Requests for comment/Meta-wiki suffrage in regards to local elections

The following request for comments is closed. Please discuss on the talkpage, not on this page.

Rationale for request

This RFC concerns Meta-specific requests and elections, which include:

Requests for adminship on Meta, held at WM:RFA
Requests for bureaucratship on Meta (same)
Requests for other rights on Meta (same)
Admin confirmations on Meta, held at Meta:Administrators/confirm
Meta Arbcom elections, in the event one is formed

but do not include:

Board of Trustees elections
Steward elections
Other universal or Foundation-requested elections, except as directed otherwise.

Concerns

While administrators on Meta do not have direct administrative abilities on other wikis, there is some limited influence on the content of other projects.
There should be opportunities for Wikimedia Foundation sponsored projects to voice concerns regarding Meta administrators.
Canvassing for votes on other projects to influence Meta elections is discouraged. Commentary is welcome even if the user has no suffrage.
Users should have some experience with Meta and its processes instead of being able to "show up and vote", otherwise we encourage voting over discussion.
Non-Wikimedia Foundation wikis may be influenced in the same manner, but do so voluntarily.
There is ambiguity regarding if other local user rights (bureaucrat, checkuser, oversight) are influenced by confirmation, or if they require separate confirmation for those rights.

Current standards

The current suffrage, per local policy, is "All editors with an account on Meta, at least one active account on any Wikimedia project, and a link between the two, may participate in any request and give his/her opinion of the candidate. However, more active Meta editors' opinions may be given additional weight in controversial cases."*

Proposals

Please ensure that proposals are discussed and there is consensus (or at least minimal agreement) to list or delist proposals in this section. When delisting proposals, please strike them out, do not remove them from the page.

The current standard for suffrage, as listed above. While not ideal, it's a starting point.
A. B.'s suggestion:
1. Any editor in good standing on a Wikimedia project may comment in a meta RfA
2. To have their comments counted in the required support totals, participants must have at least 50 useful, non-trivial edits on meta and must have had an active account here for at least 3 months.
3. Canvassing here or elsewhere is forbidden. Bureaucrats have wide latitude to disregard comments from participants that may have been drawn here as a result of canvassing. As a start, I suggest looking to the en.wikipedia guideline, en:Wikipedia:Canvassing, for guidance on what is and isn't canvassing. (Note: I do not mean to imply en.wikipedia should call the shots here -- it's just a usefull document I'm familiar with).
4. The same standards apply to admin reconfirmation.
5. Except in the case of RfA irregularities, bureaucrats have some (but only limited) latitude in interpreting community consensus.
Use the current suffrage for steward elections (Note that there is a proposal on the table to change steward to the same requirements as board, so this means using the 2007 standards: users must have a valid account on Meta with a link to at least one account on a project where the user has participated at least three months.)
Use the current suffrage for Board elections (To be eligible to vote, a user must have been a contributor to at least one Wikimedia project for three months prior to June 1, 2007 (that is, by March 1, 2007), as indicated by the date of the user's first edit, and must have completed at least 400 edits with the same account by June 1, 2007 ... these dates get adjusted to match the election start date)

Rationale for request

Concerns

Current standards

Proposals

See also