Talk:Stewards/elections 2007

Page organization comments

OK, earlier today I took a crack at setting up the introduction section, using the 2006-2 one (because it was multilingual. It's here: Stewards/elections 2007/Introduction and had the dates moved (by exactly one year), but I ran out of time to work on the main page itself. Anonymous Dissident took a stab at that but I think he was working from an early draft that didn't have the nifty multilingual stuff. I tried to merge some of the newer stuff in, but more work is needed I think to get it rationalised. One thing I mis-added is that the confirmations are separate (early drafts had them all on one page) so Stewards/confirm needs some work, we can move the example for an existing steward that are now on the Stewards/elections 2007 to there. SOMEWHERE we need to record the candidates identity validation, last time that was done by Danny marking candidates as valid or not during the self nom phase. ++Lar: t/c 07:34, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Confirmations (of identity and of existing stewards)

Stewards/confirm has now been updated to reflect 2007's list of current stewards. Stewards will need to readd their information sections. I don't know if some of the system listed stewards should be removed from the reconfirmation list, not my call. ++Lar: t/c 08:26, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Question: Isn't Jimbo atemporal? --Anonymous Dissident^Talk 08:29, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Almost certainly does not belong in the confirmation list. I just cranked the list of users that are stewards into a template invocation and didn't trim ANYONE away. I'd posit that maybe Tim Starling is also not confirmed? I'm not sure. That's a board decision not mine... ++Lar: t/c 08:49, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

It looks like the confirmation of identity was in the candidate statements. I just created Stewards/elections 2007/statements/Example as an example/template to start from. I commented on how the confirmation of identity could be done. ++Lar: t/c 08:57, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I think staff and board may as well be excluded from the confirmation since they might need this access for reasons other than carrying out steward activities. Perhaps people should list themselves on Stewards/confirm rather than listing everyone to start with - if someone is no longer active, it seems better for them not to be listed than to be "voted off". Angela 10:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

That is a good point. --Anonymous Dissident^Talk 10:35, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Why not just replace the statement (and comment) section by "This user will not need to be confirmed since he/she is member of the Board of Trustees (or Foundation staff) and need the steward access for foundation issues." or something like that. --Thogo (talk) 13:50, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I removed Brion VIBBER, Jimbo Wales, Kate, RobH and Tim Starling for the above reasons. Majorly (talk) 13:55, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I suggest we put Brion VIBBER, Jimbo Wales, Kate, RobH and Tim Starling back in the list of current stewards (at Stewards/confirm#Current_Steward_List), but with a note that they don't have confirmation subpages/sections as they don't need them, perhaps referencing this discussion or some other appropriate page. (and leave them out of the individual subpage section entirely) ... that might reduce confusion later if someone asks "why aren't we confirming Kate" etc... ++Lar: t/c 17:12, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I confess totally confused

1. Kate is a developer, have never been a steward ..
2. RobH is a Foundation employee, but either haven't been a steward. Brion either.
3. And you keep Bastique (Cary Base, VolCo), Anthere (Florence Devouard, Wikimedia Chair) for confirmation list.

I am confusing what is the outcome of this ongoing talk as well what was intended on the original list ....... --Aphaia 15:15, 11 November 2007 (UTC) Turn the topic, it sounds nice just to remove people inactive recently. What will be the criteria of inactivity for stewards, then? Same for the meta admin? Or any other idea? --Aphaia 15:15, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

The steward policy has a paragraph about inactivity. --Thogo (talk) 15:22, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Inactive stewards would be removed every year, at the same time as the elections. Aphaia: look at Special:Listusers/steward. Those users are stewards. They are not normal stewards, as they were not voted in. That is why I removed them. I left Anthere and Bastique because they were both voted in by the community (Anthere in 2004, Bastique in 2006). I did not consider their other roles. Majorly (talk) 15:25, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I generated everyone on the list as a convenience, but I'm not really invested in doing it that way. We certainly could hide everyone (comment their sections out but not delete them) or remove them entirely and ask stewards to individually add themselves back in. Certainly if we gave every steward a meta talk page message saying this was starting and they then did not add themselves back in, that would be a huge sign they aren't very active and maybe ought not to be confirmed (excepting the exceptions we already identified as not needing confirmation)... thoughts? ++Lar: t/c 16:37, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm reminded you are a Commons active :) Agreed, it is far friendly than just removal/hiding their names. --Aphaia 17:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I can do an AWB run to notify all the existing stewards. Let's bang out a notice we like. Does it have to be multilingual? If so the notice can just reference it (how Commons messages about things get templatised). Short and sweet! Maybe something like?

"In accordance with policy, the 2007 steward elections will include reconfirmation of existing stewards. If you wish to keep your stewardship please visit Stewards/confirm and set up your statement. You should find a commented out template to start from there already. If you do not wish to keep your stewardship you need take no action. For any questions please visit Talk:Stewards/elections_2007 -- 'the bunch of users who organized this'"

or something (it needs some editing but is that about what needs saying? and who are we anyway? The committee for the 2007 elections? :) ) ++Lar: t/c 19:32, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

As individual, or Steward Election Notacommittee ... :) --Aphaia 06:51, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

The text I actually used was User:Lar/confNotice :) I just did a pass now. ++Lar: t/c 04:46, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Subpaging?

