Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2009/ne

Template:Board elections 2009/ne

The 2009 elections to the Board of Trustees were held between July 28^th and August 10^th 2009. Members of the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to elect three candidates to a two-year term which will expire in 2011. The Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.

The elections are held securely on servers belonging to Software in the Public Interest. Votes are secret and are only visible to the select few persons who audit and tally the election. Voters submit ranked preferences by numbering candidates. The votes are be tallied using the Schulze method to rank candidates based on the number of voters who prefer that candidate over other candidates.

The Election Committee announced the results on or before August 12^th. Detailed results will be available. All times on this page are 00:00 (midnight) UTC.

Information for voters

Requirements

You may vote from any one registered account you own on a Wikimedia wiki (you may only vote once, regardless of how many accounts you own). To qualify, this one account must:

not be blocked; and
not be a bot; and
have made at least 600 edits before 01 June 2009 across Wikimedia wikis (edits on several wikis can be combined if your accounts are unified into a global account); and
have made at least 50 edits between 01 January and 01 July 2009.

Special exceptions: the following may vote regardless of the above requirements:

Wikimedia server administrators with shell access;
paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation who were hired before 01 March 2009;
current or former members of the Board of Trustees.

How to vote

If you are eligible to vote:

Read the candidate presentations and decide which candidates you will support.
Go to the wiki page "Special:Securepoll" on one wiki you qualify to vote from. For example, if you are most active on the wiki meta.wikimedia.org/, go to meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Securepoll/vote/17.
Follow the instructions on that page.

Information for candidates

A detailed description of the responsibilities of a member of the Board can be found at the Board Manual.

Responsibilities as member of the Board

Being a Board member of a small organization like the Wikimedia Foundation, which faces immense challenges, can be time-consuming. The position is voluntary and unpaid. While board members are not expected to bring personal money to the organisation, they are welcome to help raise funds.

Board members are expected to attend at least 3–4 meetings per year in person, attend Wikimania (our annual conference), and attend other scheduled online meetings and votes. The Board communicates intensively via e-mail, wiki, and IRC. Individual trustees sometimes participate in strategic meetings with other organizations and companies, relaying results back to Board and staff.

Individual board members are expected to be involved in certain activities (such as fundraising, Wikimania, or auditing) and to help draft policies, charters and resolutions on such topics.

Because Board members owe duties by virtue of their position, candidates who currently hold paid positions with the Wikimedia Foundation must resign from those position before they can be appointed to the Board of Trustees. This is to avoid potential conflicts of interests.

Prerequisites to candidacy

To be eligible as a candidate, you must:

have made at least 600 edits before 01 March 2009 on any one registered account (edits on several wikis can be combined if your accounts are unified into a global account); and
have made at least 50 edits between 01 January and 01 July 2009; and
publicly disclose your real name in your candidate presentation (because the identities of Board members are a matter of public record, it is not possible to hold a position on the Board of Trustees anonymously or under a pseudonym); and
be at least 18 years old and of legal age in your home country.

Special exceptions: current members of the Board of Trustees may be candidates regardless of the above requirements.

How to submit your candidacy

If you are eligible, you can submit your candidacy by doing the following:

Write a brief summary of no more than 1200 characters stating what you would do if you were elected to the Board of Trustees, your relevant opinions and experience, and anything else you think is relevant. You may not use your candidate summary to link to lists of endorsements or other platform pages, and may not run on a slate with other candidates.
Submit your summary between 00:00, 06 July 2009 (UTC) and 23:59, 27 July 2009 (UTC). After July 27, it cannot be changed except for minor corrections or translation. Any additions submitted after this deadline will be time-stamped and presented separately from the original summary, and will only be presented to voters if they get translated into all of the same languages as the original summary.
Submit proof of your identity to Cary Bass (Volunteer Coordinator) before 27 July 2009. You will be privately contacted by a member of the Election Committee with further information about meeting this requirement when you list yourself as a candidate.

Candidates who fail to comply with the above requirements and deadlines will be disqualified.

Organization

Time line

01–30 June 2009: primary translation phase; subcommittee actively coordinates and promotes translation.
06–27 July 2009: candidate submissions.
27 July 2009: deadline to send proof of identity (late or missing submissions will be disqualified).
28 July–10 August 2009: elections.
10–12 August 2009: vote-checking.
12 August 2009: publication of results.

Translators

To ensure that a representative cross-section of the Wikimedia community takes part in this election, it is important to translate election notices and candidate statements into as many languages as possible. To help translate, please see the translation page.