Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2009/Candidates/en

Ad Huikeshoven (Dedalus)

Summary details

Ad Huikeshoven, 2009. Personal: Name: Ad Huikeshoven Age: 45 Location: The Hague, The Netherlands Languages: Dutch, English Editorial: Wikimedian since: 1 February 2005 Active wikis: nl.wikipedia, en.wikipedia Summer holiday from Saturday July 25 until Sunday August 8. I'll be nearly completely off line, so please ask any questions you have regarding my candidacy early and ask often.

Statement

Since January 2007 I do serve as a non-board member on the (board) Audit Committee to represent and assist the board in its general oversight of the organisation's accounting and financial reporting processes, audits of the financial statements, and internal control, and audit functions. The organization of WMF is still growing and needs to attract funds, grants and many, many contributions by small donors to cover the ever increasing cost of hosting the websites. The WMF therefore needs to build trust and credibility in, for example, presenting timely financial statements with an unqualified audit opinion to show donors' money is well spent. I graduated in Economics and Business Administration at the University Maastricht (Masters degree) and I am a professional auditor with a Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) designation. I have over ten years professional experience in oversight functions. I care for the long term continuity of the Foundation and its projects, and would be happy to bring my professional experience and experience as Audit Committee member from a community perspective to the full board.

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

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File:AKoenigsberg.jpg Adam Russell Koenigsberg, 2009. Personal: Name: Adam Koenigsberg Age: 25 Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA Languages: English, Written Spanish Editorial: Wikimedian since: 25 September 2005 Active wikis: en.wikipedia

Statement

BA: The College of Wooster MBA Candidate: The Ohio State University, business marketing Listening and collaborating to reach common ground on difficult and time consuming issues, because there’s something more important at stake than our egos. This is what I learned in my five years of not-for-profit board experience, and my internship in the United States Senate. My experience managing political campaigns gifted me the ability to raise funds without selling out principles, something needed by Wikimedia right now. These experiences, combined with my MBA, have given me the ability to inform the difficult decisions the board faces, utilizing my training in marketing and finance. Wikimedia to me means bringing the world knowledge through Accuracy, Openness, and Civility. I look forward to listening to everyone over the next two years, and working to uphold these ideals. Please select me as a trustee for 2009-2011. I will not only meet, but exceed your expectations.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

Summary details

Dan Rosenthal Personal: Name: Dan Rosenthal Age: 26 Location: Washington, D.C. Languages: English Editorial: Wikimedian since: January 2006 Active wikis: en.wikipedia, intermittently active on meta, commons, and Simple English.

Statement

I believe that I have the expertise and experience necessary to serve on the WMF Board of Trustees. I’m a member of the WMF Communications Committee, a Press Contact for the foundation, and an OTRS Legal queue representative. I’m also active in the WMF community offline, having attended several Wiki-meetings, and headed up the Wikipedia Loves Art event in Washington, DC. I’m a clinical student attorney with the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic, and will be receiving my J.D. in May. I’ve met the office staff numerous times, and they’re fantastic, talented, dedicated people; I firmly believe that it is not the board’s place to interfere with their day to day efforts, but to guide and oversee the Foundation as a whole. I believe I can help to do this by developing strategic partnerships with like-minded organizations. To that end I’ve helped develop a relationship with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which has culminated in an agreement to release a large portion of their digitized collection for upload to Commons.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

Summary details

Góngora, April 2009. Personal: Name: José Gustavo Góngora Age: 22 Location: La Seu d'Urgell, Catalonia, Spain Languages: Spanish, English, Catalan, Italian and Portuguese Editorial: Wikimedian since: July 2006 Active wikis: ca.wikipedia, es.wikipedia (several edits in other Wikimedia projects: mostly en.wiki and pt.wiki)

Statement

As an English linguistics student who respects plurality, I consider myself suitable for taking this task and communicating with other people internationally. I study at UNED, a distance learning university. For this reason, I can organize my time and, if elected, participate in board duties. Furthermore, I have been involved with the Spanish Arbitration Committee (aka CRC) during one year. I am also an administrator and bureaucrat since 2007. Apart from that, I am currently a checkuser on the Catalan wikipedia project, from where I am also preparing a talk that will take place in Wikimania 2009, in Argentina, next August. I have been able to earn the community confidence in those projects. In other words, I feel highly committed with Wikimedia projects and principles. As an experienced translator, who has attended and organized several wiki-meetings, with more than 100 articles translated, I feel myself able to translate Wikimedia policy if necessary. I have promoted Wikimedia projects worldwide in countries such as Uruguay, Spain or Andorra, in several interviews with the Media. I would like to keep on doing my job by assuming this responsibility from now onwards.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

Summary details

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe, 2009 Personal: Name: Kevin Riley O'Keeffe Age: 38 Location: San Jose, Northern California, USA Languages: English Editorial: Wikimedian since: January 28, 2005 Active wikis: en.Wikipedia, en.WikiQuote, en.Wiktionary, WikiMedia Commons

Statement

Since I have become active at Wikipedia, I have noted that while every single episode of South Park has its own article, numerous topics which are of interest, and genuine intellectual concern, to those of us on the far right, have been treated with apparent disdain, and have been subjected to seemingly arbitrary deletion. It often seems to me as if articles that are of interest to persons on the far right, are held to a significantly higher standard, for the purposes of achieving notability. My candidacy is derived from my concerns pertaining to the issue of freedom of speech, or perhaps more precisely, the objectivity of the administration of the WikiMedia Foundation's various projects, with particular emphasis on what I have come to perceive as a liberal-leftist bias ("political correctness") with regard to the administration of Wikipedia. I do not claim this is a huge problem. On the contrary, I have a very high regard for Wikipedia, as well as for the Wikimedia Foundation's efforts as a whole. However, my experiences at Wikipedia, as well as what I have learned in conversations with various others who have had similar experiences, have led me to conclude that this has become an issue that requires redress, and thus is one that can perhaps be best dealt with by having a sympathetic ear on the Board of Directors of the WikiMedia Foundation.

Ralph Dominguez (Ανθρωπιστής)

Summary details

File:Ανθρωπιστής.jpg Ralph Dominguez Personal: Name: Ralph Dominguez Age: 39 Location: Tabasco, Mexico Languages: Greek, Latin, English, Spanish, Portuguese Editorial: Wikimedian since: December 2008 (as Ανθρωπιστης) Active wikis: el.wikisource, en.wikisource, en.wikipedia, es.wikisource, es.wikipedia, pt.wikipedia

Statement

I am a convinced defender of the respect to the ideological diversity and plurality. I have studied the ideas of numerous ideological groups and communities. When I was only an adolescent, I was a fanatical Christian fundamentalist. I had many emotional conflicts to accept the ones who did not think exactly like me. During many years, I underwent attacks of delirious fixed ideas of an aberrant clinical square of schizoparanoia. Finally, I decided open my mind to the world of the plurality of the ideas. Now, I am a firm defender of the plurality, the tolerance and the respect. And, like a humanist, I assume with affection the past and the stilling religious present of this world, although today I consider better a future free of religious ideas and dogmatisms (even the “Christian”). I have been working in Wikipedia Projects since December 2008, carrying out opportune and right corrections and contributions of my knowledge and studies, where is so perceivable the deficiency of good formation and information tending to fight the ignorance of the which ones who even continue promoting religious-Christian fanaticism and intolerance.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

Summary details

Ralph Potdevin Personal: Name: Ralph Potdevin Age: 37 Location: Rouen, France Languages: French, English, Spanish, German Editorial: Wikimedian since: January 2004 Active wikis: fr.wikipedia

Statement

As an engineer, currently unemployed, and a former student in computer sciences, cognitive science and electr(on)ical engineering, I think I have the skills required to imply in WM and the Wikipedias in particular. I appreciate and support the seriousness, independency, democracy and open-mindedness of Wikipedias. I regularly improve the French Wikipedia, essentially, by correcting typos, changing bad syntax into good and the like, and participating in the redaction of articles. I intervene in discussions and votes on page suppressions and so on. I'm doing my best to continuously continuing to learn wiki syntax and thus making more efficient contributions. I would be very glad to go on that way in the coming months, as a community member and why not as a board member.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

Summary details

File:Relly Komaruzaman.png KTP Kepahiang Personal: Name: Relly Komaruzaman Age: 25 Location: Kepahiang, Indonesia Languages: Indonesian Editorial: Wikimedian since: October 2008 Active wikis: id.wikipedia

Statement

(English) Rough Translation WikiKnight protects Wikipedia from vandalism which may bring a reduction in terms of quantity and quality, and Wikipedia is to enrich the knowledge of all people in the world. (Indonesian) WikiKnight yaitu melindungi Wikipedia dari kehancuran yang berupa pengurangan dari segi kualitas dan kuantitas Wikipedia, karena Wikipedia untuk pencerdasan bagi setiap manusia di dunia.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

Summary details

File:Sarcasticidealist.jpg Me, still pleased with myself Personal: Name: Steve Smith Age: 27 Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (attending school in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada) Languages: English, formerly-fluent but ever-deteriorating French Editorial: Wikimedian since: 23 February 2007 Active wikis: en.wikipedia, Commons, a handful of edits on a few others

Statement

My name is Steve Smith, and I am a law student from Canada. I am a former business manager for a non-profit with annual revenues in excess of half a million dollars and a former director of three different non-profit corporations and one for-profit. While this 1200 character limit is awfully restrictive, my platform is as follows: promote the use of the “specific expertise” board seats to become less insular, make what adjustments to the privacy policy as are necessary to promote accountability on-wiki, issue such Foundation-level dictates on biographies of living persons issues as can be issued without jeopardizing the Foundation’s protection under s. 230 of the Communications Decency Act, advocate for the Foundation-imposed creation of committees in our largest projects, such committees to be empowered to make project-specific policy, elected to finite terms by the community and recallable by same, overrulable by community consensus, authorized to alter their own makeup, and no threat to the Foundation’s Section 230 immunity as a nonpublisher; guard against over-optimistic growth projections, and oppose paid advertising on any Wikimedia project.

Ting Chen (Wing)

Summary details

Ting on Wikimania 2008 Personal: Name: Ting Chen Age: 41 Location: Mainz, Germany Languages: Chinese, German, English, French Editorial: Wikimedian since: January 2003 Active wikis: zh.wikipedia, de.wikipedia, en.wikipedia, less on commons, meta and other language versions (mostly interwiki).

Statement

I was elected as a board member last year. In the past year I have actively worked on various resolutions and topics on the board, including the resolution about BLP, the change of licensing policy just to name the two most prominant ones. I am on the board nomination committee and am one of the board representative on the Chapters Committee. Last autumn I was with Jimmy Wales in Beijing, China to explain our work, mission and goal to chinese officials and to persuade them keep Wikimedia projects unblocked after the Olympic Games. I see it as my duty to keep the community informed about what the board and the Foundation is doing, thinking and planning and to relay the opinions of the community back to the board and the Foundation. Despite my job, my work on the board and other things in my life I had kept my promise to remain a community member, take part in discussion as a community member about different and controvertial topics and keep my work on Wikipedia: Since my election I had created numerous new articles on zh-wp or had inproved them from stubs to normal articles. I had kept my administrative work in cleaning up copyvio texts or images, in helping SUL requests. I would like to keep all these works also in the next two years, as a community member and as a board member.