Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024

Review and comment on the 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection rules package

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Dear all,

Please review and comment on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection rules package from now until 29 October 2023. The selection rules package was based on older versions by the Elections Committee and will be used in the 2024 Board of Trustees selection.

The rules package includes campaign rules, voter eligibility criteria, and the voting method, platform, and timeline. In previous Board selections, the voter eligibility criteria and the voting method were adjusted to fit expressed community needs. The Candidate Guidelines were originally developed during the 2022 election and have been revised.

The Wikimedia Foundation staff are supporting a community comment period for the rules package so the Elections Committee can receive comments and concerns well in advance of the Board selection process. Completing this comment period now will allow time for the Elections Committee to adapt the rules package as appropriate.

Please visit the Meta-wiki talk page to provide your comments now and invite people you know to do so as well. Your comments will help the Elections Committee provide a smoother, better Board selection process.

Best,

Katie Chan
Chair of the Elections Committee

Voting method and platform

Hello. Can someone offer more clarity on this proposal envisions how and by whom the "[s]hortlisting candidates" process will be taken? Thank you. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t) 07:08, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I came here to ask the same question. BilledMammal (talk) 01:22, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

same. Borschts ^Talk 05:28, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@L235, BilledMammal, and Borschts: hi all, thanks for your patience. This section is a bit delayed, but it is now uploaded as part of the package. Looking forward to your review. Best, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 16:06, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

RamzyM: Why are the affiliates being involved in this election? The bylaws don’t require it, and it would seem that for seats that are nominally community seats it would be better to have a process that is fully community based? BilledMammal (talk) 07:41, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

How do you define "the community"? Are the people who arrange in-person meet ups for editors part of "the community", or do you perceive them as outsiders? What about the people who answer local media inquiries? Who encourage teachers to use Wikipedia as a classroom (reading) resource? Who host training programs for both new and existing editors (e.g., to introduce experienced Wikipedia editors to Wikidata)? Who buy books for editors? Who ask experts to answer questions? Who tell local museums how to get their images uploaded to Commons? Who recruit translators for articles like w:en:Ebola and w:en:Zika and w:en:COVID-19 pandemic? Who write software documentation? Who create and update gadgets and tools? Who handle the paperwork for special events (e.g., to bring Commons photographers to a place that normally prohibits photography)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:47, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Of course those individuals are an equal part of the community. I feel you have a point you are getting at here; can you elaborate on it? BilledMammal (talk) 10:27, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

If the people doing that work are part of "the" community (I think it's more accurate to talk about the communities, in the plural), then the affiliates are part of the community, because that's what the affiliates do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I wouldn't consider organizations "members" of the community - I don't really buy into corporate personhood - but reasonable minds may differ, and of course the members of the affiliates are part of the community.

However, when I say "fully community based", I mean with all members of the community (or communities) being equal, rather than some members having privileges beyond those held by the broader community. BilledMammal (talk) 12:53, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

How do you propose that the views of the translators of key medical articles, most of whom don't make 300 edits on wiki (though that may spend many hours in Google Docs), have their views represented in the election? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Can you give a few examples of translators who are both not in the franchise and are members of an affiliate? I don't think there will be very many - but regardless, I'm sure the WMF can work out a way to expand the franchise to include them. BilledMammal (talk) 21:20, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

We have translators who make very few edits (e.g., posting the entire finished translation in a single edit) because they are working with Wiki Project Med. They may not technically even be "members" of the organization, but I would expect the affiliate to care about this project, and to consequently question the fitness of a Board candidate who held views that were incompatible with it (e.g., a candidate who said that translation was unimportant, or that they believed that, as a matter of principle, that newly registered editors should never be able to create pages at any minority-language Wikipedia, even if the local community welcomed such editors). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:30, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

And the broader community doesn't care about this project? I'm struggling to understand the point you are trying to make. BilledMammal (talk) 05:28, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Did you even know that it existed before yesterday? WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:58, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

No. But as a community we care about making knowledge accessible; that includes translating it.

I also find your argument extremely implausible; you think we need to grant the affiliates veto rights, because if we don't a candidate will run on an anti-translation platform and get elected by the community? I think such a hypothetical is improbable in the extreme. BilledMammal (talk) 02:29, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I think it would be plausible for two things to happen:

• online contributors to vote in a way that disfavors programs that they are personally unaware of, and
• a candidate to run on an anti-affiliate platform.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:49, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi @BilledMammal:, the board seats for the upcoming and future elections are community-and-affiliate seats. Previously the community and affiliate board seats were separate, this is no longer the case. This change was made in 2020 and is set out in the bylaws on Foundation wiki. KTC (talk) 20:26, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@KTC: The bylaws read As many as eight (8) Trustees will be sourced from candidates vetted through a Community and/or Affiliate nomination process, emphasis mine. While this is permitted by the bylaws, it isn't required by the bylaws, and so I am asking you why have chosen to include them. BilledMammal (talk) 01:39, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

It sounds like you would like to interpret "Community and/or Affiliates" as "individual online contributors but not affiliates" WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I believe - and I suspect the broader community would agree with me - that at least some seats should be entirely the domain of the community. BilledMammal (talk) 21:20, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

That was the old system, and AIUI it was changed to this "blended" model because some individual online contributors thought that it was bad to let the affiliates have any affiliate-only seats. We previously had some affiliate-only seats and some individual-contributor seats (not that any of them are actually supposed to serve as representatives of these constituencies, because that's basically illegal under US law – by law, board members are supposed to serve the mission instead of the volunteers). Now individuals and affiliates both get to vote on everyone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:34, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

And it's bad to have no community-only seats. BilledMammal (talk) 02:34, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm sure you are not the only person who holds that opinion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:49, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@KTC: Sorry KTC, pinging you again as I feel you may have missed my previous question about why you are choosing to include the affiliates here. BilledMammal (talk) 02:39, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@BilledMammal: Utlimately, the composition of the Board of Trustee is determined by the existing BoT. It is their interpretation of the Foundation's bylaws that these seats are all combined community-and-affiliate seats. The Elections Committee is tasked with the responsibilites to organise elections to help fill seats that the BoT says is available to be filled. -- KTC (talk) 11:34, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@KTC: Thank you. Can you ask the board to explain how they came to that conclusion, because a straight reading of the bylaws suggests that there is no such requirement? BilledMammal (talk) 11:59, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Unless I missed it, nobody has claimed that the Board has declared this to be a "requirement". A plain reading of the wording in the bylaws says that this combined approach is permissible, and the Board has said that's how they choose to do it this time.

Of course, if you'd like the Board to say that it's required, they can do that. Corporate bylaws can be re-written at will. As long as they don't change their charitable purpose or break any actual laws (e.g., by making the same person be secretary and president, which is illegal in most US states), then the Board can change the bylaws to say whatever they want. If you'd like the bylaws to say "All candidates must be not only approved by online contributors, existing affiliates, and the current Board, but also BilledMammal personally", then they could do that. They just need to provide 10 days' written notice to the other existing board members, one simple majority vote (of all board members, not just of the members present at the meeting), and to send a bit of simple paperwork to the state and the US IRS.

It is always good for people in the movement to know how a corporate board works for non-profits. I don't know what the equivalent is in your area, but the go-to provider for US non-profits is https://boardsource.org/ Maybe you'd like to spend some time educating yourself about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the board can make things less democratic than they used to be. That doesn't mean people must be happy about it, or take it lying down. The board could also make things more democratic. That won't happen unless there is a spontaneous change of heart in the board (unlikely), or there is a cost attached to making things less democratic. Andreas JN466 20:05, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

It is their interpretation of the Foundation's bylaws that these seats are all combined community-and-affiliate seats. My interpretation of that statement is that they see it as a requirement; if they didn't, the more accurate and less misleading way to word that statement would be It is their interpretation of the Foundation's bylaws that these seats are permitted to be combined community-and-affiliate seats, and they have chosen to make them so. BilledMammal (talk) 00:10, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Would a change in wording make any practical difference in the outcome? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:08, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Hello - as KTC has noted, the bylaws list these Board seats as “community-and-affiliate selected” as per the decisions in a Board resolution in 2020. The reason we are considering a shortlisting process is because we received feedback in previous elections cycles that it is a burden to voters to have a large number of candidates to review. This review process for voters includes reading the candidates’ applications as well as their answers to community questions. We saw the large amount of information for the community members to consume in the MCDC selection process as well. The concern is that we want community members to participate in the Board selection process, but we do not want their involvement to be a burden on their available time.

Affiliates have experience voting to shortlist candidates in a selection process and have been a willing partner in the past. With that said, we welcome your ideas on a different way to shortlist candidates.

The Elections Committee and Board decided on 12 candidates for this cycle as that would be 3 candidates per open seat, which falls within norms for other nonprofits as recommended by the consultant the Board engaged with in the past and through our study of executive board practices. However, it is unlikely that the Elections Committee would shortlist if there are up to 15 candidates, as removing 1–3 people does not seem like a good use of time or resources. But, I cannot promise this will be the case.