Also: Do we want each section (the place to comment) to be a subpage, for confirmations? How about for the regular election? Many other potentially high volume comment/voting pages use transclusion by candidate to allow for editing and reduce page load times etc. I didn't do it that way because that was how it was last year, but if we want to reorg this, now might be a good time. OR, reorg it on the fly if volume gets to be a problem? Thoughts? (remember we had some candidates that got well over 100 votes and some substantial threaded discussion) ++Lar: t/c 16:37, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Strongly agree with subpages for the actual election. Especially as there may be lots of threaded discussion and a lot of votes. The page would be too busy. Majorly (talk) 16:42, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I see that the Confirm page has already been subpaged by Thogo, good work there! I should have reviewed all the page work first I guess :) ++Lar: t/c 16:52, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll take a crack at subpaging Mr. E. X. Ample when I get a chance if no one else does, we really ought to get that sorted before we open noms (although we CAN rearrange later). Fair warning I may put Mr. Ample's humorous candidacy speech that Majorly took out back in, just for giggles. Free ice cream IS rather compelling you know. If we wanted to get really fancy we could have a field that generates a subst'd template and etc, ala en:wp's adminship stuff, but I figure if you're standing for steward you ought to be able to handle copying a template page and transcluding it properly. :) (er, maybe that disqualifies me???) so we could skip that level of work. How many subpages do we want? double transclude with the language/statement stuff transcluded in a then transcluded overall page that carries the yes/no/maybe/questions part? If we do it that way I think Pathoschild's diet steward thing will work, but I'm not totally sure. We also need to format in a way that Gurch's (or whoevers') automation can parse, if we decide we want that. ++Lar: t/c 19:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I attempted to use the Example template to write a statement, but when I clicked preview, it only showed {{{2}}}. I think a template should be used for the statement AND the votes in one place together. I think having it separate isn't necessary. Majorly (talk) 19:28, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I have to run but ya, it's not right just yet. I think maybe we don't do the Diet-steward thing? Pathoschild did a lot of compressing/moving/copying/redirecting after the end of the election last time which makes it a bit tricky to see exactly how things were done. There was a Stewards/elections_2006-2/statements page which had individual statements as separate transcludes. But the voting seemed to be all on one page. I like going with separate pages for each candidate, and I guess if we can get to only need one page per candidate, statements comments and all, that we transclude, that's goodness. I will hack later if no one else has sorted it by then but perhaps make a template that you can subst: to get started? ++Lar: t/c 20:01, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Take 2 on subpaging... Single level inclusion all on one page is implemented. I created Stewards/elections 2007/statements/CandidateTemplate. This template includes a questions section. When subst'd on a page such as Stewards/elections 2007/statements/HarveyTheGiantRabbit]] (a candidate page) sets things up, and then that page can be transcluded onto the main elections page (I tried it with new candidate FredBloggs to test it out). I revised the instructions just above the candidate sections to explain the process but they could use some tightening/smithing. I have to say I'm of two minds about the single level inclusion because voters, when they go to vote/comment, will see all the multilingual text in the edit box, unless we put in another header that they click on to vote or some other trick. But it seems to work, please give it a whirl... see Stewards/elections_2007#Instructions_to_add_a_new_candidate_page If this is no good please take another cut. I would not be averse to seeing two level transclusion come back but let's try it this way? We are close to when real candidates will be starting to turn up, theoretically (but we haven't publicised it anywhere yet, we need to decide what to do about that!) One nit, with the Statements in the name there seems to be an extra level of naming, but statements is how it was done last year. Last year we also had a list of candidates at the top before you got to the individual statements, which I had in there in the page, but it got removed by Majorly... no biggie. ++Lar: t/c 05:36, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

The introduction vs the instructions

We have some redundancy there. Is that OK? I think it's because AD and I were working independently. I'd favour going with just the introduction which is multilingual, (we could beef it up and ask for additional translation) otherwise the more elaborate instructions being only in English might be perceived as unfair. Thoughts? ++Lar: t/c 16:37, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I can't find where this was discussed further, but I think we should not use the longer form instructions. The short form introduction has been translated already, (once it's checked over). if there is something that we really need to incorporate in the introduction we should, but we should get it right if we can, so it only needs retranslation once. ++Lar: t/c 17:25, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Lining up translators

I forget exactly what was done last year to find and encourage volunteers to translate, we are about to see a fairly large volume of stuff that needs translation in fairly short order. What was done last year, does anyone (Aphaia?) remember? Is this a problem where we should line people up?, or can we just assume that stuff will get translated as needed? Thoughts? ++Lar: t/c 16:37, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Instructions were translated. Transcom, as a part of Foundation Committees, didn't get involved by intention, since we didn't want to give an impression it was organized by the Foundation - the community should organize the Steward things instead, and I think this separation sensitive. So I'd keep a distance this year too, I hope Grieves and Pathoschild may help out this sphere. They have good experiences to organize translation on meta.

As Lar said on the above, 1) the instruction text are better to be concise and 2) we would love to see multilingualized instruction before the election starts. --Aphaia 16:53, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Let's dump the longer version then? Maybe leave it somewhere or maybe just remove it outright. Thoughts? ++Lar: t/c 17:04, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Well now ... we got translations. One concern is the schedule, it says for exmaple, "2007年11月26日から2007年12月16日" (ja: from 2007-11-26 to 2007/12/16). Is it right? So there seems to be no further need ... Aph.

