[Wikipedia-l] Endorsement

Sun Sep 17 07:58:09 UTC 2006

----- Исходное сообщение ----- 
От: "Anthere" <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>
Кому: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Копия: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>; <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>;
<wikifr-l at wikipedia.org>
Отправлено: 16 сентября 2006 г. 20:49
Тема: [Wikipedia-l] Endorsement

>
> > On 9/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >I personally strongly strongly support the candidacies of Oscar and
> >Mindspillage.
>
> Angela wrote
> "My view on who should be elected is already public, but for those who
> don't read meta, I believe Erik is the only candidate capable of
> having any positive influence within the current Board."

If you care about the POV of a user from the virtual street... I voted for
Erik, for the simple reason that I know him (although very superficially)
and I had a few chances to work in projects where he is involved, so I can
at least have a personal opinion about him. I do not even know WHO the other
candidates are, therefore I won't try to judge them at all. I believe that
such a lack of information is far from being uncommon among us voters.

When we have a flyer calling up people to vote, we should also have the very
same flyer point the people to SOME information about the candidates
(projects in which they were/are involved, personal background, etc). If the
info was there, I absolutely miss it, and many others may have missed it
much in the same way. I did not look for further info myself, but that's
just my own life style. I stopped voting for political elections *many*
years ago, because I won't choose anyone who I do not personally know and
trust. Nevertheless many people on this planet seem to vote anyway, even
just based on a supermarket-style approach. So possible any relevant info
would be useful for them, as a minimal consumer's rights protection.

>From a personal "political" POV I will add is that I shall not vote for
anyone working on *en-wiki only* or being limited to english only, as far as
communication is concerned. IMHO, the community needs bridges and
interlanguage co-operation, and anyone being uncapable to address this won't
be of any use in the WMF's Board, because he/she will biased from the very
start. He/she is welcome to be elected as the "emperor of en-wiki" and even
to be given the royal privilege to trasmit such a title to his/her son
(since life memberships have already been called for), but WMF has a much
larger set of activities and members, than just "en-wiki and a few weird
guests".

Even just by focusing on 3 main language areas as spanish, russian and
chinese we get the potential for multiplying our audience and communities by
3 or 4 times in the next decades. As a matter of fact, a board member unable
to address such an option will only play a purely conservative game. Too bad
that passive defense won't take us much far from where already we got to be,
while our competitors will not sleep at all. I invest my time in this thing,
and as an investor I want to make sure that the Board will produce
interesting dividends. Nothing personal, business is business.

My five-pence worth :)
Bèrto