I look forward to hearing alternative proposals and reviewing the community discussion around this topic. Pundit (talk) 13:46, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Pundit: Can you link these bylaws? The ones I am reading don't say community-and-affiliate selected, but instead say Community and/or Affiliate nomination process, emphasis mine.

An alternative method to shortlist candidates is to only allow candidates who have received 50 or 100 signatures in support of their candidacy to proceed to the voting stage. BilledMammal (talk) 02:38, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

The section heading on the page you linked to says ====(C) Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees.====, and the words "Community- and Affiliate-selected" appear three times in that section (vs only once for the "and/or" language). Read the immediately following sentence to find one example of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Look at the hyphens in "Community- and Affiliate-selected"; it doesn't mean the same thing as "community-and-affiliate selected". Further, the section that talks about selecting these trustees is the section that uses "Community and/or Affiliate".

Regardless, I was asking Pundit, and I'm still hoping they will provide an answer. BilledMammal (talk) 03:41, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Alternate proposal: not doing the thing that was sworn was not planned at all.

It's extremely convenient that after swearing that there was no discussion about watering down the community's right to vote, mysterious "feedback" was found that made it necessary to relieve the poor community from their rights and do exactly that. Amazing how of all of the people who have expressed opinions on this topic never said so in public.

My neighbor complains how much his sports car is to repair. Perhaps I should be a good Samaritan and take his car into my possession, thus kindly relieving him of his burden of ownership that he clearly suffers from. No need to ask him ahead of time; I'll just set up a community forum where he can provide feedback which I will "consider."

AGF is getting harder and harder than ever when it comes to dealing with the WMF. It's way past time for the community to discuss removing fundraising banners from English Wikipedia without real change. And they should thank us. After all, by removing those banners, we're just easing the WMF's workload by aiding with the burden and stress of having to collect and spend all that money. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 15:49, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Amazing how of all of the people who have expressed opinions on this topic never said so in public.

That does happen, though. I've both seen and sent private feedback before. It's rational for people to avoid an overtly hostile environment or to be unwilling to publicly paint a target on their backs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I haven't seen this onslaught of "voting is super hard and hurts my brain, please take away my right to vote" posts. Links? CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 09:31, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

It's way past time for the community to discuss removing fundraising banners from English Wikipedia without real change. If this goes ahead, and if the Affiliates veto candidates that appear to have strong community support, I expect I'll be proposing something along those lines - I would lean towards limiting the length of the fundraising campaign rather than blocking it outright, but we can work out the details if it turns out to be necessary. I hope and believe it won't be. BilledMammal (talk) 17:03, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Candidacy process

• Are all open seats "affiliate seats"? If not, why would only affiliates shortlist people? --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 03:45, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Frank Schulenburg, I think you want to see this comment from @KTC. The old system of having separate seats reserved for affiliates disappeared several years ago. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:30, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks WhatamIdoing! Lets change the election rules then so not only affiliates can shortlist people. Affiliates shouldn't have more power than the communities. Best, --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 02:42, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Or maybe Wiki Edu should become an affiliate.

  I'm not sure that letting one set of affected groups shortlist the candidates is giving those groups more power than other groups. We either have to say that organizations (groups that might reasonably think they have more of a stake in who oversees the largest organization in the movement) don't matter at all, or we have to let them have their say (i.e., separately from unaffiliated individuals). The new system lets the affiliates have their say, and then lets the individual volunteers have their say. Successful candidates have to pass both of these groups^[*]. Since a candidate have to pass both, I'd rather that individual volunteers only see the candidates that already passed the affiliate vote. It doesn't make sense to me that individual volunteers should have to review and vote on people that can't pass the affiliate vote. (I guess that I don't mind making the affiliates to the work of vetting candidates that won't pass the individual vote.)

  ^[*]Also the Board's own review. For example, the Board can't legally appoint a 17 year old to a (voting) Board position, so even if the teenager had unanimous support from everyone in the movement, the answer would still be 'no'. We tend to think of the Board's approval as a mere rubber stamping, but this is not really true. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:52, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Regarding (i.e., separately from unaffiliated individuals) and The new system lets the affiliates have their say, and then lets the individual volunteers have their say.: Unless I'm very mistaken, affiliated individuals are allowed to vote; as such, I don't believe your characterization of the system is correct; instead it lets the affiliates have their say, and then everyone, affiliated and unaffiliated, have their say. BilledMammal (talk) 13:20, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think that the affiliate organizations put this out to a general membership vote. It's their Board or designated representative who provides their response. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:42, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  That's even worse; it's not a small minority that we grant veto powers to, it's a tiny minority. BilledMammal (talk) 05:28, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  Do you have the same complaint about the election of the US Senate, which allows each state, regardless of population, to have the same number of senators, and which originally (until the 17th amendment) appointed those senators through the state's legislature instead of a popular vote? WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:57, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not sure I understand your point, but if you're describing a system where senators are appointed by legislators (rather than a popular vote) then the difference is that the people voted for the legislators in the first place, whereas no one voted for the affiliates. Andreas JN466 08:34, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  No one voted for the US states to exist, either. Affiliates are membership organizations, and their boards are elected by popular vote of the members. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:40, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  Right, I see. But in the U.S. the entire electorate is located in one state or another, and therefore enfranchised in one of the constituent states; whereas in our case, most members of the community are not part of an affiliate and are not represented in its internal voting process. Andreas JN466 20:00, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

  We'd have to talk about how we define "the community" (can you be part of it if you organize editing events but haven't made the minimum required number of edits on wiki yet?), but I'm not sure that's a serious problem. Anyone in the community could join an affiliate (or several). If they don't choose to, then that's their choice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:19, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think the US senate is analogous to this.

  However, since you asked; I'm not American, but anyone with two brain cells can see their system is beyond broken; my ideal electoral and governmental system would be unicameral parliamentary elected by mixed-member proportional. BilledMammal (talk) 02:25, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

  Just to be clear: I'm posting here in my personal capacity as a Wikipedian, and not as a representative of Wiki Education or any other organization or group. Now, with regard to my question, let me ask again: if these are "community-and-affiliate seats" (see the link above), then why would only the affiliates have the ability to shortlist people? In my personal case, WMDE doesn't represent the community of content creators and content curators on the German Wikipedia in any way… now why would they have the power over who gets shortlisted? If the assumption that these are "community-and-affiliate seats" is correct, the process for shortlisting candidates needs to change. Best, --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 01:30, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  So that we can vote on everyone, and the affiliates can veto candidates later? I don't like that approach.

  If we treat the individual contributors and the affiliate organizations as separate groups with separate methods, the options are:

  1. Both vote at the same time, and you have to pass both to 'win'.
  2. One group votes before the other.

  Can you think of any third option that results in both groups approving the resulting winners? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:08, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  I am not sure why you think affiliates must have a veto somewhere in the process. In my view, affiliate members are community members and can vote as community members like everyone else. Andreas JN466 19:29, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  I don't say that affiliates must have a say in the recommendations made to the Board; I only say that they are permitted to have a say, according to the current bylaws, and that they will have a say this time (according to the process the Board chooses to follow). Note that nothing in the bylaws says that there must be an open vote by individual community members, either. "The Board shall determine who is qualified to participate in the approval process for Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees", and if they wanted to completely depart from all previous precedents and anything that seems like a reasonable procedure in my personal opinion, they can do that. They could decide that only a handful of Board-selected community members would make the recommendation for community seats. They could disenfranchise any individual. This is not a real government; this is a corporation. We are not electing people to represent The Community™; we are suggesting some people to care for a corporation.

  I sometimes feel like some of the more vocal participants don't grasp (or don't want to admit publicly) the situation here. Individual editors (like us) literally have no legal rights to control or influence the Wikimedia Foundation at all. None, zip, zero, nada. If you own stock in a publicly traded corporation, you have more rights wrt to that corporation than you do wrt to the WMF. We are involved in the Board selection process only at the Board's discretion and on the Board's sufferance. That decision was made when the WMF was incorporated as a non-membership corporation. If you feel like you are entitled to something here, then your expectations are not aligned with reality. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:55, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  Individuals have plenty of power to influence the Wikimedia Foundation, starting with participating in consultations like the one here, moving to community letters (like the WP:COLOR, and ending with editing strikes. That goes with crowdsourcing volunteer labor. I personally don't think that affiliates are so out of touch that they're likely to shortlist candidates that are unacceptable to the larger community, but people are certainly entitled to disagree. TomDotGov (talk) 21:25, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  The power to attempt persuasion is not a legal right over a corporation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:56, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  The end point isn't editing strikes; it's blocking fundraising on the English Wikipedia and possibly other major sources such as the German Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia almost did so over immoral and misleading banners last year; I suspect they would be willing to do so over a topic as important as this. BilledMammal (talk) 02:40, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

  @TomDotGov You say, I personally don't think that affiliates are so out of touch that they're likely to shortlist candidates that are unacceptable to the larger community, but people are certainly entitled to disagree.

