I haven't seen too much discussion about this, but i just wanted to remind
everyone that people who participate in mediawiki development (including
many third party extensions) are eligible to vote in the current Wikimedia
foundation board of trustees election, even if you don't edit any wikimedia
wiki. You just have to have made one commit. Commits to third party
mediawiki extensions not used by Wikimedia wikis count (including some
hosted at github). The Wikimedia Foundation is the largest contributor to
MediaWiki core, and the trustees control the direction of the Wikimedia
Foundation. Hence your vote (indirectly) determines the direction of
MediaWiki software!
There is an unofficial list of eligible developers at
https://i-want-to-vote.toolforge.org . I encourage anyone who participates
in development of software in the mediawiki ecosystem to check if they are
on the list. Even if you are not on that list you may still be eligible.
You can learn more about the candidates at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Candida…
. In particular, many of you might already know legoktm who is one of the
candidates and is very active in the mediawiki developer community. You can
vote now up until september 6 (however some eligible people must register
to vote before sept 2). The link to vote is
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/393 . People who
are eligible to vote due to software development must pre-register via
email before that link works for them and they must do so 4 days before the
end of the election. See
https://i-want-to-vote.toolforge.org for details.
The full official list of eligibility criteria is at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Voter_e…
. The key point for software developers, is you only have had to make 1
commit between Jan 5 and july 5, to any gerrit repo, any toolforge tool
repo (including those outside gerrit), or any mediawiki extension/skin on
MWStake's list of mediawiki extensions/skins developed outside of gerrit.
If the above doesn't describe you, there are also other criteria that can
make you eligible, like if you have made lots of edits to
https://mediawiki.org or
https://translatewiki.net, maintain or contribute
to "tools, bots, user scripts, gadgets, and Lua modules on Wikimedia
wikis", or "substantially engaged in the design and/or review processes of
technical development related to Wikimedia." or are employed by the
Wikimedia foundation or an affiliate of Wikimedia. Check the official rules
for the full list.
Anyways i encourage everyone to vote who is eligible. People who are voting
by virtue of being a software developer MUST register 4 days before the end
of the election (i.e. sept 2), so if that's you, be sure to do it in time.
See the official rules or
https://i-want-to-vote.toolforge.org for details.
--
Bawolff
p.s. Just to clarify, this isn't an official email, i just wanted to ensure
that the wider mediawiki developer community was aware of this as i suspect
many eligible developers may be unaware they are allowed to vote.