Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2011

Archives Archive 1

Details to remember

(Please add only specific, practical points.)

• Notification email:
  • provide direct links to vote from the correct wiki, and mention they can't vote from any wiki.

• Vote wiki:
  • hide login links using CSS.

— The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pathoschild (talk) 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Voting period

The word through implies passing a boundary: Someone who intends to go through a door will not walk up to it and stop (not even in between Kanada and Mexico). So elections should be held from 29 May to 12 June 2011 instead of QFROM MAY 29TH THROUGH JUNE 12TH 2011 (Qfrom May 29th through June 12th 2011) (unless this is a very US-specific event; but even then the aforementioned alternative (not alternate, but this is another mystery to be clarified not here and now :-) phrasing should be clearer (not least of all, because it emphasises the important boundaries, the days, by mentioning them first). -- cookies didn't keep my secure log-in so I'll remain anonymous

See wikt:through#Preposition, the usage of "through" implies that the latter date is included in the range. So "through June 12th" means that the election goes on until the end of June 12th, and not the beginning of June 12th. Hope that clarifies. Jon Harald Søby 09:29, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I know this local and inhumanly (or humanly when you've just heard the news ;-) unreasonable usage of through (the word meaning would feel strange, too reasonable, in this context). My points are: – it is local; – it is illogical; – there is a global and (more) logical alternative; – it is reasonable to use this alternative. -- still anonymous

Neither Wiktionary, Merriam-Webster, dictionary.com or Cambridge Advanced Learner's dictionary have any indicator that this usage of "through" is non-standard, local or illogical, so I don't see the problem. Jon Harald Søby 10:05, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Just as you did not see that cambridge.org labels this as US (local from a global point of view) usage. At dictionary.com this is only 2 (obscuring if not contradictory) of 25 meanings (7 and 19) and the entry seems largly copied from merry-webster; both fail to point out the locality of this usage. And dictionaries only describe what is there, they do not promote reason. Since going to a door is very different from going through a door it is only reasonable to use two different words to communicate this; all the more so when two such words (as given in the examples) happen to already be in common (as opposed to local) use. Merely pointing out that something is as it is, is no argument for it having to be the way it is. --109.90.144.240 12:28, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Times given

Midnight should be clearer by using 24:00, the special value for it, instead of 00:00. Additionally it should be made clear whether this is also true for the 29 May, which it is probably(? speaking from experience …) not, but 00:00 (morning) of the 29 May instead. -- anonymous by impossible secure log-in

We use 00:00 to denote the beginning of one day, and 23:59 to denote the end of one. I think that is clear enough. Jon Harald Søby 09:40, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

It is. So one is to understand the given "midnight" 00:00 on 12 June as 23:59 on 11 June? or as 00:00 on 13 June practically being 23:59 on 12 June? It is quite unusual to give a date of which one does not even allow the first second to be used. Really not trying to get on anyone's nerves, but the small benefit of a small improvement really belittles the tiny effort it requires by being multiplied by the number of readers. --109.90.144.240 11:47, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

00:00 is the usual UTC designation of midnight. While both 00:00 and 24:00 are technically correct, usage of the latter is far less standard, particularly within Wikimedia, where 00:00 has been used in numerous prior elections. I don't believe this needs changing. Ral315 (talk) 13:44, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Right, they are both at midnight; the trouble being that the midnight 00:00 of say the 12th of June is 24 hours earlier than the midnight 24:00 of 12 June. The same goes for say 29 May (and each and every other day of any year :-) leaving a maximum uncertainty of 48 hours between the maximum and minimum interpretation of the midnights (if one failed to notice that 00:00 on a date always denotes the beginning of that day) – which leads back to the questions above … --109.90.144.240 15:10, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I really don't understand what you're getting at. The election will begin at 00:00 UTC 29 May, and end at 23:59 UTC 12 June. How could this possibly be misconstrued? Ral315 (talk) 21:07, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

It could best be misconstrued by reading June 12th and All times on this page are 00:00 (midnight) UTC. (on the board elections 2011 page) which is – something completely different (from 23:59 UTC 12 June. OK not completely, but 24 hours earlier, just had to use the phrase :-). By the way (regarding your first reply): something is standard or it isn't; things may be more or less usual or common – something completely different from standard, let alone the horrid abuse of it as 'preset, preconfigured' or even 'what we want you to buy'. -- forgotten to try the secure log-in and then go here just to be asked to log in

Please note that this language has been removed. The elections will end at 23:59 UTC on 12 June. Ral315 (talk) 21:39, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Question

Why were a number of the candidates deleted?? Mrmewe 02:21, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

A number of candidates did not meet the requirements listed here, and yours was mistakenly removed. It has been added back. Ral315 (talk) 01:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

My summary has been deleted eventhough I do meet the requirements.--Stephan Spahn 14:23, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Hey Stephan, the requirements ask for 300 edits to Wikimedia projects prior to 15 April (this might not have been entirely clear given that the candidates requirements section references the voter pre-requisites, where that requirement is listed). According to the SUL tool you don't appear to have made 300 edits. I am guessing that is why you were considered ineligible(you'd have to wait for a response from the election committee to confirm that of course) --ErrantX 14:34, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