  I think the more likely issue would be that affiliates might not shortlist a candidate that would be acceptable to the community. Not saying it's terribly likely, but it could arise at some point in the future. Andreas JN466 16:11, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  +1. Andreas JN466 19:26, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  I share the concerns Frank has expressed here. I do not understand why affiliate board members should get such a large say in the elections compared to everyone else. Why are they, as stakeholders, so prioritized in this way? Barkeep49 (talk) 17:22, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

  So yesterday in discussing this issue at the North America conference someone asked "has it been tried where more groups than Affiliates are consulted"? I thought this was a great question and idea. Given the number of groups that the Foundation already directly works with, I think there are many groups beyond affiliates who could be offered the chance to weigh candidates. Some of them might not be interested but asking groups like ArbComs, Stewards, LangCom, and others like that would give a more representative sample between editors who are generally focused on movement building (many Affiliates) and those who are focused on specific "front-line" work. It doesn't change the issues Frank has pointed out but it does start to address them while not undermining the concept that there needs to be a practical way to narrow candidates. It admittedly does not address the reason offered by a Board of Trustee member for why this change was made in the first place - as a makeup for not having affiliate specific seats - but I think is still far more defensible from a movement building stand point. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:48, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

  Agreed. Alternatively, we could just go back to having a couple of affiliate seats and the rest community seats. As far as I recall, nothing in the bylaws forbids it. Andreas JN466 14:49, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

• @Frank Schulenberg and Barkeep49: Agreed that while some shortlisting helps keep the process manageable, other models ('primaries') are possible, and the group doing it should be refined into something that's not exclusive to affiliates and that cuts the gordian knot of "participating in a primary is like voting twice". –SJ talk  02:28, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Voter eligibility guidelines

• "or maintainers/contributors of any tools, bots, gadgets, and Lua modules on Wikimedia wikis." seems redundant - surely such a person would qualify on edit count alone. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 01:14, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Pppery, tools may be hosted off wiki (e.g., at Toolforge), and none of the work actually done on wiki. Also, while most bots rack up impressive edit counts, (a) some of them, such as w:en:User:Joe's Null Bot, don't, and (b) you don't really want the bot op logging in to the bot account for voting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:37, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

• GitLab should be mentioned as well, not just Gerrit. Frostly (talk) 05:02, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Also, AffCom, and LDWG should be included. Frostly (talk) 05:14, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Campaign rules

• مرحبًا، لدي تساؤلين
  1. هل توجد أسس أو آليات جديدة في اختيار المرشحين لتمثيل المجتمعات المهمشة
     • ، باعتبار أن التصويت مهما كانت طريقة حسابه تعود الغلبة للمجتمعات الأكثر حضورًا وتمثيلًا
  2. هل توجد آلية تمنع المترشحين للترويج لحملتهم في وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي أو أثناء الأحداث المجتمعتية
• تحياتي -- Nehaoua (talk) 09:57, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  About #2: Since it says candidates must Publish content about their candidacy and election events only in online spaces where it is welcome by the space organizers, I think that candidates are allowed to discuss their candidacy on social media, if that discussion is welcomed by the organizers.

  Some communities use social media very heavily. Others do not use social media. If we had a rule that said "no social media", some candidates would have problems talking to their home communities about the election. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:35, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  Hi @Nehaoua:, Thank you for taking the time to read the content and write a comment. In this proposed rules package for 2024, there are no mechanisms for selecting candidates from emerging communities. Regarding social media usage by the candidates, there are no restrictions in this proposed rules package. If you feel this is important to have, do let us know and we can discuss. KTC (talk) 20:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

• "Candidates must not link to any pages in their application statement." - why? * Pppery * _{it has begun} 01:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  I assumed that was to prevent end-runs around word counts, but I don't see any word count restrictions. But perhaps we could speculate that this is about the difficulty of monitoring off-wiki communications? ("Hi, I'm on MySpaceBook. I promise to like and subscribe to all your social media channels if you send me a private message there.") Exclusion of people who don't speak the same language (since it won't be translated) or who don't use the same off-wiki channels? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• More generally the entire section on must-nots seems superfluous to me - what problem are all of these rules trying to solve? * Pppery * _{it has begun} 01:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  I generally agree with this point. There are plenty of loopholes in the rules (as there were last year), the ambiguity only hurts candidates. Last election, we saw the election committee arbitrarily interpret the rules in favor of specific candidates to the detriment of others. The committee should be working to create an open and broad campaigning process instead of trying to lock it down. Legoktm (talk) 06:10, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  Hi, @Pppery:. The reasoning and background to the must not prohibition varies, generally with the intention to ensure a reasonably fair playing field, balancing the campaigning capacity between candidates from various communities. Unfortunately, volunteer capacity varies and without some rule balancing campaigning capacity, some candidates may overwhelm the channels and garner much more support simply because they had more available freetime or have access to channels or opportunities not available to other candidates. The Wikimania (and other community events) rule orginated from request made by the organisers during the 2021 Wikimania. Asking candidates to not campaign during Wikimania is understandable because campaigning during Wikimania might be a distraction or be offputting to other attendees. -- KTC (talk) 20:56, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  I agree that if the Wikimania organizers don't want campaigning at Wikimania that makes sense, but wouldn't it make more sense to change Publish content about their candidacy and election events only in online spaces where it is welcome by the space organizers. to Publish content about their candidacy and election events only in spaces where it is welcome by the space organizers. (deleting online) rather than dedicating an entire rule to it. I personally don't see why people having more time to actively campaign doing better is a bad thing, nor how the remaining rule (Attend Board of Trustees election-oriented community meet-ups without prior approval from the Elections Committee.) actually helps that cause - it feels like censorship. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 02:44, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

• What does "Run as a group with other candidates" mean? BilledMammal (talk) 01:22, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  I suspect that means "No w:en:Slate (elections)". You run independently, by yourself, for yourself. You don't make a "political party" or encourage people to vote for (or against) other candidates. "Hi, I'm Bob, I want to be elected" is good, but "Hi, I'm Bob, and Alice and Chris and I are all running as a group" is bad. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:10, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  This rule should be clarified whether it only applies to an explicit slate of candidates or whether candidates or forbidden from coordinating with other candidates or something in the middle. Legoktm (talk) 06:10, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  Hi. Yes, this originated all the way back in 2008 where the word "slate" was used. The wording was changed to hopefully be more easily translatable into other languages. @Legoktm:, we'll look to clarify exactly what the committee mean. Thanks -- KTC (talk) 20:38, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

• Last year, there was an attempt at a set of standard questions, but I found some of them to be tendentious ("Do you agree with me about this hot-button issue, or are you a bad person?") and most of them to miss the point. I have made a list of things that I would find actually useful to know at User:WhatamIdoing/Board candidates. The overall theme is "Do you have any business experience that would justify putting you in charge of a multi-million dollar corporation?" There may well be editors who believe that it's more important to be able to articulate the difference between the English Wikipedia's notability for corporations vs athletes than to know how a corporation's budget gets set, but I'm not one of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:28, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• "Board of Trustees election-oriented community meet-ups" merits more clarification after what happened in the last election. Does a podcast appearance count? Does holding IRC/Telegram/Matrix office hours count? Legoktm (talk) 06:10, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
• What happens if someone, knowing you're a candidate, approaches you at Wikimania to discuss your candidacy? Are you allowed to talk with them? Do you need to go outside? Do you say you just can't discuss it and move on? Are you allowed to even discuss general Wikimedia governance topics if they don't say the word "election"? Legoktm (talk) 06:10, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  Hi, thanks for your comments Legoktm. We'll go away and clarify what the committee mean/agrees on so that hopefully it's clear. -- KTC (talk) 20:47, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Prior discussion

For what it's worth, I predicted a year and a half ago that this was the precise thing that was going to happen. At the time, User:Pundit tried to make out that forevermore filtering all community votes through an affiliate-selected shortlist was the furthest thing from the board's mind. But as I said then, it was indeed clear as long ago as April 2022 that the board had abandoned its commitment to holding a free community election for the four seats that used to be community seats in 2024.

The only (marginal) improvement is that the shortlist is now longer (twelve rather than six). But this scheme still enables the affiliates, all of whom are financially dependent on the Foundation, to remove any particular candidate from the pool available to the community. It should be resisted. Andreas JN466 22:59, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Object to Wikimedia Foundation staff automatically getting the right to vote

I feel that there is a distinction between Wikimedia Foundation staff and Wikimedia Community and request that being hired at Wikimedia Foundation not grant a ballot automatically. The rule Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2024/Voter_eligibility_guidelines#Wikimedia_Foundation_staff_and_contractors proposes to give this demographic a ballot by default.