For the intro, I took last year's intro, and changed 2006 to 2007. Someone else looked at the calendar and shifted it by a day (presumably to keep the days of the week the same, which seemed sound to me and no one reverted it so that's a done deal unless someone has a big issue?) and edited all the translations. The introduction translations have not, I don't think, been edited for anything else have they? But if we keep everything about the same I think that's not necessarily needful and the introduction is "done". As for translating candidate statements, I'm not suggesting that the official foundation trancom get involved but if we could ask for volunteers there (on their working pages) it might be helpful? Again, not invested in that idea, just suggesting. Thoughts? ++Lar: t/c 17:04, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Ah Okay. So it would be better to put a note "These date were not updated: Please refer to the latest English one, update the dates and then remove this remark" or alike. Candidate statements are better to be translated, yeah. And if we have some complete set of translations, nomination should be closed much before the vote starts in my opinion. Or latecomers can hardly get their statement translated. --Aphaia 17:14, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Last time we said late noms were likely to not do as well but we did not close noms off until after the vote closed, and there were some late noms. I think one even got confirmed. So I'd leave it as last time, but make sure we do a good job of publicising this (global site notice (see where Majorly suggested it...) sounds good to me...)++Lar: t/c 18:52, 11 November 2007 (UTC) (forgot to sign AGAIN! :) )

Global sitenotice? Hmmm I am not sure even if it is feasible. Fundraising banner surpresses the local one, and even now there are, hopefully not many, complaint to "have an ad" ... Can you merge them into one decently, not deluging the current sitenotice? --Aphaia 17:57, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I've had a thought about this. I don't think it will be feasible to put it in the site notice. We can announce it on the foundation mailing list, and put it in the site notice/watchlist here on Meta. Prospective candidates will already check Meta regularly, so they won't miss it. Word will spread for sure. Majorly (talk) 10:37, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

FYI, last year I was a candidate and as I started translating other candidates' statements, they soon began to do the same and we ended up in multilingual statements for all candidates. Some translators who weren't candidates then helped in translations. I would love to see again candidates translating other candidates' statements, as I believe this is a good way to show one's commitment to Wikimedia's multilinguality which stewards deal with everyday. And I prefer not to ask "regular" translator before candidates have done a significant part of the work. guillom 12:36, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I think that's actually a great idea. Can we identify the non "candidate statement" pages that need translating just so we know we don't miss any? ++Lar: t/c 13:02, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Questions/comments

Do we need another section in the candidate template for comments/questions? Majorly (talk) 13:35, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Last year comments/discussion got a bit messy for a few candidates, IIRC. (and this is always a bit of a sticky topic, see the en:wp arbcom election discussion about how to organise this). People commented threadedly right in the yes/no/maybe area under other people's comments. And in some cases that ended up getting pushed to the talk page when it got too long. I'm open to another section though and require all threaded discussion to go there... or whatever, maybe push that to the talk page rigorously with only a link left behind. Questions (which is what you actually asked about, I think, I just went off on a tangent there :) ) definitely need a section of their own I think. Now is the time to get this nailed so why not change Example's pages/secitons/subpages around till we like how it looks (I gave Mr. Ample a campaign statement so we could see how it looks)... I have to go away for a bit but the progress here is awesome. ++Lar: t/c 17:08, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Generating statistics

I've left a note for Gurch about User:Gurch/StewardElections. It would be swell if he or someone else could run this or something similar again. Unless we have a strong anti statistics/tracking sentiment now, that is. Thoughts? ++Lar: t/c 19:03, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

It will run as it did last time, when the voting starts in two weeks Gurch 22:12, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

More see alsos

The following have content related discussion germane to getting the pages right.

• See also Talk:Stewards/elections 2007/Introduction which has some discussion of edits done to the introduction itself. ++Lar: t/c 17:20, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
• See also: Talk:Stewards/Application guidelines where there is some discussion of the confirmation process itself. ++Lar: t/c 17:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Process to start?

I believe we should be ready to announce this as ready to go very soon - I'm thinking of starting tomorrow, two weeks prior to voting. Someone should announce it to the mailing list(s), and candidates can add themselves in the two weeks. Any thoughts? Majorly (talk) 13:41, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Hm, yes, could probably be a good idea to have some time for translating the statements and confirming identities and so on before the entire voting starts. --Thogo (talk) 13:46, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Candidates can start nomming themselves (and translation of bits needed can get underway) as soon as we think we are most of the way there. I think maybe we are? I'd favour starting as soon as possible, even tomorrow. IF we are most of the way there! I think we are but I'm perhaps biased.... what do others think? There are other places to announce this too, eh? Sitenotices of some wikis? Or will announcing it on some but not all wikis cause problems? ++Lar: t/c 17:00, 11 November 2007 (UTC) (forgot to sign :) )

Candidates should nominate themselves from tomorrow. Translations can go on for the two weeks until voting starts, as Thogo says we need time for candidates to identify themselves and write statements etc. Majorly (talk) 16:50, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

That works for me. I think we have a plan. There has been a lot of refinement since we started, it's cool how fast things can come together with many hands working. Even if you're an old wiki hand it's fun to see it happen. ++Lar: t/c 17:00, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and could it be announced on the global notice, or will it conflict with the fundraiser? Majorly (talk) 17:17, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

What if it were a tiny little box with a "see more" link, merged into the fundraiser's thingie/pagie/template somewhere? I confess I'm not sure what pages that fundraiser stuff is driven off... but ya, I think a global notice would be good. ++Lar: t/c 18:32, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

