Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2009

If you have an idea on how to improve the 2008 board elections system for 2009, please post them below under a section name that briefly summarizes the subject (for example, write "Exempt remote staff from edit requirements", not "New idea").

Suggestions

Exempt remote staff from edit requirements

A technicality in the rules didn't exempt remote staff from the edit rules (none needed an exemption, so the committee decided not to change it). The exception should be fixed as such: "paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation who started working at the officewere hired before 01 March 2008". —{admin} Pathoschild 19:18:24, 03 June 2008 (UTC)

Make that "paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia chapters" notafish }<';> 14:19, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Count contributions across all Wikis

Current guidelines do not count contributions to multiple wikis to satisfy voting criteria. In my case, I've had a few months of decreased activity on my home wiki, which resulted in my inability to vote in the 2008 election, even if when counting contributions across multiple wikis I would have met the 50-edit criterion. -- IlyaHaykinson 23:29, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Seconded. Thinking about it, get rid of the "50 edits in the last 6 months", it seems to have brought only problems. notafish }<';> 14:20, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Agree on both points. The penalty for splitting one's time across various wikis is counterproductive, to say the least (shouldn't working on multiple wikis be encouraged?), and the 50-recent-edits rule unfairly penalizes active contributors who take wikibreaks and return only to find themselves disenfranchised. Both of these prerequisites should be abolished, although a new one requiring voters to have been registered users for at least a year might not be a bad idea. (Should that be a new proposal in its own section?) Rivertorch 05:42, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Enforce either a total-edit count, or a recent-edit count

I feel disenfranchised by the voting requirements in 2008. I count myself an active member of the Wikimedia community, but have not been able to dedicate a lot of time to editing my home wiki. It seems very strange to me that a fairly arbitrary limit was put into place that prevents me from voting in this election — despite the fact that I did contribute, that I retain support for my administrator and bureaucrat rights, and ArbCom membership on my home wiki, and that I still work towards driving Wikimedia forward in small steps. Yet, someone who has gone on an editing spree two days before the election is able to help select a community representative.

In order to help diminish the impact of this edit-count policy, I recommend that the next election's rules only consider one but not both of the edit count rules. Users who have been previously active should perhaps have only one recent edit (to ensure that they're still alive), on any wiki. Users who do not have a high enough edit count historically but have a high edit count recently should be able to vote as well. This will enfranchise the biggest amount of our community's users. -- IlyaHaykinson 23:29, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Please do not change the edit count requirements

Fifty edits since January 1 is not a very large amount. If a user does not have the right to vote this year despite being an admin / steward / whatever, too bad. You have not lost your right to vote forever - just your right to vote that year. Next year, make a greater visible contribution to a Wikimedia project, and your right to vote will return.

I would, though, support expanding the scope of what counts as an edit to include other actions such as deletions, account creation, blocking, renaming, account flagging, page patrols and so on, as these are all contributions. Proto 13:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Better document vote tallying method

Choose whatever voting method is best but... Please make sure there is a page explaining it where it is understandable by all. Sorry, but the article on the Schulze Method on Wikipedia is absolutely not for the "not highly trained in statistics and other weird formulas" people. Like me :-). Thank you. notafish }<';> 14:23, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Don't bother the ineligible

Since the requirements for who can vote are well-known in advance, please don't pester me to vote on every page when I am not eligible to do so. I wasted a good 15 minutes (which is a long time to some people BTW) waiting for the whole process to unwind before finding out my admittedly minor contributions do not qualify me to have a voice in who runs wikipedia. As noted, since the requirements are well known, just calculate the eligibility on a user ID basis; and omit / include the vote request on pages loaded by that user ID. That's all the voting wiki does but only after one has wasted their time. Just my 2 cents. 72.73.13.29 22:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
P.S. Here's another thought (I like to solve almost as much as whine!  :-), why not dump us amateur editors into a "Friends of Wiki" category. That way the powers-that-be can gauge the sentiment of thousands of other-wise ineligible voters. Why toss out good information once you've asked for it, eh? 72.73.13.29 22:39, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Use human-readable vote summary page