Here are some reasons supporting this position:

1. Evidence suggests that Wikimedia Foundation staff are not free to express their views Conflicts on social and ethical issues frequently arise between the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia community. When this happens, the Wikimedia Foundation issues a position, and there is never or rarely any individual expression of deviation from that position. Until and unless the Wikimedia Foundation develops public forums for public disagreement, then the institution is not compatible with the Wikimedia ideology for elections. Some examples of protests where 100% of Wikimedia Foundation where on the opposite side of community protesters include Community open letter on renaming, Wikimedia Enterprise, and Superprotect. There should be some history of individual deviance from WMF positions, but the evidence is not there to demonstrate that some WMF staffers will oppose the leadership to join the community in protest.
2. WMF is a voting block, and we have other rules in place to avoid group campaigns There is a rule in the elections that candidates cannot organize to campaign in groups. In practice, there are no wiki political parties, and no other voting blocks. Based on the WMF so routinely as an institution having complete solidarity in opposition to community organizers in major ethical protests, it is a voting block, and word and advice will circulate around the WMF in favor of certain candidates. The number of WMF staff is great and can influence elections. Granting this group votes when they otherwise do not qualify is a big decision.
3. WMF has a conflict of interest against community interests The Wikimedia Movement does not belong to the Wikimedia Foundation, but rather to the community of editors. Unique among all tech platforms, Wikimedia projects are community-governed, and not governed by top leadership as Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, and other platforms are. We have always been a community platform, and we need to protect this unique characteristic of Wikimedia projects. WMF staff already get supremely privileged access to benefits including salary, program budgets, the attention of decision makers who do not talk with community, and extreme trust in that they do their jobs without the transparency that is routine and expected even for small Wikimedia community grants. Among all the voting demographics, WMF staff are the ones that are furthest removed from the routine ethics and ideology and practical experience of collaborative crowdsourced online user activities. If staff vote for candidates who might de-fund community interests to fund (their own, their co-workers) staff interests, then this is a conflict of interest.
4. There is no Wikimedia community support for staff voting The implementation of WMF staff voting is not the result of a community request, community conversation, or any transparent process. This rule is in place because the Wikimedia Foundation advocates for itself in all things, and when this election is distributing power, the WMF as a corporation is trying to claim a share of it. If WMF staff really are to vote, then do things the Wikimedia way, and find some Wikimedia community members to organize the community discussion to change the old rules and implement this new way forward. Staff voting is a new concept; it has not always happened; it is being proposed because staff are writing it in and not community wishes.
5. Granting more power to staff stifles leadership development, community/staff relations, consensus building, and power-sharing There are already investment deficits in many Wikimedia communities. Granting the power of voting to already powerful and over-supported Wikimedia Foundation staff will impair other attempts to raise up underrepresented demographics who should be organizing their own voter drives, including in lower-middle income countries where our Movement Strategy recommendations say to Ensure Equity in Decision-making and Invest in Skills and Leadership Development. If WMF staff want to participate in elections, then they already have the power to give grants, resources, training, staff time, and software development to whichever demographics they choose as investment targets. That already is highly influential, and and recruiting more community voters is more aligned with our other strategy goals. There is no part of the Movement Strategy which recommends moving more influence from the community to WMF staff, especially on social and ethical issues of the sort which elections decide.
6. If staff vote, then they will also unduly participate in election campaigns If WMF are stakeholders as voters, then they are also stakeholders who will talk about elections with each other and Wikimedia community members. Staff have highly privileged access to Wikimedia community conferences, conventions, online talks, and community conversation channels. If WMF staff take positions on candidates, or even if they express positions on controversial issues, then Wikimedia community members will hear this. Staff are influential because especially for people in lower middle income countries, being friendly with staff is a pathway to accessing wealth and support in many forms, and being friendly rountinely means sharing someone's point of view. With the existing power disparity of most WMF staff being global top 10% income earners, and most Wikimedia community members having much, much less money and power, WMF staff are extremely privileged in influencing community sentiment in elections. We could conceivably restrict WMF staff from discussing election topics, but I do not think that is possible practically, and having elections means that voters are encouraged to talk about election issues and express their interest in different candidates. If WMF staff join election conversations - which they have not in previous elections, because they instinctively know that it would be taboo - then it would be inappropriate and offensive. Let's stop this now, so as not to begin justifying this over time.

Bluerasberry (talk) 18:05, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

• I agree with the above, but I acknowledge that this kind of rule was originally introduced for pragmatic reasons which didn't go away, such as the possibility that community members who became staff would lose the right to vote due to having less time to edit (though nowadays a requirement of 20 edits in 2? years seems easy enough). I also appreciate in principle that it's possible to be participants in the Wikimedia movement in ways other than making edits. It's also good for criteria to be easy to apply automatically. With this in mind, I wonder if "being (full time?) staff of a Wikimedia entity" (or a committee member or a grantee etc.) could be considered equivalent to meeting the total edits criterion, and be accompanied by a requirement to also meet some extremely low number of edits (for example 5 edits on Meta-Wiki in the last 2 years). Having shown a minimum degree of interest in the Wikimedia community would show that the person is not voting just as a WMF staff member or other interest group. Nemo 22:11, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

@RamzyM (WMF): I am pinging you because you are the first staff listed at Wikimedia Foundation elections committee. I previously proposed the above listed rule change to the upcoming election plan. Can you arrange for a response from the election committee? Thanks. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:48, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi Lane, thanks for the ping. Let me relay this to the committee. Best, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 02:40, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2024 Selection

(cross-posting from Wikimedia-l and Board noticeboard -- RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 14:26, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Dear all,

(This message is also available in Arabic, French, Igbo, and more here)

This year, the term of 4 (four) Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees will come to an end [1]. The Board invites the whole movement to participate in this year’s selection process and vote to fill those seats.

The Elections Committee will oversee this process with support from Foundation staff [2]. The Governance Committee created a Board Selection Working Group from trustees who cannot be candidates in the 2024 community- and affiliate-selected trustee selection process composed of Dariusz Jemielniak, Nataliia Tymkiv, Esra'a Al Shafei, Kathy Collins, and Shani Evenstein Sigalov [3].  The group is tasked with providing Board oversight for the 2024 trustee selection process, and for keeping the Board informed. More details on the roles of the Elections Committee, Board, and staff are here [4].

Here are the key planned dates:

• May 2024: Call for candidates and call for questions
• June 2024: Affiliates vote to shortlist 12 candidates (no shortlisting if 15 or fewer candidates apply) [5]
• June-August 2024: Campaign period
• End of August / beginning of September 2024: Two-week community voting period
• October–November 2024: Background check of selected candidates
• Board’s Meeting in December 2024: New trustees seated

Learn more about the 2024 selection process - including the detailed timeline, the candidacy process, the campaign rules, and the voter eligibility criteria - on this Meta-wiki page.

Election Volunteers

Another way to be involved with the 2024 selection process is to be an Election Volunteer. Election Volunteers are a bridge between the Elections Committee and their respective community. They help ensure their community is represented and mobilize them to vote. Learn more about the program and how to join on this Meta-wiki page.

Thank you!

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Results#Elected

[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Committee:Elections_Committee_Charter

[3] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes:2023-08-15#Governance_Committee

[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/Roles

[5] Even though the ideal number is 12 candidates for 4 open seats, the shortlisting process will be triggered if there are more than 15 candidates because the 1–3 candidates that are removed might feel ostracized, and it would be a lot of work for affiliates to carry out the shortlisting process to only eliminate 1–3 candidates from the candidate list. Pundit (talk) 17:54, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

"Significant experience in movement building and organizing"

I would hope that anyone who has organized efforts with others in editing the projects would qualify!

The way this is phrased has made some people question whether it is prioritizing things like editathons, public event organizing, or [user group / formal committee] participation over planning and implementing tools, procedures, and wikiprojects to improvement the wikis. Could the election committee clarify? –SJ talk  02:33, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

@Sj: Where did you read that phrase? It's not on the front page. Maybe one of the pages listet here Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 07:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I see it in the "Candidate application" rubric which describes how initial candidate interest will be triaged. –SJ talk  14:27, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I guess the main purpose of that phrase is to "exclude" users who are only-authors and nothing else. How much more is required? Hard to say.

I remember an ElectCom debate about how in-/exclusive that section should be:

• Too exclusive: we might loose some good candidates
• Too inclusive: we might get too many unsuitable candidates

Candidates should be aware that the Board of Trustees is not about content (writing articles on wikipedia, taking fotos for commons, .....) but about managing a global movement of volunteers. Some meta-experience with (our) movement and it's organization is expected.

The details are blurry: I myself was member of a formal committee (German ArbCom), but I wouldn't consider that enough experience for a trustee seat. Affiliations Committee would be good. User groups sounds also good to me, also organizing (!) events and editathons. Not sure what exactly you mean with planning and implementing tools, procedures, and wikiprojects to improvement the wikis. But writing bots and scripts is probably rather unrelated to what a trustee needs to know and do.

Other methods of evaluating your own qualifications, is to have a look at the board members, at the moment they became a Trustee / their candidacy page. You could also check what the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is acutally doing: Look at their resolutions, activity reports etc. If most of the topics are alien to you, maybe you're not yet ready and should gain more experience? But if you spot options for improvement, think "I could do this better", then you have probaly enough experience.