See my comments above. I think a post to the mailing list/sitenotice on Meta will be sufficient. Majorly (talk) 10:39, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Probably right about the difficulty and about that being good enough. So are we there yet? Anyone spot anything else amiss or that needs attention? ++Lar: t/c 11:22, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I think we are just about ready to go. If Anthere hasn't made the announcement to the mailing list by this afternoon, I will. This whole thing apparently needs board approval, but as she is board I'll explain she has agreed with it. Majorly (talk) 11:30, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure Anthere has a chance to watch this page this week. She seems to be busy and tend to lack connectivity ... Regardless that, Chair alone is not equal to board, so her nod is not sufficient to get "board approval" ... while I am not sure if we need board approval at this stage. Rather, better to ask opinions publicly and directly on the list, perhaps? All other board may have better connection... it may sound distractive, but we can go for it on the risk later just being rejected ... --Aphaia 12:39, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I think we should go for it anyway. I'll post a message to foundation-l in a moment. It would be a waste of time not to, and we need to start today. Majorly (talk) 12:46, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Underway

The email has been sent [1]. The elections have officially begun :) Majorly (talk) 12:55, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Well done on the post, looks good. I agree that we should just go for it, not seek board approval. Meanwhile I have been tinkering with the template to make it a bit easier to use. It has more defaulting behaviour on the userName and userID parts and I TRIED to add the "not substituted error" check but it wasn't working so it's in there but commented out. I am going to ask Pathoschild to fix it if he can, he brought Template:Error:not_substituted over here I think. I will do an AWB run to notify existing stewards later today if i get consensus on the text to notify being "good enough" and if no one beats me to it. ++Lar: t/c 12:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I concur with Majorly's decision to just go ahead with it, too. --Anonymous Dissident^Talk 20:38, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Aye. Community nominate stewards. Hillgentleman 20:43, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

diet fixes

To have a diet version like user:pathoschild/Diet steward, from what I can think of, we should make the transclusions absolute, and add an #if PAGENAME =|| around the multilingual stuff on every candidate subpage. Do we want to do it? Hillgentleman 20:42, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Can you elaborate on what you mean by absolute transclusion? Just changing the path to start at stewards instead of starting at /? I had thought of passing a parm in to the transclusion that would suppress including and rendering the information, or something, but that relies on two level transclusion which we opted not to do at least for now (We can rearrange midway through if we HAVE to I suppose). How badly do we need Diet? It was there to make the pages load faster, but now maybe with separate subpages we are ok??? ++Lar: t/c 23:29, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

1. Yes. By absolute I mean not /. 2. Sure. It is better to wait; it is probably much easier to automate the summary after a while, according to the demand. I brought this up only because it is very convenient to make the transclusion absolute by adjusting the template. Hillgentleman 23:49, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I changed the transclusions to be absolute (starting with ":Stewards/elections 2007/statements/") as well as changing the instructions. Hope that's what you had in mind (although it's easy enough to change back). The rest we can do as needed. ++Lar: t/c 11:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes. I have adapted pathoschild's page, but it still includes the multilingual text. Let's wait and see; we may want something completely different. Hillgentleman 01:54, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Cleanups

The elections have now been announced in a few places, for example the en:wp signpost, on the Commons admin board and surely other places as well. We still have the "work in progress" notice at the top of the page though. What remains to clean up so we can remove that notice? I had said a few times I thought some of the text just after the introduction should be removed, as it's redundant with the intro, and with the application guidelines, etc. But maybe it is fine as is? The rest of the page seems fine to me, I'm not spotting anything to fix. Maybe we should change the note to say what phase we are in, or remove it altogether. Thoughts? ++Lar: t/c 23:39, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

We should update it to reflect the status I think. Majorly (talk) 23:45, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Done. I tweaked the wording in the preface a bit as well, codified the times (to match last year's start and stop times) and I think that now there are no more cleanups remaining. ++Lar: t/c 02:04, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Publicising redux

OK, so the global site notice is not feasible, it seems. Do we just want hit or miss publicity? Do we want to fan out and publicise further? Do we track where we publicised? Not worry about it? Thoughts? ++Lar: t/c 23:42, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. Those who care will notice, I should think. If not, they'll hear about it through word of mouth (text). If anyone wants to advertise it on their home wiki, they are free to, as long as it's not campaigning or anything. Majorly (talk) 23:45, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

The site notice is still usable with AJAX_SiteNotice.js; with some minor changes, that could retrieve a localized global site notice and display it as well. All that would be left would be installing it on the various wikis. —{admin} Pathoschild 04:30:35, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Would this entail doing something to 700 or so wikis individually? I would think only current stewards could do that. :) ++Lar: t/c 05:04, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Section "Rules" is unclear

Translating the section "Rules" from english into french, i found some unclear sentences according to my point of view :

1) «To be promoted a candidate must...

• gain at least 30 votes in favor
• have at least 80% overall votes in favor »

Both conditions should be satisfied? or just one of them? Clearly, is it a and or or between the two conditions?

2) «Voters must (...) this crosslinking validates the user's contributions are correctly connected to their candidacy »

Are we giving in this sentence recomendations to voters or to candidates ?

3) «or a crosslinked matrix of accounts like many users have.»

Unclear... is it possible to precise ?

Thanks for answers. Guérin Nicolas 11:43, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

1) both

2) to voters, the voter should be acitve on any wiki of the wikimedia-foundation for 3 months, to proove that he must create an account here and link to that userpage there and link back from there (else impersonation would be possible)

3) some people created a list with their userpages on different wikiprojects, it is allowed to link this, but as far as I understand the trick is still to link back as in 2) otherwise the same problem would arise.