After the user votes, they should be shown a human-readable summary of their vote. This makes it easy to understand what their vote numbers actually mean, and to change it if they made a mistake. For example:

Your vote (click here to change):
Favourite (1): Billy Joe
2^nd choice (30): Joey Bill
2^nd choice (30): Bob Apple
3^rd choice (99): Jane Apple
 
Don't want at all: Other Guy
Don't want at all: That Guy

—{admin} Pathoschild 12:39:13, 04 July 2008 (UTC)

Count Code Contribution as Edits

I would very much like to run for the Wikimedia Board, but unfortunately I don't spend most of my time editing Wikipedia. I do however, spend most of my time writing code that goes into run the mobile version of Wikipedia. I am not the only one. There are hundreds of volunteers that work on the different Wikimedia software projects and I believe they should be eligible for board seats. --Hcatlin 18:20, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Voting Period

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The voting period should be 3 weeks as in the last elections. HannibalForever 19:50, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - we have expanded it by about six more days - finding the time in the schedule to do three weeks has been a real challenge, but we certainly appreciate the feedback. Philippe 22:03, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Link to Board manual?

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A few of us on the Board have been working over the past year on a Board manual, designed as a thorough intro for prospective and new trustees to governance at the Foundation, the role of a Trustee, and how things work day-to-day. It's on Meta at Wikimedia board manual. Instead of linking to the outdated page at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_member, I suggest this page instead link to the new manual and likely even remove the duplicative "Responsibilities as member of the Board" text. Stu 23:51, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I just added a some additional detail on expectations for trustees to the Board manual. Stu 05:32, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Done, and thank you. :-) Philippe 22:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Edits

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If you're going to bottleneck the edits on this page (which, is not a good thing... the licensing update had a ton more participants than any board vote, yet we kept the pages open for the most part), please be sure to update everything when you change something. :-)

• first line: "between August 3rd and August 10th 2009." should be updated
• "A detailed description of the responsibilities of a member of the Board can be found at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_member." should link to the board manual, per the above section. That page is very detailed and they have been working on it for years, keeping it updated and current.
• "28 July –10 August 2009: elections." eww, space?

Cbrown1023 talk 15:37, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Done, and thank you. :-) Your observation as to bottle-necking is noted, and thanks for pointing out the necessary changes. Philippe 22:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Why is this page protected?

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I was going to add a mention in the top box of the dates for candidate submissions and voting, but was surprised to find that I can't edit this page? Why is that? Mike Peel 18:36, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Nobody knows... I'll unprotect it tomorrow unless it's explained in a convincing way why that's a bad idea.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 04:36, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, Yann as again asserted that only election committee members can edit the page. Again, there is no actual rationale. Sometimes I wonder why we use wikis if we're not going to let people edit things.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 23:42, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello Mike. The page is protected because it contains the official rules and is the source for translations. It's automatically loaded whenever a new translation is started, which is why a stable verified source text is ideal. Changes also trigger updates to all the translations, which is why we prefer that it not be changed without discussing it first; if it's later reverted, we'd need to sort through the changes to the translations to figure out what needs to be reverted too, and ask translators to change any new translations to match the correct text.

Also, the top box Mike Peel mentioned is actually transcluded from Board elections/2009/Warning2/en (and other subpages), which is not protected. —Pathoschild 12:44:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

"election has not begun" warning message

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I have moved this message into a separate template Board elections/2009/Warning/en so that it can more easily be translated and removed from all languages simultaneously when the elections do begin.

However this message has a problem. It not only says "election has not begun", but "Candidates and votes will not be accepted".

That means that we'll have to remove it as soon as candidates are accepted (6 July 2009 if what I read was correct).

Are we going to have no message at all from that day on ? Don't we need to prepare additional messages and their translations ?

I suggest to create Board elections/2009/Warning2/en with the following message :

Voting has not begun. Votes will not be accepted.

and Board elections/2009/Warning3/en

Voting has begun. Voters can vote now.

and Board elections/2009/Warning4/en

Voting has ended. You can no longer vote.