Maybe User:NTymkiv (WMF) wants to add something. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 18:47, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

The BoT is a very specific, high-level governance body. While editing the projects is quite essential in understanding the communities (especially if done across different projects/languages), it does not translate into any specific experience, skills, or expertise for this role. Involvement in ANY movement building and organizing, in a form of organization building, leadership, management, governance is key. If this experience comes from Wikimedia organizations - that's great, but I could just as well see someone with significant experience from Creative Commons or OpenStreetMaps, or Linux bring a great perspective and skills. In principle, I personally would love to see people with significant editing experience AND governance experience from other organizations to apply, as we need both fresh perspectives and an intimate understanding of how our movement works. It is essential, though, to understand that editing alone is not the same thing as movement building and organizing. Pundit (talk) 11:59, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Propose to combine board election with charter vote

I propose that the Wikimedia Foundation elections committee combine the ratification vote for the Movement_Charter#Timeline with the Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024. The reason is that these are major elections which require huge amounts of volunteer labor but there are no documented plans to arrange that kind of participation. Combining the votes would save volunteer labor in outreach if these two major elections scheduled for July and August 2024 became one bigger election.

Right now another major Wikimedia Movement election is happening with

• Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024

The election committee already seems overburdened as it is not responding to questions on the talk page at Talk:Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024. This election is being discussed in many other places but the election page is not documenting this, and whatever outreach happened to promote the election is not resulting in Wikimedia community organizers repeating and remixing calls to this election in the usual channels. With volunteer organizers already showing election and outreach fatigue in this case, and with the other elections so close in time but also lacking even finalization of schedules and rules weeks before the deadline, I think that combining the elections would help maintain voter enthusiasm and make more efficient use of organizer time and energy.

@RamzyM (WMF): Thoughts from the election committee? Bluerasberry (talk) 16:18, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

"The election committee already seems overburdened as it is not responding to questions on the talk page at Talk:Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024." is not true. --Ameisenigel (talk) 20:22, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

The Movement Charter also has its own Election Commission (Talk:Movement Charter#Recruiting members for the Charter Election Commission). --Ameisenigel (talk) 20:24, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

The U4C elections are not optimal and not without some minor problems. But it's the first time we have U4C elections so we all lack experience. Single ElectCom members can't decide on their own, we need to consult and not everyone is available 24/7. Committees in general are just slow. Also, EC had little time to prepare the U4C elections. The board elections on the other hand: We prepare them since about half a year. Candidate questions and requirements, eligibilitiy requirements, translations, .....

Combining the elections might be contraproductive and lead to the overburden by running two elections in parallel with different requirements. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 11:21, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Ameisenigel: I mean no offense to say that the committee is overburdened. Perhaps I am in error to judge that talk page activity is lower than normal for elections, but I feel that I am correct to say that there are some odd things about this election. We could talk it through, or it might just be more constructive and positive to make particular commitments that future elections will meet certain named standards of quality.

@Der-Wir-Ing: Combining the elections would be counterproductive but I am comparing that to the usefulness of running two of the biggest elections in Wikimedia Movement history a month apart, which also makes no sense. Here is another proposal - can we move the Movement Charter ratification 9 months into the future? What is the urgency that both of these complicated elections, neither of which have confirmed schedules right now, must happen so soon with so haste, and that they have to be separate, but they also have to occur at nearly the same time? To me it makes more sense to either 1) combine them or 2) separate them by 9-12 months.

The Wikimedia community are volunteers who need time to discuss big decisions in advance, talk during voting, then reflect and report on the outcomes. The proposed schedules do not match the amount of volunteer labor that our community organizers are able to provide. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:07, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Late response: as a point of observation, the timeline for Movement Charter ratification is breathtakingly quick and could benefit from more time. It will be released on the 18 June, and then ratification is from 25 June to 9 July. That is only 7 days to digest the Movement Charter and then a 14 day voting period, that takes into account both individual vote and affiliate voting. For a process that has been years long, this period is extremely short. Affiliates typically meet on a monthly basis and should be given at least 4-6 weeks, yet there is only 3 weeks total. - Fuzheado (talk) 18:42, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

هل هناك إمكانية لفوز ممثل عن مجتمع مهمش

مرحبا، هل هناك تغييرات في طريقة الانتخابات، لأن كل الانتخابات السابقة حدد مصيرها المجتمعات الأكثر اصواتا (كل الفائزين من اوربا وامريكا الشمالية،0 من اسيا و0 من افريقيا)، وكل مرة نطالب بتعديل بسيط لتمكين المجتمعات المهمشة من المشاركة في صنع القرار، حتى هذا التجديد الجزئي لن يترك الفرصة ابدا لهم، فهل فعلا هناك امكانية لمجتمع مهمش او اقل تمثيلا (كالمجتمع العربي) له امل في الفوز بتمثيل، مادامت الانتخابات عامة وبالطريقة السابقة تحياتي. Nehaoua (talk) 11:59, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Translation from deepl:

Is it possible for a representative of a marginalized community to win?

Hello, are there any changes in the election method, because all previous elections were determined by the most voted communities (all winners from Europe and North America, 0 from Asia and 0 from Africa), and every time we ask for a simple amendment to enable marginalized communities to participate in decision-making, even this partial renewal will never leave the opportunity for them, so is there really a possibility for a marginalized or underrepresented community (such as the Arab community) to have hope to win representation, as long as the elections are general and the previous method, Greetings. Nehaoua (talk) 11:59, 16 May 2024 (UTC) Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 12:14, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

@Nehaoua,

Tu tuches deux sous-sujets:

1. changes de methode d'election
2. participation des communautés

As-tu des propositions concretes? Moi, j'aimerais aussi d'ameliorer la participation dans notre wikivers. Vous-avez deja proposés des choses? Où et quand?

--

Mais oui, c'est possible.

En 2017 Abbad Diraneyya – (User:عباد ديرانية) avait plus de 60% de soutien.

En 2019 je vois le candidat Reda Kerbouche (probablement de l'Algerie) qui etait proche d'etre elu: Affiliate-selected Board seats/2019/Results.

Et dans le Board aujoud'hui, je vois une personne avec un nom arabe, originaire d'un pays arabe.

--

Dans les elections pour le U4C, il y a deux candidates arabes, et la participitation de la communiauté arabe est plus grande comme chez autres elections. Mais il y avait deux candidats forts. Et je crois qu'ils aient des bonnes chances d'etre elus.

Cordialement Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 13:07, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

@Der-Wir-IngBonjour, bien que Rida ait reçu le soutien de plusieurs communautés, il n'a pas eu de chance lors d'une élection globale. Dans une élection partielle, ses chances sont pratiquement nulles. De plus, l'autre candidat(e) arabe est désigné ne fait pas partie du communauté autant q'un(e) utilisateur(e). Cordialement Nehaoua (talk) 13:18, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

@Der-Wir-Ing Effectivement, pour U4C, la chance de succès est quasiment de 100% grâce à la sélection par région. et ce n'est pas un centre de décision important. Cordialement Nehaoua (talk) 13:21, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand you. Laelanne Epono (talk) 14:48, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@Laelanne Epono It seems you didn't understand what I wrote, which isn't surprising since I wrote in Arabic and you responded in English. I'm not obliged to write in a particular language, and expressing myself in my native language reflects strength and confidence in what I want to convey. Cordially Nehaoua (talk) 17:53, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Mobile view not working

Screenshot of mobile view of a candidate page

The mobile view of candidate pages for this election do not immediately present candidate info because the statements are in a clickable drop down section.

I suggest changing the template so that candidate statements are on view whenever readers arrive to the page.

Many new readers will not know what to click to find the statements otherwise.

Bluerasberry (talk) 14:19, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Let me check what our options are for the mobile web view -- thanks for raising this. RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 16:08, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Based on a colleagues' suggestion I've made this change to the template, and when I open it from mobile web it looks collapsible now. Let me know if this resolves your question. Cheers, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Y Yes looks great now! That fixed it. Bluerasberry (talk) 02:19, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Duplicated question in statement template

The questions template for candidates contains a duplicated question, "Can you describe a policy". I suggest editing the template to remove it. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:19, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this, Lane, and apologies for oversight in my part in this template. As approved by the EC, the third question for the Leadership Experience optional part should read "How have you been able to empower people to make their voices heard?". Again, apologies for the effect on this oversight to your overall application. RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 15:39, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

courtesy ping to all candidates: @Bobbyshabangu, Oesjaar, Eng-Bavly, Erikemery, Fjmustak, Kritzolina, Laurentius, Alhassan Mohammed Awal, Rosiestep, Tesleemah, Tochiprecious, and Victoria: RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Okay, the new question is added. Is your suggestion that everything stays the same, but now candidates should add this question to the list?

We are 8 hours from the deadline in a 3-week and we have a word limit. I propose that we do either of these things -

1. Strike the question and leave that blank, and move it to Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024/Questions for candidates for the next round of questions
2. Increase the word limit to allow for answers to that question

Even increasing the world limit would be a challenge to ensure that everyone has time to answer the question by the deadline.

I am happy to answer the question but I would like to know if I need to revise my other answers to meet the word limit. Thanks. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:04, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

ElectCom is discussing this already. We'll find a reasonable solution. The deadline concerns especially the application itself, to me it seems possible so far to grant some extra time to answer that question. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 19:24, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Midnight deadline

Yet another reminder that using 23:59 Anywhere on Earth as the deadline is far more equitable and inclusive than a "UTC" deadline. - Fuzheado (talk) 18:44, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

It is indeed. I didn't pay attention to that detail, because I was busy with the U4C election. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 19:20, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Please make this a norm across the movement. –SJ talk  04:34, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Elections Committee note on the candidate eligibility criteria

Hi all,

The Elections Committee received a query regarding the candidate eligibility criteria, in particular that one of the accepted candidate do not meet the voter eligbility critieria.

