot. It already has a legacy problem with the UCoC that has never been voted for, so we shouldn't create a new one. Denis Barthel (talk) 13:52, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The U4C would need a quorum to decide that a RfC fits the definition of a special election. Until the U4C is seated formally, U4CBC and Electcom would also be able to make the same decision. If you want to specifically go by rules as written, no flexibility allowed, both those bodies should have leeway to decide what happens here. So an RFC based appointment approach could very well be completely alright.

Also, what Ajraddatz said about community consensus. As long as those rules are followed, there can easily be an additional clause made to allow this. Ultimately, it depends on the elected U4C members and how they would prefer to handle this Soni (talk) 13:53, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The charter explicitly says "When there is no quorum, the U4C will continue to work on matters where no vote is needed and call a special election if needed." (3.4) The U4C has the right to call for a special election, regardless of it's size. And as the "special election" is not defined specifically, the U4C is allowed to give it the appropriate form. Which should be discussed with the community. Q.E.D. Denis Barthel (talk) 13:57, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm fine with that too, I understand the impulse to follow the charter as closely as possible. Definitely no issues with your proposal. – Ajraddatz (talk) 14:04, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree, and I believe we all agree that the U4C could and should call a (special) election. But I am still all against the U4c with RfC decides on the composition of the. Only community in election can do that Yger (talk) 14:06, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying. Denis Barthel (talk) 14:42, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The U4C must be formally seated even without a quorum because the charter says they can do their work, but they can't vote on anything. Also, I did briefly mention above that the proposed RfC could be used to amend the Charter to fix this. -- Sleyece (talk) 14:03, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The u4c members could work on many things. They are all experienced and capable persons, so I assume they'll figure out ways.

• They need to build some basic infrastruture (mailing list, special wiki, pages on meta to make a case,....)
• Reports on UCOC violations
• Recommendations on changing the charter.
• Help implement the incident reporting tools (I think the enforcement guidelines mention them)
• Help with training material
• For cases it seems they cannot make decisions (like (un-)block a user), but they can hear cases, investigate, get a feeling for what is going on.

Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 14:19, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

 Like Yger (talk) 14:25, 1 June 2024 (UTC)