Talk:Movement Charter/Ratification/Voting

This page is for discussions related to Movement Charter/Ratification/Voting.   Please remember to: Sign posts using the four tildes (~~~~) Remain civil and polite during discussions. Place new comments below in existing sections or start a new section.   Discussion navigation: For general discussion of the Movement Charter: Talk:Movement Charter For general enquiries to the Movement Charter Drafting Committee: Talk:Movement Charter/Drafting Committee For general dicussion about the Movement Charter ratification vote in June-July 2024: Talk:Movement Charter/Ratification/Voting For specific enquiries to the Charter Electoral Commission, send an e-mail to cecwikimediaorg For other enquiries, send an e-mail to movementcharterwikimediaorg

Voting both individually and on behalf of an Affiliate?

Is the affiliate vote entirely separate from the regular user vote, or will there be problems if a designated user votes their individual ballot and then try to access a link to vote for the affiliate? GreenReaper (talk) 06:34, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

The affiliate vote is entirely separate and is operated on a separate SecurePoll instance. The affiliate identifies its designated voter, and only that voter has access to the ballot. The individual voting on behalf of the affiliate also has the right to vote as an individual in the global community SecurePoll provided that the individual meets that voting eligibility criteria. Risker (talk) 21:46, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Change deadline to anywhere on earth

Currently the deadline is set for UTC. Change this to en:Anywhere on Earth.

We are an international community and have had many communication problems on this point. All Wikimedia votes should close on a given day, anywhere on earth. They should never close at one time zone's midnight. Bluerasberry (talk) 19:04, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

The software underlying SecurePoll is written to allow access to the poll for X number of hours; it is not based on geography or what time it says on a clock somewhere. This is a technical restriction, and it is a pretty standard one for electronic voting systems that are used across all global time zones when it is not possible to verify the exact geographic location and time zone of the voter. SecurePoll is not designed to delve that deeply into the private information of its users, and I suspect most Wikimedians are happy about that. Everyone has exactly the same length of time to vote; we use UTC because it is a universal coordinated time. We could hypothetically use Howlands Island time instead of UTC (i.e., UTC-12), but what would be the point? Risker (talk) 22:19, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

You are misunderstanding the request. The point is to avoid user confusion about whether they are safe if they vote by a given day in their own time zone. SecurePoll supports this already, and it has been used in other election activities here (most recently, UCOC). As noted in the linked Wikipedia article above, "Anywhere on Earth" is simply a specific offset from UTC (indeed, currently equal to UTC-12 hours, but that could in theory change with legislation some year) and is thus equivalent to a normal time zone, chosen to make it easy for all users to be sure that if they cast their vote by the given date in their time zone, they'll be covered. But at the same time, it allows a few extra hours into the next day for some folks. But, crucially, the end time does not depend on the user or their location.

And to clarify the request, AoE midnight is actually also midnight in the "last" time zone (IDLW, for the Howland and Baker Islands). ★NealMcB★ (talk) 19:21, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Please add links to the voting instructions

From the main voting page:

"1. Review the draft Movement Charter." I assume that's Movement Charter, but a direct wikilink here would be helpful.

"3. Learn how to record your vote with SecurePoll." Seriously, that's a step on the list? I'm tempted to be snarky and say, "Learn how to write instructions," but instead I'll ask for a link to some documentation or something.

"4. Go to the SecurePoll voting page and follow the instructions." Please link "SecurePoll voting page" to the SecurePoll voting page.

Thanks! Levivich (talk) 22:35, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Levivich! Thanks for the questions, and I think we addressed the first two with some minor alterations to the text on the projectpage. The link to the SecurePoll vote will only become available when the voting opens on the 25th of June, but we'll make sure to link that one out as well when it does. (cc: @RamzyM (WMF)) Ciell (talk) 17:35, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Ciell, those changes are very helpful! Levivich (talk) 18:30, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I've added the SecurePoll link to the page. Cheers, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Special note on affiliate voting eligibility and participation

(Cross-posted to Talk:Movement Charter)

Affiliates are reminded that they are to submit the information about their designated voter by end of day 24 June 2024. If there are not enough affiliates who have identified their designated voters, it will not be possible to meet the quorum required for the affiliate vote to ratify the Charter.

The Charter Election Commission, in its meeting of 17 June 2024, has decided to modify the eligibility requirement for affiliates. Affiliates who are not listed as "compliant" on the Wikimedia Affiliate Data Portal may instead provide the Charter Election Commission with a link to a published online version of their current annual report.

For the Charter Election Commission, Risker (talk) 18:26, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Non-neutral heading for vote reminder mass message

The heading for the vote reminder mass message, Reminder to vote now to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter, should have been phrased neutrally instead of encouraging voters to take a specific position. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 23:23, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes. Sorry for that. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 23:43, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Clarification of who can vote

Everyone using Wikipedia is being encouraged to vote.

