Talk:Affiliate-selected Board seats election FAQ

I have no idea what I am doing

I wrote this FAQ in response to people asking me about this election. If anyone has better answers then please share. If anyone has better questions then please ask them. Blue Rasberry (talk) 03:24, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Is this really an election, or is it a recommendation for a selection?

The majority of the community found out, late December last year, that while community seats were driven by "elections" and supervised by an "elections committee", the vote resulted in recommendations that the Board of Trustees is free to consider, or not. I would like this clarified, and if we're indeed in a similar situation, that the misleading use of the term "election" be replaced by one that doesn't mislead the community. Thank you. MLauba (talk) 22:36, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

MLauba Sorry - this is a space to coordinate the election and there is no one here who is able to address the deeper issue which you are raising. I am not putting you off or dismissing you, but instead, I am giving you the useful information that there are no answers or responses here and that it would be better for you to direct your question to a place with more authority. Perhaps you could take your question to the board itself, because only they can decide such things.

You are welcome to criticize the election here, but what happens after the election or what might happen in the future is beyond the scope of what can be managed here. I wish only to support the planned election as directed by the chapters. I wish to avoid discussing issues which can be separated from management of this election.

The board of trustees is 5 persons elected by the community and their representatives, and these 5 appoint another 4 and confirm the appointment of another. Personally, this entire process seems to me to favor the community decision-making process because so much seems to be so close to community control. Other people have other perspectives. I invite you to engage in this process as two more board members are selected. I am here because I think supporting this process is useful. Thanks for commenting. If you have a request which I can accommodate, then I will try to help. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:30, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry if you feel this is an attempt to criticize, but surely, asking on the election FAQ whether the process leads to a straight election or a recommendation for a selection isn't too controversial? MLauba (talk) 07:02, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

To answer directly - yes, like the community election, this is an election that produces a recommendation for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. It is very unlikely that the WMF Board would choose not to appoint the people who win this election and this has never yet happened. However, I can see circumstances where it would clearly be the right decision to take. Say a candidate won the ASBS election and then a month later was convicted of a criminal fraud. It would clearly not be appropriate for that person to join the WMF Board in those circumstances.

Whether WMF Trustees can or should be removed from the Board once appointed is a slightly different question. In my own view the power to remove individual trustees whose presence makes the board dysfunctional is vital to the health of any trustee board.

We use the term "election" because that is the dominant method we use to select these board members. In some previous years the term "selection" was used because it was expected that there would be a consensus-based decision among affiliates, rather than a vote. I appreciate that the term "election" is used slightly differently to how it is in public elections where no other body needs to ratify the result of the election (though of course in most democracies election results can be overturned by courts in some circumstances, or elected representatives can be recalled by petition, so maybe it's not so fundamentally different). However I don't see that the word "selection" is any more or less misleading than "election" here. Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 10:10, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Created for 2016 - reapply to 2019

This was categorized as a 2016 election resource but it could apply to the 2019 and subsequent elections.

It should - it already is translated.

Parts to update:

1. It seems like Wikimedia user groups get a vote
2. It seems like chapters and thematic organizations lose a vote
3. the "chapters wiki" could be renamed to be "affiliates wiki"

There are other issues about running the election in general, but those should be discussed on the main page. Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:50, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Make this talk page a redirect

If this is a general FAQ then it should not have its own talk page. It should redirect to the main talk page for any current election. Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:50, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

How many candidates can an affiliate endorse?

How many candidates can an affiliate endorse? — Finn Årup Nielsen (fnielsen) (talk) 23:11, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Dear Finn Årup Nielsen (fnielsen), Each organization may endorse up to two candidates. I am not part of the election committee and just saw your question seconds ago. Geraldshields11 (talk) 00:56, 8 May 2019 (UTC)