This List http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:Beiträge/Stephan_Spahn seemed to contain 500 items (because this number stands on top), but in fact there are less. Nevertheless the deleted summarys of candidates should be sent back to them, since these are their property. --Stephan Spahn 18:11, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, then you should go to this page and ask to make those versions of Board_elections/2011/Candidates/en, that contain your candidacy, invisible. Markus Schulze 19:16, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Urdu Translation of Board elections/2011/en page

Dear Concern,

As, Wikipedia is my own house and world of every single user of Wiki therefore I would love to contribute by translating Board elections/2011/en page in Urdu language as I am Native Urdu speaker, would you be kind enough to permit my self to be a part of this honor.

I will be honestly waiting for your rapid reply.

Best Regards,

Faizan ALi Varya Wikipedian Faizan Ali Varya Wikipedia Profile --Faizanalivarya 05:28, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Questions

The page shows a Voting has not begun message. The time to send questions to candidates is/will starts when? 555 15:31, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a good question. It would be nice if there were some sorting process by which the most popular questions filtered to the first page; readers often have a hard time reading through all questions, and last election they were posted in the order that they were written. –SJ talk | translate   05:38, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

This year we dont have any questions ... ;-) John Vandenberg 12:45, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Questions can be asked any time. There were problems in the beginning because the template used was wrong, but it should now be possible to ask and answer questions easily. We may need to advertise it a little though, any suggestions to where? Jon Harald Søby 08:34, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Candidate Statements

Reading some of the candidate statements some appear to be over the 1200 character limit (by a relatively large margin, or I wouldn't have raised this). On a bit of digging all but one of those whose were over are under 1200 characters without including spaces. Can we get a clarification on which is the accepted value to use? I'm not fussed about forcing people to reduce statements, but if w/o spaces is acceptable I have a couple issues I can use up the extra 200 characters in my own statement :) It took a while to pare things down to 1200 chars (and I am sure all the other candidates had the same issues!) and some stuff necessarily had to go --ErrantX 10:01, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I think we can be nice and not count spaces... :-) Jon Harald Søby 08:31, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

For future elections, to allow using the automated character-counting utilities in most word-processors, I think the limit should be increased to 1500 characters including spaces.Enon 16:30, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Comments?

Sorry for being silly :) , am I right saying that there is no place to comment on a single candidate? Even if I had a question, it would be just for this one (as I kinda know the others or I think I'd know what their answers would be). --Elitre 12:31, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Not in any formal way connected to the election, but you can always use their user talk page. Jon Harald Søby 15:14, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Questions sandbox?

Might it be useful to strongly suggest that question-askers first post their questions to a sandbox where other interested community members can comment on the question first before making it an official question for the candidates? This might remove some duplicated or otherwise trivially answered factual material and lower the reading / responding volume for anyone. Also is their no facility provided for public questions to specific candidates? Some of the candidate statements include very specific platform statements which raise questions which would be inapplicable to other candidates. --Gmaxwell 03:30, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• +1 to this, seems like a good idea. It would be nice to see what questions have traction as being something people care about, and also merge questions. -- phoebe | talk 17:56, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Not the Schulze method again <groan>

I am surprised that there was not any discussion about whether or not this was the appropriate voting method, after concerns had been expressed in previous elections. There is no way to indicate in the Schulze method that one absolutely does not want a certain candidate to succeed. It is also a non-transparent system in that, short of someone doing considerable research about the system itself, it is not obvious that all ranked candidates are more highly rated than entirely unranked candidates. It is natural for people who have no other way to object to a candidate to "rank" them in the last possible position (i.e., if there are 19 candidates, to rank the candidate one doesn't want to be appointed as #19). This has created an artificially high result in the past, and is likely to do so again.

Since it is probably too late to do anything about this now, please include a warning to voters to rank *only* candidates they feel would be suitable for trusteeship, and to leave those they feel unsuitable unranked. Risker 05:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

IIRC, There is nothing wrong with ranking all of them, including ones you don't consider unsuitable. What is problematic is ranking only top and bottom of the pack people, then leaving middle ground people unranked. It's not really a property of Schulze it's a property of ranked ballots. This could be improved by an improved UI which e.g. shows the ranking that your ballot provides. I think I pointed to some examples in the paste that let you rank by dragging and dropping to change the order— and showed the unranked as all tying each other for last but no one has bothered to do the software to make it real... :( --Gmaxwell 04:17, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I believe one can use rankings that are greater than the number of candidates (I ranked two at 49 and 50 and several at ~25, and my ballot was accepted). One can use tiers - ranking all the middle/indifferent candidates about the same, but lower than all the good candidates, and all the bad candidates much, much lower. Enon 16:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Editor qualifications

I think I should be allowed to vote and even run even though I'm blocked on two wikis and have not been editing much. I'm a friend, and the only reason I was blocked is because a few people felt my editing was not good enough. That has nothing to do with my ability to judge the candidates or be a good trustee. I got average grades in high school and college. I've taken public speaking and was in drama club. I think revenue sources are donations, advertising, and government grants (if from coined money) and so forth. I think Wikipedia plans on telling the truth and being well-written, perhaps with the articles checked by named experts. The Executive Director should know about fundraising and advertising, and so forth. My real name is Charles.--Chucky 07:36, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Eligibility of Capsot

His talk page says that he is globally blocked. Markus Schulze 19:01, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

He was globally blocked; however, the block was rescinded. Ral315 (talk) 01:46, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

But this is still a block evasion on Meta. Ruslik 09:57, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, the current situation is very problematic. Capsot is still blocked on meta.wikimedia.org, so that he had to use a sockpuppet account (InnaBalaguer) to submit his candidacy. I recommend that Capsot should be unblocked at meta.wikimedia.org at least until the end of this election to make sure that he is not accused of committing a block evasion. Markus Schulze 10:49, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I unblocked him. --Millosh 17:48, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Posting on behalf of Capsot

While blocked he asked me to post this comment. I see Millosh unblocked him a while ago but I think some details may be of interest.--Gomà 18:45, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Dear Wikimedia people,

Gomà (we are still friends even though I left Amical) was kind enough to inform me of this new discussion about me (I am glad to be the center of so many discussions, it flatters my ego…) and to accept to paste my reply here so you won’t accuse my wife of being a sockpuppet (I can send you her picture if you still think she is a sockpuppet (you can try to reach her/us by Skype, I will write down her/our address if you want to…) or ask her to answer but she only speaks (understands) Ukrainian, Russian and then French to a certain extent, a few words in English or German, but well you should know she might get mad because she is not really glad about the time I spend in the Wikipedia projects and she kindly helped me pasting my translations and then she still has to translate my statements in Ukrainian, so please don’t create more couple tensions than needed… I am afraid she will not accept to help me anymore, she personally chose the picture, I wanted others (I can send them as well and you can tell me if she was right or not…) but well…).

You can also ask Abbas about it all, I had sent him my statement at first (on Friday I guess) but well he told me (on Sunday I guess) he preferred to wait for the notification (and that my wife had beaten him (not physically I hope… well no, she is way too far…)) so I had to find another way and bother my wife… I can also send you the Word files with the translations I worked on (I usually translate directly on the pages without using Word).

I am really glad you all show so much interest in me, however I must bring some unpleasant points forward. I kindly remind you that I was first blocked on the charges of being libelous (“WizardOfOz blocked Capsot from 21:09, 22 March 2011 to infinite; the reason given was: Vandalism: posting libelous information, mail content” ), charge which was discussed by an anonymous user:

“1. If the content of an email can be considered potentially libelous, the responsability lies on the writer of the email, not on the the reproducer (like Julian Assange).2. A disclaimer in an email has no legal effect, being it unilateral and written at the end of the mail, after the main text.--193.145.56.241 18:04, 24 March 2011 (UTC)“

which received the following answer from WizardOfOz:

“Sorry but per Austrian law, where I´m located, there is a law which prohibits providing of correspondence without permission of both sides (and disclaimer clearly confirms that there is no permission). I´m not a OS here on meta, so I just provided the information to meta OS who decided to oversight. Feel free to contact him. --WizardOfOz talk 18:13, 24 March 2011 (UTC)”, should I understand that Austrian rule prevails in the Wikipedia?

Then according to this Austrian law (this is Wikipedia please, aren’t you supposed to bring references?), it would not be libelous but a fault in the fact that there wasn’t permission from both sides, if Austrian law ever was to be contemplated here, obviously… All of this does not seem appropriate to me since there cannot be anything libelous (however I wasn’t unblocked, curiously enough…) when you are not the author of the letter, the guilt would be to make it public when not allowed and that would be another accusation. The letter was actually made public in the Spanish list (http://lists.wikimedia.org.ar/pipermail/wikimedia-es/2011-March/002904.html) as Gomà had already pointed out on March 20th while discussing some issues in the Movement Roles: [1].

I then was blocked in all the projects -without consulting, nor saying anything to, the”local” administrators, is it a usual practice? Shouldn’t they have their say?- with very discussable reasons and clearly going against some (basic?) rules of the Wikimedia world as Sj (I am really grateful of his interventions) reminded Magister Mathematicae (Sj’s talk page: [2] and M & M’s talk page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Magister_Mathematicae#On_locking_editors).

I had previously promised, but seemingly to no avail, not to create any other secondary/multiple account(s)- you can check the definition of Sockpuppet account in the English Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry ; I can stand the accusation of having multiple accounts even if it does not seem to be punishable (simply not advisable) or of evading a block; the other charges are in my opinion ungrounded…- and asked to be judged (see DerHexer’s talkpage: [3] or Sj’s talkpage: [4]) but there was not even a single attempt of taking my case into consideration (no reply from WizardOfOz but well I prefer to think that he did not see Sj’s message and that Sj did not pay much attention that the message was not at the end of it all and forgot he had posted the message afterwards (from WizardofOz’s talk page: “That comment states the lock rather than explaining it. We don't usually use locks to resolve social disputes or sockpuppetry among established users - unless this was meant to set a precedent. Was there a discussion about it here on Meta? –SJ talk 01:17, 2 April 2011 (UTC)”.