I had been aware of this and when I realised the deadline was close, I started looking at the Movement Charter.

I took me quite a while to realise I wasn’t entitled to vote!

I would have liked a short summary of who is entitled to vote and easy access to check that early on.

I think there are some significant gaps in the charter but I haven’t devoted enough time and energy to getting to grips with being an active participant in Wikipedia to raise these issues effectively.

Overall, I feel you are doing a great job. I am concerned there are more issues that impact Wikipedia that need recognition at least.

I am pleased that I have this opportunity to express some disquiet. That is much better than many other systems.

So, congratulations from a concerned and interested supporter of Wikipedia. CuriousMarkE (talk) 04:50, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

@CuriousMarkE: Hello, there is a tool for a quick verification of whether you are eligible to vote or not. Furthermore, could you please explain "I think there are some significant gaps in the charter" in detail? Thanks. SCP-2000 05:12, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick reply. I had found the tool you referred me to, but late on.

You as about the “significant gaps in the charter”.

The main ones I have noticed are:

For the Global Council, it states:

To support inclusion and representation of diverse perspectives, the membership of the Global Council should not be dominated by any particular demographic, including, but not limited to, any linguistic, geographical, or project-based demographic.

This is missing dominance by highly educated and/or technical people.

Out of date material.

How is information kept relevant - pruning old, out of date, hard to maintain information?

Keeping the information reliable, relevant and accessible.

How to reference Authoritative information.

Reliance on books and articles is less useful now than in the past. It is likely to become even less useful as time goes on.

With much more information becoming more transient or behind paywalls or similar, how is Wikipedia responding to these challenges.

I hope this is of interest. CuriousMarkE (talk) 21:55, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Improving layout, numbering and minor errors in my previous reply. I want to put more spaces in.

Thanks for your quick reply. I had found the tool you referred me to, but late on.

You ask about “significant gaps in the charter”.

The main ones I have noticed are:

1. For the Global Council, it states:

To support inclusion and representation of diverse perspectives, the membership of the Global Council should not be dominated by any particular demographic, including, but not limited to, any linguistic, geographical, or project-based demographic.

This is missing dominance by highly educated and/or technical people. I feel that bias is significant and needs to be addressed.

2. Out of date material.

How is information kept relevant - pruning old, out of date, hard to maintain information?

Keeping the information reliable, relevant and accessible.

This is important now Wikipedia is established and the early enthusiasm has waned.

3. How to reference Authoritative information.

Reliance on books and articles is less useful now than in the past. It is likely to become even less useful as time goes on.

With much more information becoming more transient or behind paywalls or similar, how is Wikipedia responding to these challenges for referencing reliable sources.

4. Is there an a Wikipedia Governance issues backlog or similar where these types of issues can be seen and tracked, with the intention that they are addressed at a suitable time?

I hope this is helpful. CuriousMarkE (talk) 06:00, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

How does a '–' vote impact quorum?

The voting page says:

A "–" selection does not affect the outcome in any way, but allows you to leave a comment.

Is this considered to be contributing to the quorum required for ratification or not; or does it remove you entirely from consideration so that the total for quorum is less, as an individual or an affiliate? Currently our affiliate has no consensus, so we might select it.

The language should probably be changed to clarify this for votes with quorum requirements. GreenReaper (talk) 17:45, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello GreenReaper, the quorum measures participation, not what voting option the voter selects. As long as there are 2346 accounts participating in the voting, quorum is reached. (For affiliates, that number is 84.) Only after quorum is reached for each vote does the vote tally make a difference; in both cases, the vote needs 55% support in order to succeed. Risker (talk) 18:29, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, it's good to know - we'll probably do this, but "does not affect the outcome in any way" is a little misleading, especially as we know quorum wasn't reached earlier in the day, though it is now. GreenReaper (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

This is useful feedback, GreenReaper, and we are making notes on how to improve and standardize more of these processes for future use. We are certainly doing much more direct community consultation in the past few years, and it would be useful to develop more of a standing procedure with explanations for different courses of action. For example, the "--" option is most often seen as the word "Neutral", but we received feedback from some translators that it is a very difficult word to translate into some languages. We tried out a few options, but this seemed to be the one that was least problematic. It's one of the lessons we learned as we worked to respect the diversity of our movement. Risker (talk) 05:14, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your participation in the Movement Charter ratification!

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language.

Hello everyone,

Thank you to the 2451 individuals and the 129 affiliates for participating in the Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification vote. Thank you to those who shared additional feedback with their vote!

We will now proceed with scrutinizing the votes. The results will be published as soon as possible, no later than the end of July 2024. We will then follow up with an overview of the next steps, depending on the result of the vote.

On behalf of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee and the Charter Electoral Commission, Lucy Iwuala Iwuala Lucy (talk) 06:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC)