[Foundation-l] Candidate statements

Thu Sep 21 17:57:12 UTC 2006

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>  In the first election, I set a limit of 500 words on each candidate's statement. Despite the complaints back then, there was a reason for that.
>  
>  Danny

You just raised a memory here...

I remember trying to have the statement fitting in those 500 in 2004.

Except it was not 500 words. It was 500 caracters.
I was counting those with Word, and I had just a few less than 500.
I was delighted. I published the statement.

Then Erik complained that I was over 500 caracters. Uh ?
Counted again. Got less than 500. He insisted I was above.
I then realised he was counting the spaces as caracters, and I was not 
counting them. So, of course, I had maybe 20 spaces to separate words. I 
was around 510. Invalid. Too lengthy !

I considered removing a couple of spaces, hence merging some words to 
got to exactly 500... maybe not such a good idea for readability.

Then, we discussed whether the 500 caracters should be the limit in 
english... or in the original language the candidate was writting in...
But I had no door out, since french tends to be longuer than english, so 
I was maybe 600 in french.

So I decided to make an effort, did a bit of rewritting of my english 
text... and got it under 500 in the end !!!

SO proud !

Ahum. What happened in reality, is that the official statement on the 
candidate page was restricted to 500.... but several candidates wrote 
another page, much more lengthy. This is no different from what was done 
this year. Each candidate had the short statement and some had a long 
statement.

Frankly... I find such issue... a little bewildering :-)

Errrr. I like reading what candidates propose to do if they are on 
board. It is interesting. It is enlightning.

And then, if they get elected, we can later complain an issue was on 
their election plateform and they did not take care of it ;-)

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Sorry, I am certainly over the 500 threashold here...