In spite of it all, I am really grateful and indebted to some honest administrators like DerHexer who did not erase my message (man, the one who erased it erased a proof in what could be a legal procedure, how can it work this way here? Aren’t there guarantees here a devoted user should be judged in a fair, unbiased way? Am I being considered a troll or a vandal in spite of my daily work on the projects? Are the administrators above the laws?).

I think however, as I said in my talk page earlier, that most of the people in the Wikimedia and in Meta are doing their job fine and are honest people; so please, find a solution to my case, I will accept the final sentence if it is based on sound grounds and real debate. Sincerely, de còr e d’òc, Claudi Balaguer/Capsot

PD1: By the way, tell Magister I am not Catalan… nonetheless if he (or anyone else, but not too many otherwise I can’t afford it) is interested in Catalan culture or language (I live in Northern Catalonia), just let me know I can send them some books to learn the language for free.

PD2: I would really appreciate the momentary unblock you were talking about, which would avoid me having to ask/beg/bother other people (I do not like asking favors or being bothersome, except when needed…) to paste my translations or answers, thanks in advance!

Thanks Gomà for kindly pasting my message, sorry if I bothered you. I also want to thank Markus and Millosh publicly. For those my case might interest and interested to witness real interesting debates about my blocks, check the bottom of my User page and WizardofOz's and you will learn very interesting knowledge about the Wikimedia world. Have a nice day, Claudi/Capsot 06:51, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Candidate needing to fix broken link and one minor edit

In my candidate statement, an unclear abbreviation (ww for worldwide) was pointed out to me by a question from a translator, and the link to POTD 2009-11-19 is broken because of a lapse in syntax. I would like to make those two simple corrections (plus changing "open-access publications" to open-source papers" to stay within the 1200 character limit), but cannot do so because the page is, understandably, blocked. I would be very grateful if someone on the election committee with the right permissions could help by making those edits for me.Dcrjsr 15:46, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

This has been done. Ral315 (talk) 17:22, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks so much! Dcrjsr 17:30, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Add new additions to other languages plesae

It would be great if someone would add the English text of the recently added requests to other languages, so the translators would be notified and translate them subsequently. Huji 23:52, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I had tried to send translation requests to the translators-l mailing list, and apparently none went through until earlier today. My apologies for that. Needed translations can be found here; at the moment, our primary focus is the "candidates" and "vote interface (meta)" pages. Ral315 (talk) 20:21, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

You must be logged in to vote

I followed the vote invite from a logged in session at Enwp and got the ballot screen. Took a while filling out the ballot (it's hard work!) only to be told that I must be logged in to vote. Fortunately I'd saved my ranking first, so I just had reload the page and tediously reenter it. Can we please make the timeout longer? I think it took me an hour to re-review all the candidate statements and Q/A. It's not reasonable to time people out during the vote in the amount of time they would naturally need in order to become informed, especially since the sitenotice for the vote takes people directly into the poll booth. --Gmaxwell 03:12, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations on having the foresight to save your rankings first. I didn't and am hesitating before starting the process again. Especially as the login it prompts you to is on a Wiki that isn't part of the universal login. https://wikimedia.amellus.net/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Special:SecurePoll/vote/200 WereSpielChequers 10:32, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Google translation of the questions to candidates

Google only translate a portion of the text. Perhaps the pages should be split in shorter ones.--Gomà 12:02, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Need for a centralized and advertised discussion area

2011 board elections
Introduction and rules Candidate presentations Questions Discuss Vote Results
Organization
Election Committee Translation

We need to explicitly invite people from diverse projects to discuss the candidates with us here on Meta. Input from other users, especially those from non-enWiki, would be very useful in helping us form a good decision. --Alecmconroy 02:52, 29 May 2011 (UTC) 1}

For example, maybe add a link from the navigation box in Template:Board elections 2011, linking to the appropriate discussion page, as illustrated right.[5] --Alecmconroy 04:02, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't feel that this is something that should be explicitly endorsed. In the past, we've had similar setups (including requiring candidates to require X number of signatures in order to stand, or just having an "endorsements" page). It has always turned out to just be a popularity contest. Ral315 (talk) 19:57, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Feel what you want-- but if you run an election without any serious, substantial inter-wiki dialogue or debates , your election won't have any legitimacy and neither will the people appointed by the process. Right now, the larger WM community is absent from this election-- if only the wiki-politicos on IRC are allowed to caucus, then we won't have ANY true community representatives on the board anymore.

STOP. Stop for a second and just think about this strategically, people. WMF has had a VERY hard year where they have worked their butts off to try and regain the community's trust.

You cannot have community-trusted elections when IRC discussion is encouraged (for the 'wiki-elites') while ordinary wikimedians are shewed away like flies if they try to start a similar dialogue on-wiki. IRC politicing is all good-- but regular folks on the wiki are a threat?

This isn't a minor issue-- if the status quo of the election were really to continue for the entirety of the election, the resulting candidates may appointed, but they wouldn't have been truly elected by the community.