Teofilo 12:13, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Number of eligible voters

How many eligible voters are there this year? HannibalForever 00:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

across across

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Please fix "across across" misstype (if it misstype). --Kaganer 17:31, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Done. iAlex 07:30, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Board elections/2009

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somebody can help me with the board elections please? Thanks 94.162.37.158 10:29, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello 94.162. What do you need help with — voting, or submitting a candidate statement? —Pathoschild 17:55:09, 08 July 2009 (UTC)

Nonsential Link Anchors

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Page Board_elections/2009/Results/en has some nonsential link anchors, such as "here" and the like. Beware! The target page of a link is never ever about the subject matter "here". So please amend, and please avoid such mistakes next year! See also last paragraphs in mw:Internationalisation#Link_anchors --Purodha Blissenbach 10:55, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out; I fixed the text. —Pathoschild 17:53:01, 08 July 2009 (UTC)

Candidates

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Any and all of the 2009 canidates appear to be wonderful choices. What about female canidates? Even though I am not eligable to vote, I'd like to see at least ONE female canidate. --99.171.101.69 17:41, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello 99.171. Feel free to encourage eligible females to participate. :) —Pathoschild 17:51:19, 08 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, I dislike the absence of female candidates. - Damërung ^{...ÏìíÏ...}_{_Ξ_} . --  14:31, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, however this does reflect the nature of our editing community which is heavily male biased. AndrewRT 21:33, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Moved from Talk:Board elections/2009/Translation

Table is off

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The table is a bit off somehow. Anyone one know how to repair it? -- Cimon Avaro 10:54, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I made a few edits, including a few mistakes, yesterday, now corrected, as I hope. Teofilo 14:51, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Warning msg need update?

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Maybe update Warning template for sinc. with current status: candidate submissions in progress? --Kaganer 22:29, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think a new message is necessary, since there's a message to that effect at the top of every wiki page. —Pathoschild 12:54:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Centralnotice

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I don't know this is the right place to ask, but where can I translate the centralnotice "Candidates are currently being accepted for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election"? Tân (talk) 11:23, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

The CentralNotice page is at Board elections/2009/CentralNotice‎. Thanks for your efforts with translation. Regards, Daniel (talk) 11:24, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

contradicitive terms

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In Board elections/2009, I just translated that we elect board members for a 2 years term. Elsewhere, I translated earlier today, that the term ended some time in mid 2010. Only one can be true. --Purodha Blissenbach 21:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Can you find the page that says mid-2010? It may have been fixed since then. —Pathoschild 01:37:23, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Board elections/2009/Results/en and the translated versions of this page said mid-2010. But this has already been fixed. Markus Schulze 01:54, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. —Pathoschild 01:59:45, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

time table

In Board elections/2009, there is a time table saying that translations were to be made until the end of last month, and the committee were actively seeking translators during this time. Because this did not function as intended last year, I must complain again. I do translate, I am the only translator registered here for ksh and once again I was not actively approached. In fact, I stumbled again over the election stuff somewhat accidentally in the early hours of today. That means my start of translations is 9 days after the planned end of translations, again. That also means, folks reading my translations, who cannot read English, and did not stumble over the election by accident as well, are once again deprieved of roughly 50% of their time to find out, make a decision, apply, and have their statements ready. Leaving aside that the number of potential candidates in our community is pretty small or zero, and those incapable of reading English is also pretty small. This is kind of luck in our case, but the unfair treatment of small language communities remains, that I sadly had to complain about during the last elections, despite the promises made last year. --Purodha Blissenbach 21:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Become a candidate

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The message header on the english wikipedia links the phrase "Become a candidate" to Board_elections/2009/Candidates/en. This is just a list of candidates. Could we either:

1. Have an introductory paragraph on that page which says who the qualifications, duties, requirements and powers of Board members are, and invites people to add their names to the list below, or
2. Change the link to another page that does that job.