In previous board election, the requirements state that a candidate must be eligible as a voter. That line was unintentionally left out by the EC during our process updating the rules for this year process. As it was not included in the published criteria for this year, it is the position of the committee that the candidate in question thus meet the published requirements. As such, their candidacy have been accepted for the forthcoming vote.

Chair, On behalf of the Elections Committee -- KTC (talk) 19:45, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Community Questions

Hi all,

@Bobbyshabangu, Oesjaar, Erikemery, Fjmustak, Kritzolina, Bluerasberry, Laurentius, Nadzik, Alhassan Mohammed Awal, Rosiestep, Tesleemah, and Victoria:

The Elections Committee have shortlisted 5 questions from the Wikimedia community members to be answered by the candidates. The questions are:

1. [Question 1] The creation and implementation of a Universal Code of Conduct has been a Board priority since 2020. The original timeline for the implementation of the UCoC was wildly unrealistic, the UCoC was implemented by the Board without community ratification, and the first Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee was recently elected without a sufficient number of members to form a quorum. What lessons should the Board take from the UCoC process, especially about how the Board interacts with volunteers?
2. [Question 2] There has been some trend towards devolving or sharing the governance of the Wikimedia movement, including having a separate board for the Wikimedia Endowment and the proposed Global Council in the Movement Charter. What do you see as the positives and negatives of these trends, and what is your overall assessment of the work so far?
3. [Question 3] In the 2024-25 draft Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan, there is a statement that Wikimedia content is becoming less visible as part of the Internet's essential infrastructure, because an increasingly closed and artificial intelligence-mediated internet doesn't attribute the source of the facts, or even link back to the Wikimedia projects. What responsibility does the Board and the Wikimedia Foundation have in enforcing the CC-by-SA licensing of the content from all projects by AI or other digital media information formats that do not respect the copyright law?
4. [Question 4] Wikimedia Foundation's Annual Plan recognizes multiple trends negative to the Wikimedia movement: decreasing visibility, audiences moving to a novel competition such as artificial intelligence solutions and Internet influencers, increasing information warfare and erosion of trust, necessary technical investments while the revenue growth was flattening. At the same time, the movement's products and processes change very, very slowly. Which bold steps would you recommend to the Wikimedia Foundation?
5. [Question 5] What are your thoughts about systemic bias on Wikimedia projects, both in their content and their demographics, and including identity-based, language-based, economic/resource-based, ideological/worldview-based, and other forms of system bias? What measures or initiatives do you think the Board can appropriately take to address systemic bias?

Per the updated timeline, candidates have until July 1, 2024 at 23:59 UTC to answer the questions at the respective pages.

We thank all community members that have proposed their questions for the candidates.

Chair, On behalf of the Elections Committee -- KTC (talk) 13:12, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

@KTC, thank you for the questions. I would like to proceed with answering all of the community questions that were asked (unless already present as a full/part question above). As there is no dedicated space for that, I will answer them here. Nadzik (talk) 13:28, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

The links to the answer page for all candidates are under [Question]. Victoria (talk) 10:01, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

@Nadzik Out of curiosity, are you still planning to answer all the questions? Soni (talk) 00:54, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

@Soni, yes; I have answer to most of them already, unfortunately Wikimania registration launch slowed me down a bit. They should be out by the end of the weekend! Nadzik (talk) 12:44, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, I answered the questions already Tesleemah (talk) 03:33, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Deadline to answer questions is approaching

@Bobbyshabangu@Oesjaar@Erikemery@Fjmustak@Kritzolina@Bluerasberry@Laurentius@Nadzik@Alhassan Mohammed Awal@Rosiestep@Tesleemah@Victoria:

Reminder that the deadline to answer questions for candidates is 23:59 UTC, 1 July 2024, a little over four hours from the time of this posting. All candidates are required to answer the questions put forward by the Elections Committee, as set out in the Candidate Guidelines. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

at least one Wikimedia Foundation grant since August 4, 2024

Hello. Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024/Voter eligibility guidelines#Wikimedia movement community organizers has a passage below:

> ...at least one Wikimedia Foundation grant since August 4, 2024

Is this date "August 4, 2024" correct? -- miya (talk) 05:13, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Changed it to 2022. That was an obvious copy mistake. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 18:40, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Community Written Guides

In order to better allow voters to make informed choices, I have started writing a guide for all the BoT candidates as I evaluate them - User:Soni/BoT 2024 guide

I also started Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024/Community voting guides to collect all such community written guides. That should help anyone else evaluating the candidates by collecting them all in one place.

Soni (talk) 05:31, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Answer to all community-asked questions by Nadzik

As I committed myself earlier on this page, and announced during the Candidates' session at Wikimania 2024 last week, I would like to link to my answers to all of the community-asked questions (not only the 5 selected by the Elections Committee) which I answered last month.

You can read all of my answers here. I am happy to clarify anything if needed. Nadzik (talk) 20:39, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

End of "campaign period"

@Bobbyshabangu, Kritzolina, Oesjaar, Erikemery, Fjmustak, Bluerasberry, Laurentius, Nadzik, Alhassan Mohammed Awal, Rosiestep, Tesleemah, and Victoria:

Per the timeline, we now mark the end of the scheduled campaign period for this election, with the vote opening in a week's time. We strongly recommend that all candidates give yourself and the community a break from additional campaigning activities prior to the vote opening. Having said that, we note that there are no additional restriction imposed onto the candidate guidelines during this period, and that the existing rules apply.

Regards,

On behalf of the Elections Committee -- KTC (talk) 23:11, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the message, it is duly noted Tesleemah (talk) 23:58, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the heads up. The support and due diligence by the election committee has been quite remarkable throughout the campaign period. I wish myself and my colleague candidates good luck. Alhassan Mohammed Awal (talk) 06:57, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Bug with SecurePoll?

SecurePoll seems just to be counting my Metawiki edits rather than my edits across Wikimedia. Is there a criterion that just counts metawiki edits? Abzeronow (talk) 00:23, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I faced the same problem too. I'm already eligible for the vote. Ahri Boy (talk) 00:38, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Same here. Will patiently wait :) Shushugah (talk) 01:43, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Same here. I can see "Sorry, you cannot vote. You need to have made at least 300 edits to vote in this election, you have made 18." However, the AccountEligibility page shows that I have 918 edits in the English Wikipedia. Grillofrances (talk) 02:26, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Same here.--Faisal ^talk 02:27, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I have the same problem, It says I have only made 10 edits, even though I have over 10,000 on enwiki. I Am Andumé (talk) 02:40, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

staff and electcom are dealing with the situation. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 03:12, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I made a change to the configuration which may have fixed the issue, but I can't test it. Please let me know if that did it! Joe Sutherland (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 04:00, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Voting now works for me. Thanks DWI and Joe Sutherland. Abzeronow (talk) 17:47, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

No problem, sorry for the mistake. If you would like more info about this I filed a bug report, task T373945. Joe Sutherland (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 22:16, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Homewiki

The selection "Wähle Dein aktivstes Wiki" is not working, i can only choose "de.wikipedia.org". Commons is my homewiki. ----Ailura (talk) 05:38, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. This data is not actually being used for this election, but the bug report is well noted. I will file something technically tomorrow. Joe Sutherland (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 06:18, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Hello, "Currently, when one votes in a SecurePoll election on votewiki, no matter where they clicked the link to vote, their home wiki is logged as the home wiki as defined in CentralAuth / by SUL". The bug T329922 discusses this, unfortunately I do not think this is going to be implemented in this election though. Thanks. – NahidSultan (WMF) (talk) 06:25, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Transparency regarding removed answers

I noticed that KTC removed (I understand as an election official) the responses placed by Fjmustak. The current placeholder text states "No response yet". That doesn't seem very transparent. At the very least, wouldn't it be more transparent to state something along the lines of "Response was submitted too late and removed by XYZ"? Effeietsanders (talk) 14:30, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I have actioned that. Thanks for the suggestion. -- KTC (talk) 16:15, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, User:Fjmustak's answers can be viewed on his user page. Andreas JN466 19:52, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Questions I asked the candidates on August 25, 2024, and were not answered, but on the contrary were deleted

I was at Wikimania in Katowice, I entered to the session where each candidate introduced himself for 3 minutes. I prepared questions for the candidates, but to my surprise they were not allowed to ask them questions. There were so many sessions in Wikimania, some of them were very very long. On such an important topic, the Wikimedia Foundation did not see fit to leave time for questions. When I returned to Israel, I posted the questions on the questions page for candidates. No one answered except one candidate. Thank you very much. The questions were removed on the bureaucratic grounds, that the time for questions had passed. Prefering bureaucracy over substance. I hope that what I wrote on the talk page now will not be deleted. Hanay (talk) 14:52, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

1. A question for all candidates: What do you think about the use of Wikipedia for political purposes including the use of banners and changing the site's logo to a political logo. If you are elected, will you act to change the regulations, so that there is no permission to do so? And if in a certain Wikipedia they do it anyway, are you in favor of the Wikimedia Foundation's intervention in the matter, including blocking the editors who initiated and did it? Thanks Hanay (talk) 17:21, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

   I'm glad you raised this concern -- I didn't realize that Wikipedia had been doing that.