I know Civility is important, and I hope the discussion will be civil.. But democracy is important too, and we're not living up to our ideals on this. The candidates signed up to have their toes stepped on a little here and there-- it's how humans pick good leaders. We need to create an INVITING culture that is ACTIVELY recruiting the rest of the community to participate in this process.

Right now, this election has a big "GO AWAY" sign written all over it. --Alecmconroy 22:24, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Voter Guide

Work in progress of course, but here's my Voter Guide. They're very popular at the EnWiki arbcom elections, there were 24 such guides in the last election. I mostly made it for myself as I try to sort out all the candidates, just to keep things straight in my own mind. But they also help explain to others how you're think, such that they can learn from your thinking (or even change how you're thinking with discussion). --Alecmconroy 02:52, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Where to vote?

I think I have found nowhere to vote. There is no banner. I signed off once and in again but got no guidance. Where do you think people know the voting acceptance open and go to SPI site? I'm puzzled ... Or is it just I'm not eligible to vote, whereas I don't think so? --Aphaia 08:01, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Board_elections/2011#How_to_vote says you have to go to Special:SecurePoll, it work for me. You may be not eligible to vote on some wiki, try on the one where you've been most active recently. Nemo 08:26, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, it seems to work for me as a meta editor. It still may remain if it's intuitive enough for many editors, which I'm worried for the sake of turnout. --Aphaia 11:54, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

It didn’t work for me either; I got an invitation on the English site, and the voting site says “Welcome FlashSheridan!”, but both voting and account creation failed. Fortunately, I did save a record of my choices.

—FlashSheridan 23:21, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

You do not need to create an account or log in - you are logged in when you click the "go to the secure server" button. You should be able to vote. It's possible that you spent too much time determining who to vote for, and you were inadvertently logged out. Can you try to vote again, and let us know if you have a problem? Ral315 (talk) 00:19, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

That did it, thanks. Silly me, taking time to research and decide before voting :-)

—FlashSheridan 02:51, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Can you please ask the the timeout be increased? Several people have now reported losing their votes because of this (see my comments above)— the system shoves you right into the voting booth when you click the banner, so only after the ballot is loaded will many people do their initial research. --Gmaxwell 03:28, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I've asked whether this can be done. Ral315 (talk) 06:30, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

One candidate is indefinitely blocked

Hi! Mischa Vetere was indefinitely blocked on Commons some minutes ago. See the block log on Commons. Does it have any impact on his candidacy? Cassandro 10:39, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

• The candidate has made legal threats and requested identification of editors see COM:AN/U discussion for the full discussion. I know en:WP policy is very clear about such actions If you must take legal action, we cannot prevent you from doing so. However, it is required that you do not edit Wikipedia until the legal matter has been resolved to ensure that all legal processes happen via proper legal channels. and Commons practice is to defers to en:wp policies where no specific policy exists. While I'm not sure about the extent of a trustees access to information clearly continuation of the candidate calls into doubt this process. for the record I havent voted and wont vote in the election. Gnangarra 01:06, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

It would probably create completely pointless drama to disqualify the candidate now in any case. I'd just recommend adding a fair discussion of this subject to whatever community discussion of the candidate happens and let people make up their own minds on how they plan on voting in light of the available information. --Gmaxwell 02:45, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Except that the rules clearly state for those standing are the same as voting plus.... for those voting its states not be blocked on the project you are voting from; and User:Mvart4u is block on Commons the project from which he nominated that makes him ineligable. Gnangarra 03:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

It's a reasonable interpretation of the rules that you must not be blocked on the project from which you are voting at the time you vote, but if you are blocked later it doesn't matter. I believe thats actually how its enforced today. I would sooner unblock him on commons then allow the wikimedia election to be made into a circus by disqualifying him after the polls opened under some questionable interpretation of an ambiguous rule.--Gmaxwell 03:34, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a situation that we didn't envision when writing the rules. I don't want to speak for the Committee because we're waiting for input from other members, but know that this is under discussion. As of now, he has not been disqualified, and remains a valid candidate. Ral315 (talk) 06:30, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that it is feasible to say that Mvart4u's nomination came from commons.wikimedia.org. The provided link rather suggests that his nomination came from meta.wikimedia.org. And Mvart4u is not blocked at meta.wikimedia.org. [However, I recommend that (in future elections) edits from projects, where someone is blocked, should not be counted. In this case, Mvart4u was not eligible, since 706 of his 801 edits are at commons.wikimedia.org.] Markus Schulze 09:51, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

please note the titling === mischa vetere ([[commons:User:mvart4u|mvart4u]])=== the link there to his user page is to Commons, there is no mention of meta activity in his nominations it says Active wikis: Commons and rarely wikipedia . Given the nature of a Trustee and the access to information even if he was basing the nomination on another project its still a significant concern that legal threats have been made with requests for identification of users. As it stands Ral says the committee is discussing the issue given thats not something that was envisioned in the process we should let them investigate and decide how to proceed. Gnangarra 10:24, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, the requirements don't say that you must not be blocked on your home project. Markus Schulze 10:50, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Because Mischa Vetere was a valid candidate at the start of the election, the Committee has determined that he shall remain a candidate. Ral315 (talk) 16:12, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this is a superior rule going forward, in any case. Without it there may be a continually running political game during an election where parties attempt to get a candidate blocked in order to disqualify them. If the election process can't avoid making a bad choice without the "help" of projects banning candidates during the election then we have bigger problems! :) --Gmaxwell 20:32, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Ral for the response the committee has made a reasonable decision under the circumstances. Gnangarra 03:57, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't see why Mischa Vetere should not be eligible. Please explain! The website says that you have to be blocked on more than one project to become ineligible. 217.92.151.70 09:10, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Is there a page for messages to the Election Committee?

