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.org
Year: 2006 Week: 34 Number: 39 Extra
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Board Election 2006 candidates ===
==== Erik Möller ====
The Wikimedia Foundation must meet many critical challenges in the coming years,
including, but not limited to:
- getting as many people as possible involved in important organizational tasks
and making the Foundation transparent, open and accountable
- accelerating technological innovation to make projects such as Wikibooks,
Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons, Wikibooks, Wikinews, and Wiktionary succeed in
the same way Wikipedia has
- finding new ways to systematically improve and label the quality of Wikipedia
content, without destroying the principles that have enabled our fantastic
growth and that make Wikipedia fun
- developing a large network of partnerships with organizations and individuals
who can help us in our ambitious goals, particularly with regard to building
sustainable free knowledge communities in developing nations
- responsibly and thoughtfully dealing with legal risks and conceiving a sound
legal strategy that covers all projects, all chapters, and all languages.
After 5 years of contributions to Wikimedia on almost all levels, I believe I am
ready to help to guide the organization to meet these challenges. I would like
to gain your trust and your support in this coming election.
Please review my candidate presentation at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/Platform_2006
and tell me what you think on the associated discussion page.
Sincerely,
Erik Möller
==== Cimon Avaro ====
Hi. I have been editing wikipedia and the related projects for three years now.
My focus has been always finding where I can do most good, even if it has meant
sacrificing my own ego in the process. Attempting to find solutions in a
forward thinking way; such as conceiving the cleanup process out of thin air,
and making an honest go of steering the nascent mediation committee away from a
bureaucratic model. (Cleanup turned out to be a phenomenal success, although it
quickly surpassed all my planning through the miracle that is collaborative
wikiway, the mediation committee less so, but that is how it goes).
My last real life job was about "herding cats" in a heavily geek-oriented
environment (16-19 age group), as a librarian at a Sciences oriented "magnet"
high-school. My modus operandi there was to meet the students at their own
level, as far to being one of them as possible. Having established early on
that I could not be provoked into over-reacting to their lively antics, I only
had to raise my voice once (when a student juggled a switchblade in a dangerous
fashion) and it was immediately effective, largely in part to not establishing
myself as an authority figure to start with. Over here in Finland this model is
called leading from the midst of the troops, rather than from the front, or the
rear.
As you can read from my [[w:en:User:Cimon Avaro]] userpage, I have had a decades
long interest in encyclopaedias and systematizing the worlds knowledge in
general, and have witnessed the whole history of The Net, far from being a pure
spectator; for instance participating in the founding of the first commercial
ISP in Finland.
Although you can read much more about me on my candidacy page, I would like to
end this short introduction by recapping what you will get, if you vote me in
as trustee of the board of the WMF:
* Someone who listens before he talks, talks before he acts and thinks before he
either talks or acts.
* Someone not beholden to authority, or intimidated by it, but realizing that
the potential of collaboration can acheive developments that individual
planning might not ever be able to conceive.
* Someone who firmly believes that people will do what people will do, and the
role of people in positions of responsibility in an organization such as ours
is to apply the "art of the possible" rather than impose superficially ideal
seeming constructs. Evolution, not "intelligent design" for WMF. Our part as
trustees should be to fend off harm, not believe we can deliver some great
boon. The great and wonderful things we acheive are in large part due to
communities brewing "stone soup", each bringing to the pot what they can, and
spicing up the broth.
Thank you. -- User:Cimon Avaro 02:07, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Vote for who you like, but do vote. Read
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/En
and make your own mind up.
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