Best regards, and thanks for the translations, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 12:44, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

(my bad, this was my text in this area, for the most part!) For an example of 3), see User:Lar/WikiMatrix ... the idea there is that since that page is maintained by me, any wiki which has an edit (by my id on that wiki) linking to the matrix which also has an edit (by my id here) linking to that wiki is "crosslinked"... the ids on the two wikis are run by the same person. Using a matrix reduces the verification problem from n squared to 2n... Not sure if that's clear yet. It's a powerful idea and a lot of people have started doing it.++Lar: t/c 19:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Something a bit off in the candidate template?

See Stewards/elections_2007/statements/CandidateTemplate and Stewards/elections 2007 and in particular Stewards/elections 2007/statements/Fabexplosive. I think something isn't quite right. The "you forgot to subst" warning is coming up on the statements section for Fab even though it looks to me like he DID subst the template into his page. Fabexplosive is the latest candidate and I think the first one to enter since some tinkering was done with the candidate template. We can edit the warning out of his page, but maybe we have a bug now? I'm not sure. This revision: [2] and the next one may be relevant? Hope that helps. ++Lar: t/c 15:42, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, "{{subst:#if:{{{foo|}}}}}" is always true; "{{{foo|}}}" is never parsed to blank when the ParserFunction is substituted. I've never found a way to simultaneously check if a template is substituted and substitute the check code. —{admin} Pathoschild 16:57:33, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I have changed it to subst:#ifeq:{{{userName|+}}}|{{{userName|-}}}|{{{userName}}}| (name not specified) . The previous wikitext worked with the given {{subst::.....|userName=|userId=|...}} . Thanks.Hillgentleman 17:15, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Refus de vote

Je refuse de voter pour ou contre tous les nouveaux candidats, en raison de ma désapprobation formelle et définitive du mode de confirmation des stewards en place.

Le système de listage des plaintes individuelles, puis de leur examen par le corps des stewards pour décider au final qui sera confirmé ou qui ne le sera pas, montre en fait une oligarchie. Ce système est nuisible. Soit les stewards sont élus sans limite de temps (comme les admins sur de nombreux projets), soit ils se représentent, comme les autres, dans un processus électoral. Mais ce truc hybride est malsain. Hégésippe | ±Θ± 05:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Translation: "Refusal to vote

I refuse to vote for or against all the new candidates, because of my formal and definitive disapproval of the confirmation method for established stewards.

The system of listing individual complaints, and then their consideration by the body of stewards to decide who will be confirmed or not in the end, in fact shows an oligarchy. This system is harmful. Either the stewards are elected without a time limit (as admins on many projects), or they re-run for the job at the end of their mandate, in an electoral process. But this hybrid thing is unhealthy.

" —translated by Pathoschild.

Wiki is intended as a collaborative workspace, where policies are discussed and are endorsed with consensus, usually on the relevant talk page. Since I didn't find your voice, I'm afraid that your boasting is just an attitude and therefore is neither useful nor constructive, especially during the election. There is plenty of time to suggest a better system without unnecessarily hurting new candidates who voluntarily offered themselves to help in serving for the Wikimedia projects. --M/ 12:44, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Translation: "fr: Wiki est conçu comme un espace de travail collaboratif, où les politiques sont examinées et endossées par le consensus, souvent sur la page de discussion. Puisque que je n'ai pas trouvé vos commentaires, je crains que votre vantardise n'est q'un attitude, et donc qu'il est ni utile ni constructif, en particulier lors de l'élection. Il y a suffisamment de temps pour proposer un meilleur système sans bloqué inutilement les nouveaux candidats qui ont offerts de leur plein grées de servir les projets Wikimédia." —translated by Pathoschild.

Annoucements?

Did I miss something or was the election not announced on mailing lists? The only thing I can find is Majorly's "very informal notice". 131.180.152.213 15:59, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Multilingualism

The devotion towards representation in multiple languages of this page is of such a nature that it impedes general usability. Issues are:

1. Page loading time. Long is bad, short is good. The biggest issue for me.
2. Voting ease. It is good to have as many people as possible vote here. Wading through lots of lines of foreign languages and special characters in order to add something is not good.
3. It's all fake/for the sake of correctness/unneeded (choose the one that is least offensive to you). All discussion is in English (i.e. votes with responses). All questions are in English. All discussion on this page is in English - the single point not in English was translated into English, and responded to in English.

The above concerns apply to everyone, not only to English speakers. Loading time is universal, and most languages are inevitably foreign to most users. A solution can be found in any of the following:

1. Different pages for different languages. Solves all three points, but increases organisational overhead. The work it causes for few has to be related to the problems for many.
2. A better technical solution. May solve the first two points, depending on what is done.
3. Limit the number of languages. Awesome, but impossible.

