[Foundation-l] board elections

Sat Apr 30 23:45:46 UTC 2005

On 4/26/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> I have three requests regarding the organization of this year's election:
> 
> 1) Translations. We need
> - the announcement that people can stand for election, and how
> - the 1000 character candidate profiles
> - the announcement of the actual vote
> to be translated into as many languages as possible. To avoid candidate
> bias, a translation of candidate profiles should only be allowed if all
> profiles are included.

Well said.  In the interests of speed, it might make sense to have a
public place for initial profiles, before they are translated, and to
add translations one language at a time, for all profiles at once. 
That way translations need not wait on a multitude of languages all
being finished at the same time.

> If Sj is not going to stand, I think he would make an excellent
> organizer for this. Getting longer platform statements translated could
> remain within an individual candidate's responsibility.

Thank you, Erik, you are kind to suggest me.  I am sure that most of
this list would like to see the upcoming elections showcase the
projects' many languages and projects.  Perhaps the organization can
be distributed more broadly than a single person.  I would like to see
coordinators on each project engaged to help out; see my separate
email about election translations.

As to my standing, I have some ideas about possible roles of the
member representatives that I would like to share, particularly with
the community members who do not frequent the meta-watering holes like
this list; a candidate's statement seems a good forum for that. 
However, the beginning of my statement would be a request to re-elect
Angela and Anthere.  We were lucky to have chosen so well last year. 
I doubt anyone could have foreseen that the Board's first year would
proceed so smoothly, so calmly, or with so much transparency, despite
many growing pains and opportunities for conflict and crisis.

> 2) I would like the candidate profiles to be displayed *on the voting
> page* in the language set in the user preferences. This should be doable
> as a hack by putting them in the language files or the MediaWiki
> namespace(s); I can write a script to assist with that.

This would be great.

> 3) Given the growing importance of Wikimedia and the Board, I'd like the
> integrity of this election to be closely watched. This should include a
> post-election analysis of the data: checking for sock puppets, double
> votes on multiple wikis, etc. This could be a collaborative effort. I'd
> like to ask the organizers to make this part of their election planning.

A non-technical hack to help ensure the reliability of the elections: 
Have a known contact from each project who is willing to comment on
the history/identity of each voting user.

Cheers,
   SJ