You want to contact the election committee, but you don't care which member you reach. Is there some central page for such requests, and if not, may I suggest creating one Board Elections/2011/Coordination or some like that. Hat tip to Wikipedia:Talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2010/Coordination for the idea of a shared election committee talk page, so that "talking about the election" and "talking to the committee" can be held in separate spaces. --Alecmconroy 14:15, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

please read :) Matanya 14:24, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

You can also reach the election committee on this page. Ral315 (talk) 19:27, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Confused by Ral's statements

So, after receiving initially supportive overtures, I spent a good while last night making a template to help with the election:

Nothing controversial about the template-- the formatting was taken from a pre-existing template, adjusting the pages to this setting. Upgraded the formatting obviously, added a call for translators right into the box since we need them so badly. Direct links to the questions and to each of the answer pages. Slightly more invitng names-- "Ask the Candidates" over "Questions".

The point was to try to help create a 'community' here like those we have on so many of the other projects, where there's a robust discussion about the candidates, so that an average wikimedian, who doesn't know people's names, can get info from their peers on the candidates. This has the potential to be mildly incivil to the candidates, but it's absolutely essential if you want anyone who doesn't live on IRC to be able to make a reasoned decision.

My assumption is: "We want all the participation we can get. We want all the questions, all the answers, all the votes, all the discussion, all the rationales that we can possibly get". Widespread voter participation IS a good thing, right?

When my fancy new template was finally done, I was happy to show it off, so I added it to the bottom of a few pages, (or float right on a talk). I smiled, drank some tea, and leaned back. Job well done? Would it help? I dunno, but if it got even one more translator or one more discussion going, that would be a good thing. -- Sadly, my pride was shortlive. Ral315 just went through and removed them all. After taking the time to learn the templating and get the code all right, to see all that time just deleted and wasted is pretty demoralizing, for someone who was trying to volunteer to help out with the election by doing boring template work.

I'm even more confused that by Ral's allusion that discussion might somehow turn this election to turn into a popularity contest-- thus we shouldn't promote discussion...??? Am I crazy? Isn't that the whole point of having an election-- for people to get together and discuss the candidates, and then decide which candidate is most popular. I've never heard of the "try to avoid talking amongst yourselves" model of elections.

If we continue to by discouraging discussion or actively choosing not to promote debate, then we'll get get exactly what we're seeing here-- the potential makings of a failed election:

• Voting has begun. Board Member is the most important position we have-- and there are still less than 20 questions?
• Voting has begun. It's our most important election, and there's still no active on-wiki debate that I can find??
• Voting has begun. A board member is supposed to represent the global community of editors, and yet, translations still aren't done midway into the elections?
• Last year there were only a paltry few thousand votes cast-- a few thousand out of a community as large as WM?

If we keep up this level of 'community outreach", we might break last year's numbers by a few hundred and get even fewer voters this year!

The lack of robust discussion is becoming a real problem. If you have an election and most of your organization doesn't turn up, your organization's governance WILL be sub-optimally selected, the leaders will lose legitimacy, and continued into the future, this low participation could eventually lead entire WMF organization to lose some of its legitimacy.

Sorry for the rant-- been up 36 hours banging my head against a wall trying to figure out how to foster a "real, robust discussion" going here on this election, and was just told that my time was mostly wasted time because we don't want to discuss the candidates lest a POPULAR election devolve into a popularity contest? Most disappointed and confused.--Alecmconroy 20:15, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

My understanding was that the Election Committee reached decisions jointly. Alec, you should ask the Committee to confirm Ral's actions, because I do not see how he had the authority to do this unilaterally. AGK 20:04, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Let's clear this up: What's our stance on discussion? Good or bad?

• Is there anyone here who thinks we SHOULDN'T be doing as much as possible to reach out to the wider community and foster robust, even energized, discussion?
• Is our low participation a PROBLEM? or is our 'enthusiasm problem' actually by design? --Alecmconroy 20:51, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to say a sincere word of thanks to all the people who have contacted me since this was posted. Based on that, I strongly feel our lack of global voter engagement is, in fact, entirely unintentional and undesired. I apologize for even considering the alternative. If I'm not able to be as active in discussion in the coming week as I'd like, it is _entirely_ because of real life commitments, not at all attributable to the any of the concerns expressed above.