Krator 16:33, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Consideration was given to a different technical solution using two levels of transclusion and the consensus seemed to be that for now, just one level would do. It's changeable if it's a significant impact though. ++Lar: t/c 19:29, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

It was hard for me to write this response with the right tone and style, as a concise but rude answer would have portrayed the message with the least number of words. It boils down to the fact that the above comment does not tell me anything new - of course I realise that different things have been considered, and that they can be changed. That was the whole point of writing down the above. Thank you for the response, nonetheless. Krator 20:01, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry if my reply didn't come across as supportive, it wasn't meant to be dismissive! Do you want to take a cut at how a two level transclude might work on some mocked up pages? I'd support a change, if it could be made to work smoothly, and the details sorted out. But... only then, as we are now underway so we would only want to change if it didn't break things for folks. So far there haven't been too many other voices saying a change was needed. But they may just not know where to speak out or whatever. ++Lar: t/c 20:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I would be very willing to test and comment on anything, but I am not a big expert in transclusions. My main goal here was to point out that a problem exists. By the way, something that can already be done is to get rid of the selector box, by instead using user's language from the preferences and some php, or is that not possible? Krator 00:19, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The AJAX transclusion table script (which is implemented on Meta) could be modified to automatically load the user's preferred language when available. That won't be ready for this election, but it definitely could if desireable for the next. —{admin} Pathoschild 20:56:08, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

refactoring?

There are a few comments that are starting to get a bit threaded. It may be a good thing to refactor some of these to the various talk pages, leaving notes behind. It may be best if non candidates do this. ++Lar: t/c 22:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree, the talkpage is for discussions not the voting page, thanks for bringing this up (this applies not to questions of course), best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 11:47, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Headings

Some candidate statement pages now have subheadings and some do not. The subheadings do make it a bit easier to edit but also clutter up this page's table of contents. There are techniques that can be used to suppress that (en:wp RfAs use them for example, IIRC). If we want headings we maybe should do that and then convert all candidate pages. If we don't we should convert the 4 that were already converted back. Right now it looks odd with some one way and some another. Whatever we do we should let Gurch know first too, as the last change broke his code. :) (personally I'd vote for going back to how it was without headings) Thoughts? ++Lar: t/c 11:30, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

There was an exchange about this between User:M7 and User:EdmundEzekielMahmudIsa this night, see User_talk:M7#RE:_Sections and User_talk:EdmundEzekielMahmudIsa#Sections, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 11:38, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

But this morning (Malaysian time) I've asked Gurch to modify the script, and he told me that he has done it. The conversation is in the English Wikipedia. It's here. --Edmund the King of the Woods! 14:11, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I have written and rewritten my code to cater for every combination of things I can feasibly imagine might be done to the formatting of the pages, and thus it cares not whether you have headings, no headings or indeed chocolate teapots up there. Though I'm sure you'll be able to come up with something that breaks it nevertheless Gurch 16:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Imho You should have talked here about it first, now all our efforts to avoid anon votings are gone, because if they click a section they won't see the warning anymore. In my opinion it should be as it was in the beginning, thanks, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 17:16, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I inserted the headings because some had and others didn't which looked really awkward. But I can remove them again, if that's considered better. --Thogo (talk) 18:21, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Hm, maybe this time we better wait a bit for opinions. Another solution could be in adding the "Please login"-thing to all sections. Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 18:22, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, we now added the "pleaselogin-notice" to every voting section, since there were anon voters again. Hopefully this does not conflict with the script, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 19:55, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

For next year

Lar's suggestions

Headline inserted by Thogo.

We're at the half way point. It may be time to start collecting ideas for improvement for next year. I have some other ones, but here's one:

• When we archive this, let us PLEASE not untransclude things, instead archive it as is, preserving all histories and just marking as historical. This year, Anonymous Dissident and I, when we started, had to basically start from scratch on structuring things as we did not have a working set of pages to start from, unless we deciphered history and looked at deleted pages and so forth. The structure is a bit different than last year and I'm not sure exactly in what way but it's not necessarily a good thing. I understand why Pathoschild compressed everything together but it wasn't in the end, a good idea, in my view. If we really want to do that sort of compressing to one page, maybe we could set up the skeleton of next year's pages in advance before we archive? ++Lar: t/c 13:31, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
• Pathoschild above suggests setting up the Ajax Transclusion script. Some elaboration on what needs doing might be goodness. ++Lar: t/c 13:32, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

As we're now past the official end time of the election are there any more suggestions? I have a few:

• The current suffrage is way too loose. I think that we go with the same suffrage as for the most recent past foundation election (as a starting point for discussion)
• The election time is too long at almost three weeks. While there was a pickup in turnout at the end, that was because it was close to the end. There were days when there were almost no votes at all in any candidacies. Something more like 2 weeks or even 10 days would be sufficient I think.
• We should consider switching to two times a year instead of just once. I already know of candidates that I wish had run that did not.

Just some ideas. ++Lar: t/c 00:47, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I like ur ideas. --Putera Luqman Tunku Andre 01:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Running elections two times would be too much, I think. This one clearly took a lot of organising, and stewards aren't desperately needed. Stewards are the most powerful users that are elected, and so the fewer the better imo. Redrocketboy 01:22, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

One of the big reasons it took a lot of organising (in my view anyway, as one of the people that started the organizing ball rolling, along with Anonymous Dissident, we created essentially all of the pages initially) was because we basically organised it over again from scratch. If my earlier plea to Pathoschild not to archive this year by smushing everything together is heeded, the next one will have the early versions of this one to use to start laying out pages from, and it will be far less work. Also by not waiting a year, people don't forget all the decisions they made before (institutional memory). But really I don't think the effort level should be the primary reason... the primary reason is, do we need to elect stewards more than once a year? I think we do. We could still reconfirm them only once a year perhaps. ++Lar: t/c 03:38, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Fewer sounds good, but that doesn't meant that they all will be available at different hours..I'd prefer stewards who can be available at different hours and is usually on IRC since its easier to help via IRC then waiting for people to request their help on vandal attacked wikis......--Cometstyles 01:36, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