   What were the campaigns supporting? Tonymetz (talk) 17:24, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

   Enter this link here. Use google translate and you wiil understand. See also File:The Arabic Wikipedia, blacked out for Gaza identification (Israel-Gaza war 23 Decmber 2023 (1).JPG, and this category on Commons. Hanay (talk) 17:32, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

   I did not receive a response from any candidate. I am tagging you, I hope it will draw your attention: User:Bobbyshabangu, User:Kritzolina, User:Oesjaar, User:Erikemery, User:Fjmustak, User:Bluerasberry, User:Laurentius, User:Nadzik, User:Alhassan Mohammed Awal, User:Rosiestep, User:Tesleemah, User:Victoria ThankS Hanay (talk) 16:46, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

   Thanks for calling my attention to this, however this page is for proposed questions, from which all 5 questions were selected for all candidates to answer which we already did. You can find it here.

   I will just give generic answer to your question. Any thing that will tamper with the neutrality and non-bias policy of the foundation is strictly not allowed within the movement. You can direct further complaints or report any irregularities you notice to appropriate authorities. Tesleemah (talk) 04:04, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

   Thank you for answering me. But you sent me to this page again. And the question I asked does not appear in the 5 selected questions. If I don't get a response from the other candidates, I will have no choice but to contact them on their meta talk page. This is a fundamental question for me regarding my vote. Hanay (talk) 12:15, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

   Hi User@Hanay My response to your question is rather long and requires one to give context, in fact it's the type of question that is best answered via a Zoom call. Response below:

   • I've discovered over time that editing Wikipedia makes one an activist by default - e.g I began by editing for fun but over time I realised that there's a shortage in African content, Most African Wikipedians don't have data, many times I ran an edit workshop I experience IP Blocking even if the participants of the workshop are not editing in the English Wiki ( Here's a recent block which happened 2 weeks ago which I had to abandon)
   • Now I'm not only a Wikipedian but an advocate for digital inclusion, I want access to free data for use of Wikipedia in the Global South, I want the UCoC and Friendly Space Policy to explicitly protect new users ( For now both policies provides a general approach for the protection of newbies.)
   • In order to highlight these issues we may as a community choose to have a banner or raise them by way of writing on meta or change the colour on each logo of our small language wikis to drive the point. It's up to us.

   In short:

   We are diverse communities, and we are not going to agree on issues, it's up to each community how they want to raise their issues, whether through a banner or via meta, but it should be within the confine of the UCoC or Friendly Space Policy. The Movement Charter can be a good instrument to address this. Bobbyshabangu (talk) 22:26, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Bureaucratic Overreach and Community Discontent in Hebrew Wikipedia

The situation in Hebrew Wikipedia is very complicated. Amid the judicial overhaul and the war in the Middle East, dozens of editors are being blocked by the bureaucrats without sharing the reasons with the community or even with those who are blocked; IP checks and intrusive private questions are being conducted without sufficient reasons, and it seems that the bureaucrats are trampling the community's rules without being accountable or giving reports on their doings. Among those permanently blocked are mainly new editors and editors from the liberal side of the spectrum. Many veteran editors, including myself, believe the situation is wrong, but we are met with rude responses or ignored.

In the last two months, numerous complaints have been filed in the Meta-Wiki RfC. These complaints have not yet been addressed.

I wanted to ask the Board candidates:

1. Do you think this situation requires intervention from the Foundation? I have seen in the past that in the Croatian Wikipedia, bureaucrats were removed, and there are other examples.
2. Do you think the team handling these complaints should be expanded? The situation is unbearable, and meanwhile, the "state of emergency" enforced by the bureaucrats is becoming entrenched, making it more difficult to restore the situation as time passes.

Thank you very much. Freddy9 (talk) 18:37, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

@Freddy9 This perhaps is more suited to the newly seated Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee. They might be a better source of resolving such disputes spanning an entire wiki than the BoT directly. Soni (talk) 15:18, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

It is still important to know what the candidates think about the issues raised. Too bad they choose not to respond. Hanay (talk) 12:54, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Hanay, @Soni gave a well suited answer already to your questions. I'm not sure all candidates intentionally choose not to respond as No one was tagged to it, I didn't see your question myself too until I was going through the talk page here.

Also, the time of campaign has passed so BoT candidate might not want to bypass the campaign guide and timeline, Do bear with us. Tesleemah (talk) 01:32, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Also, if alleged check users abuses are involved, the OC can take a look :) Superpes15 (talk) 22:00, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

@Freddy9 The role of the Board is not to oversee the day-to-day operations, but to advance the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation. As @Soni and @Superpes15 have pointed out, there are already bodies that can look into specific abuses.

While project communities should be independently run with minimal involvement of the Foundation, egregious acts that go against the Universal Code of Conduct and counter to the mission that cannot be settled within the community should be tackled by competent global bodies.

The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to "empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally".

As a candidate for the Board, I've made it clear that two issues I feel passionately about that I believe the Foundation needs to focus on that advance its mission are combatting misinformation and disinformation and advancing human rights. Shutting down speech, whether it is due to blatant transphobia or to promoting government propaganda, is a clear violation of these human rights, and should have no place within the movement.

So to answer your first question, it is not up to the Board to decide how to handle this specific case. As for the second question, I do believe it is important for the Foundation to invest in making sure situations such as these are handled swiftly and fairly, whether it be by expanding the team or developing clear mission-aligned policies. Fjmustak (talk) 23:39, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Interpret a ballot

This is ranked choice voting. A voter puts candidate A in position 1 and candidate B in position 12. They do not complete the rest of the ballot. Is this a possible scenario with these ballots?

Does the voting system recognize candidate A as that voters' first choice and candidate B as their least-preferred option, or does it just interpret that ballot as A being first choice, and B being second preference, with all other candidates less-preferred than B? Thanks. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:07, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Hey @Bluerasberry, I mentioned that to you when you raised this during our Candidate workshop at Wikimania. Per FAQ for voters: "Candidates need to be ranked without skipping numbers in-between. Skipping numbers will result in an error.".

• If you rank the following: Candidate A #1 and Candidate B #12, SecurePoll should not allow you to vote.
• If you rank the following: Candidate A #1 and Candidate B #2, your vote will go to candidate A, then to B. If both are eliminated, your vote no longer counts and goes towards no one (you can see this Sankey diagram to understand better what this means; the votes going to "Nobody").

I hope that this clears the situation :) The situation from the past election (I don't remember the year) you mentioned should not be possible to happen. Nadzik (talk) 17:29, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for comforting my anxiety an additional time. This is the answer that I wanted. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:53, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I was at Wikimania in Katowice, I entered to the session where each candidate introduced himself for 3 minutes. I prepared questions for the candidates, but to my surprise they were not allowed to ask them questions. There were so many sessions in Wikimania, some of them were very very long. On such an important topic, the Wikimedia Foundation did not see fit to leave time for questions. Hanay (talk) 12:56, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Why am I not eligible to vote?

i have an account and am a member, why can't I have a say/vote? Taint Cheese (talk) 02:36, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Which of the criteria to you fulfill? --Ameisenigel (talk) 06:35, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

@Taint Cheese: Check https://meta.toolforge.org/accounteligibility/76/Taint+Cheese, ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 08:16, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Racist canvassing trying to discourage people from voting for a candidate and dehumanising the ethnic group he belongs to

Hi, all, as the title says I would like to report racist canvassing (hidden in polite language in the first message) to discourage voting for them because the candidate is Palestinian. This is covered by the Universal Code of Conduct which applies to all Wikimedia wikis:

• Hate speech in any form, or discriminatory language aimed at vilifying, humiliating, inciting hatred against individuals or groups on the basis of who they are or their personal beliefs

Since this message isn't in English I'll provide the Google translated version.

I'm unsure of any of the rules around the election, hopefully someone on the election board or election volunteers can explain if there are any rules related to the election other than the UCoC that would cover this, or if someone could decribe what next steps could be taken.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 10:39, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Another one here, even more explicitly targetting him because he is Palestinian (I can't seem to make a direct link to the translated version, I've copied the Google translation below)

• It's outrageous how a person uses a neutral force like Wikipedia to aggressively promote a one-sided political agenda in an official and declared way. In my opinion, anyone who can - should try to vote and rank the Palestinian (Farah) in the lowest number, if only for the audacity to use Wikimedia with a vulgar and blatant political bias.