If only every day was memorial day weekend. :) --Alecmconroy 20:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

If you want more participation the best way would be to post something to the various noticeboards; a lot of people ignore the central noticeboard. But a post to the Administrators Noticeboard and Village Pump on English Wikipedia would get noticed. I don't know about other Wiki's, but I imagine it is the same --ErrantX 08:21, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Candidates look like Brežnev

See also Wikimedia_meetings/2011-06-04

To quote a well known Italian political satirist, candidates currently look like Brežnev, and the current (very little) discussion about board platform seems a starchy party political broadcast directly from the monopolistic state-owned Italian TV of the 70s: it's not surprising that we have currently few votes and little activity. We want a 21th century election campaign: discussions everywhere, candidates who excite the electorate about the usefulness of the WMF board, of the board election and of their platform; heated debates between the candidates; new communications ideas from the candidates; etc. This is not a request for adminship.
I think that candidates should take the initiative (especially most prominent ones and former board members; I'll also post something on Talk:Wikimedia board manual about this), but perhaps the election committee could help by stating the obvious (or not so obvious), for instance that it's ok to talk about candidates and platforms in public places such talk pages, user subpages, village pumps, blogs etc.; that candidates who engage in public discussion are welcome (unless they spam user talks), or similar things. Nemo 10:52, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree that a discussion on the contents would be useful - but the current environment is not very inviting for that. The infrastructure that has been built is mainly Question & Answer, not even allowing to return on an answer as the one who put the question out. Also with a small board of ten (and only three community selected board members) I feel a little held back because if elected, you have to work with the others, so making the discussion personal (you are not good for the job, and you are) is imho definitely not a wise thing to do in that respect.

I however also think that it is more important that people get an idea of the work the board does in a more continuous way. We should not wait until elections to have discussions, people should be involved from day one and throughout the time. This used to be more the case in the past (I recall Florence writing several discussion pieces on foundation-l as a board chair) than currently, and could use improvement. Effeietsanders 11:19, 5 June 2011 (UTC) p.s.: Maybe we (I?) should also revisit our photographs if we (I?) look like Breznev...

I agree with Nemo that more life inside of the elections is needed. I tried to make a kind of blog-debate with one of the candidates, but he doesn't want that. Basically, if candidates don't have to discuss, it seems that they would prefer not to discuss at all. Because of that, it's a job for voters: you should force candidates to stand behind their positions, to keep political process alive between the elections and remind elected candidates why they were elected. If public is not interested in political process, candidates and especially elected ones are not interested in it by default. (I am, but you shouldn't count on my personal attributes in political process; you should force candidates to behave like that.) --Millosh 11:29, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Besides the fact that that he supports me, I really appreciate Alecmconroy's work toward making elections closer to political process. Note that this election is the first one with such kind of public involvement. And I hope that it would be greater in two years. But, again, it is voters' job, not the job of candidates because reasons above. --Millosh 11:29, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Besides the fact that he doesn't support me I also appreciate his work and support his efforts to give it visibility. But I have to say that it is a bit disappointing that after taking the time to answer his extra questions he only recommend candidates who have not answered them. Except for your case. And he doesn't put even a single link to those extra questions/answers in his voters guide.--Gomà 15:47, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

He is doing two separate things: (1) promoting candidates which he thinks that are the best, which is his [personal] political opinion; and (2) working toward involving others in the political process; for example, he brought AGK (who, BTW, supports you ;) ). I think that the second thing is more important. --Millosh

Goma-- I'm so sorry for the confusion-- my voter guide is NOT done. not done at all. I'm so sorry that you felt I had been disrespectful of the time you took to answer the optional questions. If you'll notice, I have not added my own guide to the Template:Board_elections_2011_infobox, because it's not done yet. (also, waiting on more guides).

The truth is that it's _very_ difficult to evaluate people who aren't already serving at the movement level. If you work primarily on a local project, I need to hear from people in your community. Right now, that's not happening, and so you're essentially impossible to evaluate.

For nearly all voters, "essentially impossible to evaluate" candidates will probably become "default weak opposes"-- regardless of the quality of the actual candidate. I'm trying hard to push back against that trend, to be an exception to that rule, and to really evaluate everyone individually-- I'm just nowhere near done.

Mostly, right now I'm focusing on trying to get more feedback from others. My opinion isn't necessarily better than anyone else's opinion. A single voter guide may or may not be useful-- it's a diverse collection of voter guides that are incredibly useful and make for "smarter" elections.

--Alecmconroy 04:54, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Also-- I just double checked. There is actually a link to the extra questions on the vote guide draft as part of the 20111 Board Election Infobox I created, but if there's somewhere else in the document that you expected a link, just be bold and add one. The extra questions were great, I love linking to them. --Alecmconroy 05:16, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

If anything politics is the one thing we do not need at the Wikimedia Foundation. We need capable thoughtful people. We do not need candidates riding into town on a motorcycle because it looks hip. We do not need posturing for our community and hiding when elected. Thanks, GerardM 18:08, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Gerard - politics is a problematic factor in many issues within our communities, people labelling each other in opposition to themselves rather than focussing on what unites us. That said, I'm very much in favour of more questioning of potential Board candidates (myself included). This process has resulted in quite a bland election so far, and though I worry about changing it mid-way through, we should do as much as we can to ensure that the community get every opportunity to understand the choices available to them.