While more formal way for voting is a good idea, I don't like the idea of secret voting. Ideally, everyone should explain why they voted for someone or against someone else. And every voter should stay publicly behind their vote. I think that we didn't come into the position when secret voting is necessary because of fear. When/if we come up to such position, I will agree with secret voting. --Millosh 02:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I think our current discussive system works well. I just think that our suffrage requirements are way too lax, which is why I proposed using the same suffrage as the board election. An analogy: Board members are presumably the most senior/experienced managerial-ish people in the organisation. Correspondingly, Stewards are the most senior/experienced "functionaries"... making no decisions on their own, not setting policy, but expected to be efficient in a wide variety of different environments... it seems off somehow that one edit 3 months ago on the Klingon Wictionary would be sufficient to qualify one for voting for this position... We are talking about tightening up the Meta admin suffrage standards a bit right now in fact, and I'd say the steward standards ought to be at least that tight (one possible mooted criteria was 100 edits on another wiki and 20 here)... ++Lar: t/c 03:38, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

This is at the point about more elections during the year. Is it really necessary to organize special steward elections? I would even go so far to propose that steward candidates can just start a candidacy whenever they feel like doing so (just like an RfA), starting the voting as soon as the identity is profen by the Foundation, and we could just send a short notice to the foundation mailing list if there is a new candidate (either Cary does that after the identity proof or we do). (Of course, I would suggest that every user can apply only once in a range of 12 months...) However, confirmations should be held once a year only, preferably even for 4 weeks instead of less to give room for discussing. --Thogo (talk) 15:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem with that is that they'll get very low attendance. If I were to run for Steward (heaven forbid), I wouldn't want my name advertising on the mailing list. I do agree that confirmations should have longer. I see Marcus Cryon's comments had to be removed because he was 3 hours late. I hope they are still considered. Thanks. Redrocketboy 15:38, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean to advertise the name on the ML. Just a note like "Hey. This is to let you know that there is a new RfS on Meta. Thanks, ..." ;o) --Thogo (talk) 15:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Put it in sitenotice perhaps? I'd be fine with new steward elections as needed. I'd restrict candidates to once every 6 months rather than once a year, a lot can happen in a year... as to why I proposed switching from once to twice a year instead of to continuous was to address some of the comments when I broached starting this election process ... stuff like "why do we even need an election at all", "we have enough stewards". etc. I'd keep approval at once a year rather than making that rolling too (that however is what en:Wikisource does and it seems to work OK... maybe even generates some traffic for the new candidates at the same time). Some stewards would get re-approved on less than a year's track record. So be it, that's a minor drawback. ++Lar: t/c 16:24, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Layout of the candidacy template

As we have seen above, there was the wish to have headlines for the parts of a candidacy page (Statement, Questions, Yes, No, Neutral). Maybe we should include that from the beginning, and also the note that people have to log in to be able to vote (Maybe general semi-protection for the candidacy pages? But that would exclude questions/translations from anons either, do we want that?). --Thogo (talk) 15:52, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Headings are a good idea. Semi-protection is not. A lot of the voters will be new, creating their account here just to vote. We can of course accept questions and translations from anons (though they should be encouraged to login.) Redrocketboy 15:55, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that's why I put that in parentheses, it's not what I would like to have. But probably, that suggestion would have come up anyway. 8-) --Thogo (talk) 16:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I would love to see us use a technique similar to that used on en:wp RFA (at least some of the time :)... that format changes a lot as people try different things) in which the headings divide the page into editable subsections but are suppressed from the ToC when the candidate page is embedded into the main election page. This year's ToC looked a bit messy (unless you wanted to jump straight to the NO section or something in which case I guess it was convenient) ++Lar: t/c 16:04, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh yes, that's a good idea. We should try that out. What I think of is to have a small TOC at every section just for that section. I could prepare a small and easy template for that (it unfortunately doesn't work with forced TOCs in the subpages, I tested that). --Thogo (talk) 18:13, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

For some ideas take a look at the template used in the en:wp RFCU case pages... For example w:Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser which leads to w:Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Kitia which uses w:Template:Rfcu box ... this template puts a little box with clickable links in the upper right corner of the section. The links can lead anywhere. In fact, the first link changes where it goes based on whether you are viewing the case by itself (it takes you back to the main page) or viewing the case when embedded in the main RfCU page (it opens the case page for view). I feel that is very useful/nifty behaviour. Hope that gives you some ideas. ++Lar: t/c 16:52, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I stole some ideas there. ;o) I think it might work now, feel free to test and comment it. --Thogo (talk) 21:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Tweaked a few words here and there. Did you already create a new election page to embed candidacies in? I went snooping in your contribs but didn't find that part :) ++Lar: t/c 23:02, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