Thanks AndrewRT 21:36, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree.— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.190.139.217 (talk) 04:01, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

It might be better to link to Board_elections/2009#How_to_submit_your_candidacy ? Teofilo 15:45, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

It links to the information page now. Thanks for the suggestion. —Pathoschild 02:08:12, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Invalid candidate (User:Ανθρωπιστής)

Candidate Ralph Dominguez (User:Ανθρωπιστής) has only about 200+ combined edits in all the projects that he mentions in his candidate summary. AFAIK this means, that he is not eligible, and can not be elected. Also, he has not answered to the inquiry that User:Capmo left on his talk page.

How can he be on the list? Please remove him as soon as possible, because these texts are right now being translated to numerous languages, and his summary is in my opinion the hardest one to translate, so there is no use wasting efforts to translating a text of a user that can not be elected. Thank you, Hydrox 07:20, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

And he has registered his user account as recently as May 3, 2009 (see SUL util). –Ejs-80 20:08, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, he has also used account Ανθρωπιστης. Still, too low edit count. –Ejs-80 15:43, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Ralph Dominguez has recently edited his Spanish, his Portuguese, his French, his Italian, and his Russian presentations. Does he know that his eligibility is challenged? Markus Schulze 21:18, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

If he has edited meta, he will have seen the message on his talk page, so we should expect an reply soon. John Vandenberg 07:35, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, people!

I misestimated the admonition of Capmo because I did not see his signature at the foot of the same. Without a doubt, because of it, I did not perceive it as an admonition originated in Wikimedia Foundation. I offer many excuses.

For the respecting to the date of my beginning in Wikimedia Projects, already from some months before it had been working with the user name Ανθρωπιστης, without the orthographic tilde, also with the IP direction of my system.

Never the less, in the view of the which, I assume my own responsibility of which those contributions are not directly attributable to me.

Thanks for your comprehension! Ανθρωπιστής 16:04, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Dear Ralph Dominguez, do you agree that you are not eligible? Or do you question the claim that you are not eligible?

In the first case, I recommend that your presentation should be removed from the list of candidate presentations. In the latter case, I need more information. Markus Schulze 17:59, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

"election has not begun" and other warning messages (2)

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As Board elections/2009/Warning/en has been edited, I created Board elections/2009/Warning2/en so that the older version is removed from all languages and so that the new version gets translated into other languages, if the translators are so kind as to do that.

I strongly suggest to prepare in advance

Board elections/2009/Warning3/en

so that we have something ready in all languages when the vote begins.

I already said that earlier, above on this discussion page, but nobody seems to have paid attention...

Teofilo 16:22, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Based on this version of the 2008 election, I propose to prepare the following message as Board elections/2009/Warning3/en, to be used after the vote has begun :

The election has started. Votes will be accepted until 23:59 10 August 2009 (UTC).
Translation of candidate statements is continuing.

Based on this version of the 2008 election, I propose to prepare the following message as Board elections/2009/Warning4/en, to be used after the vote has ended :

The election ended 10 August 2009. No more votes will be accepted.
The results will be announced on 12 August 2009.

Based on the last version of the 2008 election, I propose to prepare the following message as Board elections/2009/Warning5/en, to be used after the result has been announced :

The election ended 10 August 2009. No more votes will be accepted.
The results were announced on 12 August 2009.

Teofilo 09:41, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Make candidates have better disclosure on active wikis

I feel that if candidates say they are active on a paticular wiki, they should have to say how long they've been active (first edit), and how many edits they've made. For example (this is just a random example, and is not meant to pick on anybody) KevinOKeeffe claims to be active on wikimedia commons. This implies that he has done some work there. If you look at his contribs you notice he has 4 edits in total there. This is not what i consider active. If candidates specified how active they were (Edit counts) than the active status would be much less misleading. Bawolff 06:46, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

On a related note, i think candidates should be required to disclose if they were blocked, as if someone was blocked, implies that they were not able to get along with the community (lets face it, its quite easy to contribute without getting blocked). I wouldn't want to vote for somebody who can't even contribute somewhere without getting blocked. Bawolff 06:46, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I have to say that I disagree with your second suggestion, as I've seen many cases of people who have been blocked by mistake or by unfair (sometimes even personal) reasons. Such information would create a negative bias against the candidate, as you have demonstrated yourself. Alternatively, you can use the questions section to ask candidates if they've ever been blocked, which will give them the chance to defend themselves in affirmative case. --Capmo 06:57, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Problem with the header template