James F. (talk) 19:12, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Political life is usual thing among any group of homo sapiens. Expressing opinion toward something inside of some group is political. --Millosh 04:55, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I think there are some parts of "Real Wold Politics" that we very much don't want-- the negative emotions, divisiveness, etc. "Politics" in the narrow context of a foundation election really just means "Community Engagement in Foundation Leadership", which is a great thing. We shouldn't let the 'dirtiness' of the word 'politics' contaminate an important goal. --Alecmconroy 05:03, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Speaking for myself, the wording of the election text generally put me off advocating or discussing the election too much - at least on English Wikipedia the idea of canvassing for votes or opinions is frowned on quite heavily, and the wording of the election description seemed to imply a similar approach. I mean, I wanted to post a longer description of why I am standing my user page (I may still do so), but thought it might be frowned on. I'd also love to try and drag in editors from my home wiki to contribute to the discussion/questioning - but I don't want to look as if I am canvassing for votes (not that I am big headed enough to think that posting to my home wiki would improve my chances of being elected :)). What would be nice is a group of editors whose task is to take the election to the various Wiki's, posting notes on the major noticeboard, answering questions and pushing people to become involved. --ErrantX 14:33, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

A Missed Opportunity

One of the "big vision" ideas that inspires Wikimedia is that thought that we are building the first truly global community. Wikimedia projects are a wonder of the world, a "Great Pyramid" built by altruistic volunteers from all over our planet.

A lot has changed since the last such election in 2009. Global outreach has become an increasingly major focus of our movement. We are actively seeking ways to engage the global community in Wikimedia.

This election could be an opportunity--- a chance to being forging a single,unified truly-global community (as opposed to the mere 'collections of individual project communities'. We want to engage our WHOLE community, and this is the moment.

Starting to build that global community is a positive thing in itself. We need more communication inter-project, inter-language, inter-national, and inter-cultural. I think we could be doing a lot more.

So for example?

Have _any_ non-english speakers had an opportunity to ask questions of all the candidates? Or are they limited to the 1200 letter bios?

Questions are great. Not only do they help people understand the candidates, but they help us understand the candidates as people, not profiles. This is a Good Thing.

Case in point-- We have some great diversity here in the candidates. To highlight a few examples:

• One candidate is from Israel-- Arabic-language Wikimedians should get an extensive chance to interact with him during the election, so they can see what virtually all english-speakers know by now-- Israeli just means 'Person living in Israel'. No more, no less.
• Similarly, one candidate is from the Balkans, a region of the world whose very name is synonymous with sectarian dispute. I want our global community to get to interact with this person as a person.
• Another candidate mentions a same-sex romantic relationship in English questions, and the #1 way to overcome anti-gay bigotry is positive direct interaction with someone, and seeing the person as a person. I want our global community to get to have that positive experience, if they haven't already.

I could go on and on about each of the candidate's unique demographics and what they each bring to the table. People from a variety of professions, backgrounds, and nations have stepped up to offer to help lead us. They're putting themselves out there in a big way, making us a huge offer to do a lot of work for free. The election is a positive, amazing thing, and we should be making the most of it.

Our global community, the wider community, needs to have the experience of participating in this election. It may not change the outcomes one iota, but the mere act of participation is itself a positive force. People who vote will be more likely to contribute to the projects, more likely to donate, more likely to feel 'invested' in the foundation and the movement. Voters without English fluency would _especially_ benefit from greater engagement with the board candidates, as those individuals in practice have much less access to the board than speakers of English.

In short, we need to make global voter participation a priority and a goal, in and of itself. --Alecmconroy 04:29, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

+1. I certainly agree with this; it is difficult to make the board/foundation/process seem relevant to the communities, and this is one easy way to participate; it's also an opportunity to help people learn about Wikimedia governance in general. And yes, re: the diversity of candidates; I am privileged to personally know many of the candidates running this year, and they are amazing people that deserve to be highlighted in their own right. -- phoebe | talk 17:11, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

+1. I think the votes should not begin until the presentation of candidates and the answers are translated at least to the ten major languages​​. --Fajro 17:25, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, although I think that I will get similar percentages of votes from all communities of former Yugoslavia. (To be clear: I agree with the extension of elections.) Very important issue is that election turnout is very very low. If we have ~20,000 very active users and count that it is a number of voters (some very active are not eligible, but many active users are), turnout on last elections was ~15%. That's very low even for societies where voters are apathetic toward political process. Such percentages are usual just in societies where ~2/3 of voters are boycotting elections. --Millosh 19:19, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that the process of electing Board members shouldn't be just a couple of months before the elections, but all of the time. In other words, it would be good to have permanent Election committee, which would care about letting people know what are their rights and why it is important to participate in elections, but in all other issues related to Wikimedia movement: Strategy planning, Movement roles etc. I would like to have statistics of turnout per project and per country, which would give us a guide: what should be done where. --Millosh 19:19, 7 June 2011 (UTC)