No I didn't. That (main) part is not yet ready. I will do that today. --Thogo (talk) 10:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Stewards/elections is created. Feel free to test. Policies and other stuff like that for next year will be added as soon as we have consensus about it. --Thogo (talk) 19:38, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I wonder how we can make the TOC. As template and with "NOTOC" on the page? But then every candidate would have to edit that template. Or shall we maintain it? --Thogo (talk) 22:22, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll have to go dig up how the en:wp RFA thingie worked I guess. The main page has a TOC but it has only the candidates, one line in the TOC per candidate. Each candidate subpage has each section (yes/no/question/neutral/etc) in its TOC when you are on the subpage. If that's the desired behavior, I know it's doable, I just don't recall how it was done. ++Lar: t/c 04:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's indeed the best. Btw., as you might have seen, I added a section "Discussion" under the yes/no/neutral things. That's meant for discussing the votes (this has been done directly at the votes this year, what I didn't like much, because often the counting had to be repaired and if there is much such discussion it gets a little bit confusing after a while.). If you (or anyone else) don't like that idea, just remove it from the Stewards/elections/Sample. --Thogo (talk) 11:03, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, I had to ask how the TOC magic was achieved but here is the answer: w:Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#Manipulating_the_TOC ... This approach is exceedingly clever, (requireing no magic in the headings themselves) but requires sitewide changes to MediaWiki:Common.css. Once that is changed and the templates enhanced, it works for any page though. So I'd be in favour of doing this, but we need to gain consensus for a sitewide change first. As for the discussion heading, I'm of two minds. We had said we were going to move threaded discussion (regardless of whether it was on the questions, votes, etc) to the talk page but we ended up never doing that. Some of my opposes got pretty threaded as I recall. Do we think having a "discussion" section is better than talk? I'm open either way. Probably what is needed more than a section per se is the "actually moving things" part... I let sleeping dogs lie and didn't move anything, despite intending to do so. ++Lar: t/c 16:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, right, we could move it to the talk page. Hm, I would like it if one can just read further down and come to the discussion section. But that's probably just my personal gusto. ;o) We should discuss that with others I guess. I want to gain more ideas and opinions on this slightly sensitive topic. Where to put a note about it? Metapub I would suggest? --Thogo (talk) 19:43, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not as concerned about that, it can get sorted and I'm fine either way. I'm more concerned on seeing if there is/isn't consensus about the .css changes to do header suppression... that might actually be more controversial. Hope not, but maybe. ++Lar: t/c 15:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I put a note on this here. --Thogo (talk) 14:52, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposal by Anonymous Dissident

• Instead of using a conventional table of contents, I think we should make a modified one, wherin there is just a box full of the names, and clicking on it will take the user to the subpage where they can vote. Otherwise the main page's TOC will be very cluttered, like it was this year. --Anonymous Dissident^Talk 00:37, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
  • See just above. there is a technical fix possible for this, it involves changing the common.css stylesheet. This fix is used on the en:wp RFA pages and allows embedding, clickable subheadings at individual candidate pages visible in the transcluding page, and supression of head4 and smaller head levels. I think we should adopt this and barring any objection I will be changing the style sheet so we can try it out. ++Lar: t/c 05:19, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
    • I think that's a good idea, Lar. ----Anonymous Dissident^Talk 06:07, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Votes to remove

I have checked manually all the accounts. Those ones have to be removed before the final results. Thanks to the one who'll do it :). Schiste 03:18, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the work but I think effort should be taken to contact the accounts to ask for crosslinks to establish suffrage. user:Crockspot, user:Giano II and user: Icsunonove are accounts on en:wp. Giano II actually voted in last years' election ([3]) and I know Icsunonove voted because I mentioned to him/her I was running. I suspect some of the others may be similar. ++Lar: t/c 03:43, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this validates Crockspot... I would give other voters a day or two (including those who were already struck?... if we can figure out who they are, direct notification is nice) ++Lar: t/c 05:04, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The votes are invalid, and I think it would be best to remove them if they are still not ok after 24 hour or so. Note that a few users won't become valid anyways, because their account is just too young. Effeietsanders 08:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I did contact all of them on their meta. page :). I must say after 2h30 checking, I'd say around 400 accounts, I wasn't "in the "mood" of searching for their home project... :) (Schiste I think )

My phrasing was bad, I didn't mean to suggest YOU should contact the people you found as invalid, that was a lot of work (pity the poor en:wp arbcom vote checkers though!)... just that the voters needed contacting. I contacted some, but not all, as I said. Did anyone else contact others? Which ones are missing anyone contacting them? I'll take a crack at contacting them too somehow, if I can puzzle out where their home wiki might be. I was surprised at how short the list was actually. ++Lar: t/c 16:06, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

temporary cascade-protection

People are still trying to vote. Would there be problems if we cascade-protect this page for 3 days? The templates transcluded in this page are few. Hillgentleman 03:51, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Just full protect every page. Redrocketboy 07:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I full protected the main page with cascade turned on. If that's not sufficient, please advise. ++Lar: t/c 16:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Un protect yet? or keep for a bit? ++Lar: t/c 16:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I suppose we can have it for another few hours (till midnight UTC).. No Harm done :) ...--Cometstyles 17:20, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I just lifted the protection since a user who is not sysop here wants to make a final statement to his election. --Thogo (talk) 21:49, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Anouncement

Could an announcement regarding the appointment of the new stewards be added to the page, maybe to Stewards/elections 2007/Introduction so that it could be added as multilingual text? Greeves ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:25, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I added the following text to the en version:

Note: The 2007 election is now over and the Wikimedia Foundation board has confirmed the following users as new stewards:

.anaconda, Andre Engels, DerHexer, Dungodung, Jusjih, Lar, Millosh, Nick1915, Spacebirdy, Thogo, Wpedzich, Zirland

Hope that helps. I took a shot at de but the other langs still need translating. I also removed the see also text where I saw it as it's obsolete. ++Lar: t/c 18:53, 25 December 2007 (UTC)