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The main template, in the section of the multilingual box has an error; it does not redirects to the corresponding language section, but to the source one only. For example:

• If I´m on "Board elections/2009/Results/en" and I want to click on the spanish version, it doesn´t leads me into "Board elections/2009/Results/es", but instead, the link takes me to "Board elections/2009/es".
• The same occurs for any other sub-section (like "Board elections/2009/Committee/en")

I´m not very sure how to fix this, I could find out, but it will take me a little long, so I thought it would be better if I post this message here instead, so the person who put the source code or the one who is familiarized with it coud fix it faster. Therefore I can keep my work here on translations. - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 18:50, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I made a small change to Template:Other languages/Board elections/2009 and I believe it's now fixed. Capmo 07:22, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it´s much better now, thanks. - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 05:28, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

CentralNotice and extending the Board Nomination period

I sent the following to foundation-l, but I am reposting it here as well since people associated with the election may not all be subscribers there:

CentralNotice scripts live on the image file server. As some of you may know, that server has been having serious performance problems recently. One of the steps taken early on to reduce load while people work on fixing the problem was to disable CentralNotice on all wikis (save Meta).

As a result, the "Candidates are currently being accepted for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election" message that started on the 7th has not been visible anywhere except Meta since the 11th. I don't know whether the server will be fixed before the nomination period was supposed to end on the 20th. Assuming it is not fixed, the planned two weeks of candidate solicitations will have been reduced to less than five days. (This also explains why there have been no new candidate statements since early on the 12th.)

In my opinion, that is simply not adequate.

I know it would throw a giant monkey wrench in other plans, but I want to raise the possiblity that the technical problems with the site notice should justify pushing back the rest of the Board election timeline. The Board of Trustees is one of Wikimedia's most important institutions, and I don't think this is something we can justify rushing through.

Dragons flight 12:17, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Concerning the fact that it isn't clear whether the problem with the CentralNotice will be fixed soon and concerning the short period of time, I suggest that we should send email notifications with the "Candidates are currently being accepted for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election" message to the eligible Wikipedians. HannibalForever 13:21, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

translation of the new schedule

How do you ensure that the schedule change gets translated into all languages ? I suggest to rename all language versions with the following pattern :

• rename Board elections/2009/fr into Board elections/2009/fr/old
• delete the redirect link on Board elections/2009/fr so that it becomes a red link again and shows up as a red link on the translation table on Board_elections/2009/Translation
• add a new column on the translation table on Board_elections/2009/Translation in order to show both the old and the new version (so that translators can find the old version and use it as a source for most of the text) ; the added parameter could be |intro and rules/old =

• do the same for all languages (not only "fr") where the "intro and rules" text is not missing. Teofilo 09:41, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Unnecessary language versions

In the german version and a section of the english version of the candidate statements page there are some unnecessary translations in the statement section of a candidate's nomination table. I mean, if another language already exist for the whole page translated, then placing different language versions of the statement within the table is unnecessary (case of the german version). I think that all of them shall be removed, but the one in the english version is something written by the candidate, so shall it be removed too? - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 15:45, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree. I'd remove all English versions from the German page and leave only the links to the original versions. The same should be done to the original French text by N'abbi Saad on the English page. Capmo 17:09, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Simple English translation

A simple English translation has been proposed and refused on the translation page (diff) and User talk:Tb240904 by User:Mardetanha, member of the 2009 Election comittee . If this decision is kept, it should be remembered for next year and announced early enough. Are Simple English users allowed to vote ? Are they allowed to become candidates ? Even if we don't have clear answers to these questions this year, let's hope we have them next year, early enough before the election procedure starts.

"Simple English" is the language used on http://simple.wikipedia.org .

Teofilo 10:09, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

July 20?

The section "How to submit your candidacy" indicates that people can submit their candidacy up until July 27, however the section beneath it says candidate submissions close July 20. John Vandenberg 10:45, 19 July 2009 (UTC)