John Cummings (talk) 09:39, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Just pinging the committee to make sure this isn't lost in the large list of messages, AbhiSuryawanshi, Ameisenigel, Carlojoseph14, Der-Wir-Ing, Emufarmers, HakanIST, KTC, Mervat. Please excuse me for pinging you all, I don't know the process so I don't know if I should raise this with someone in particular. Thanks for your time, John Cummings (talk) 10:29, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

• Link to UCoC violation complaint on Hebrew Wikipedia I have reported this as a Universal Code of Conduct violation on the Hebrew Wikipedia since the messages were posted there. Thanks, John Cummings (talk) 20:14, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Responses

@John Cummings: I see your first link is a message posted by Mbkv717. The second link does not work for me. 0xDeadbeef (talk) 11:51, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

0xDeadbeef Thanks very much for catching the link not working, I don't know why it broke, I've added in the original version with no translation and just copying in the translated text here. John Cummings (talk) 12:37, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

here is a link to the comment in question. Barkeep49 (talk) 14:56, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

As the message John quotes clearly shows, this is not about the candidate's ethnicity, but rather his positions. The quoted message follows an earlier one where a user called attention to the candidate's own words regarding the Gaza war. Since the neutrality of Wikipedia in this issue is of particular importance to many Hebrew wikipedia editors, the candidate's position caused a strong negative reaction among them, hence the attitude toward him in subsequent messages.

A candidate's position and stated goals are the most central and legitimate reason to support or oppose them, and being of one ethnicity or another does not make them immune from opposition. Okedem (talk) 18:47, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Since the candidate was identified by their ethnonational group in the comment that John quoted, your interpretation does not seem to be entirely representative of the situation. Richard Nevell (talk) 19:00, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

He was so identified because he is the only one of that ethnicity, and so it is a simple shorthand. Okedem (talk) 19:09, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

A completely superfluous shorthand since the candidate has a name. Richard Nevell (talk) 19:14, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Every human being on this planet "has a name", and yet, nationality or ethnicity is often used as shorthand. Phrases like "the Russian guy", or "the German woman" are extremely common. Your concept of when a shorthand is "superfluous" is clearly not shared by everyone. Okedem (talk) 19:20, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I wrote the first quoted message. I completely disagree with the framing of it as "racist canvassing". As can also be seen in the machine translation, I didn't specified the relevant candidate's ethnicity; I would not have wrote it if the candidate wouldn't have expressed in that way and I would have wrote the same message if any one of the candidates would have presented similar opinions - from any ethnicity, nationality, race, religion, gender etc. Since as far as I can see there are no 2 candidates who presented the same opinions and future goals, it is clear that at least some of these opinions or goals can be unpopular among different Wikipedians and can be criticized. When Wikipedian rate different candidates, most of them probably takes into account the perspective each candidate as they present it. If for example one candidate promotes the interests of small Wikipedias, would it be offensive to recommend Wikipedians who don't share his vision not voting him? This is the case here, and this was also the goal of User:OkedemUser:חפץ בחיים in the second message under disscussion here. Please ping me if I am required to respond to subsequent claims. Mbkv717 (talk) 20:15, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I did not write either of the quoted messages. Okedem (talk) 20:37, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Mr. Cummings is trying to be offended on behalf of Mr. Mustaklem, without actually reading what User:Mbkv717 wrote, and is trying to label Mbkv717 as a racist. The machine translation of what Mbkv717 wrote doesn't even mention Mr. Mustaklem's ethnicity, he only quotes what Mr. Mustaklem wrote, and notes that the English Wikipedia does actually have a bias in a favor of one side. HiyoriX (talk) 20:46, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Agree with HiyoriX. Not even a clue to racism. Geagea (talk) 22:30, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

@John Cummings Your claim is outrageous and refutable. Mbkv717 made no reference at all to the candidate's origin or race, mentioning him only as a "specific candidate". As has been explained several times, he only referred to his reservations about Mustaklem's opinions regarding "The spreading of propaganda and disinformation in relation to Palestine" and did so only because he knew that many of the Hebrew Wikipedia users share this reservation. Therefore I object to your accusations, and if I were Mbkv717 I would even demand that you remove them and issue an apology. OHALON (talk) 16:54, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Let's tone down the combative attitude when we are here to collaborate. In my own opinion, I don't see how Mbkv717's is problematic, but the second message quoted sounds like a personal attack.

I don't see how "rank the Palestinian as lowest" is an appropriate comment. 0xDeadbeef (talk) 11:33, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I understand how this reference could be considered racist if it was said just like that, but the context, the fact that Mustaklem's views were discussed on this page and the detail of חפץ בחיים himself (rank him last "for having the audacity to use Wikimedia with a vulgar political bias and blunt") show that חפץ בחיים was not "targetting him because he is Palestinian" and that the call to rank Mustaklem last is not racist. OHALON (talk) 13:33, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

0xDeadbeef, if I say "Rank John lowest", you'd accept that is a reasonable message, right? Expressing my opinion about a candidate?

We've also established that using a demonym (German, Argentinian, Japanese), rather than a person's name, is extremely common.

Therefore, saying "Rank the Palestinian lowest" is equivalent to "Rank John lowest", and is entirely reasonable.

I find this whole discussing absurd. Mr. Cummings browsing a Wikipedia in a language he doesn't speak, flinging baseless accusations of racism. Even ignoring for a moment Mbkv717's message, the message by חפץ בחיים expressly stated his reasoning, yet Mr. Cummings chose to ignore that in his complaint.

Mr. Mustaklem chose to make the Gaza war part of his platform, discussing it in his own statement, without any prompting. That means we are free to judge him based on that, just like we are free to judge any candidate based on any of their opinions, statements or actions. Okedem (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

It wasn't using a demonym instead of a person's name. The exact words were "הפלסטיני (פארח)" which translates to "the Palestinian (Farah)". So it was using a demonym in addition to a person's name. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:01, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

You're right, it was in addition to. To be clear, it's obvious that the reason his nationality is mentioned is because he stated his position on a Palestinian-relevant topic, the Gaza War, in his own candidate statement, where he seems to support biasing Wikipedia for his position. The discussion of Farah is exactly what users are supposed to do - discuss candidates to develop opinions about them, to be able to make an informed vote.

This entire discussion seem to take issue with users expressing discontent with a candidate, trying to falsely paint it as "racist". Frankly, it seems like voter intimidation. Okedem (talk) 01:32, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Enable page translation

Please, one of the managers or translation managers, enable the translation of the page so that the page can be translated into other languages, including Persian (fa).

Meanwhile, because I didn't know how to translate (now I know by reading Help:Extension:Translate/Page translation example), I created the Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024/Candidates/fa page, if It was made wrong, please delete it, thank you. <The text was translated into English by Google translator.) Mostafamirchouli (talk) 00:09, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I have marked the page for translation. --Ameisenigel (talk) 13:15, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Ameisenigel! RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 16:47, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Misinformation in Editors section of Voter eligibility guidelines

Not done, administrator intervention required

The Editors section of Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024/Voter eligibility guidelines starts with the following (emphasis not mine, although right on point):

You may vote from any single registered account you own on a Wikimedia wiki. You may only vote once, regardless of how many accounts you own.

User:RamzyM (WMF), who authored that, presumably meant to write that a contributor is not supposed to vote from more than 1 global account. However, what first looked like an easy fix has now turned into a complicated process, with reverts from 3 different accounts:

1. a first from the claim's author, User:RamzyM (WMF)
2. a second from User:Johannnes89
3. a third from User:Pppery

The last 2 accounts reportedly belong to administrators on this wiki, and the first reportedly belongs to a WMF employee; yet they are all in blatant violation of our processes. The second appears to be genuinely confused, but it's hard not to wonder if there is some particular link between these accounts.

To top it off, the last account involved does have administrative privileges and locked the page right after breaking it, alluding to some WMF wish without specifying where such a wish would have been expressed. I do not have the necessary permissions to fix this myself directly at this point, so I leaving the matter to be taken care of by an administrator.

I do not remember dealing with any of these accounts previously, but would suggest whoever deals with this considers a quick check that this series is purely coincidental and no further action warranted. Chealer (talk) 00:17, 15 September 2024 (UTC), updated 2024-09-16

Hi @Chealer:, several points of clarification:

• I did not author the voter eligibility guidelines. It was formulated by the Elections Committee, which I am professionally supporting as part of the election work, and was shared for review and feedback from the global community here on Meta back in October 2023.
• "You may only vote once, regardless of how many accounts you own" means exactly that. Your assumption of what I "presumably meant to write" is not correct, and per above, I did not write that rule; the EC did.
• I am not sure by what you meant by "blatant violation of our processes", so please feel free to shine some light on what kind of process(es) that I may have violated here.

Thank you for your interest in this election process, please let me know if you have further inquiries. Best, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 16:47, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @RamzyM (WMF) and thank you for the rectification.

1. Although much of the content on our projects is freely licensed, authors should still be respected and credited (as required by the terms of the GNU FDL). It is unfortunately not possible to modify past edit summaries, but you must credit sources when copying in future edits.
2. The erroneous statement is not a rule. As you can see in the title, its page contains eligibility guidelines, not voting rules.
3. Our community is based on collaboration. All interactions should be cooperative and civil. Your violation was explained on your talk page.

In fact, I do not and did not have any inquiry; all this topic does is report the error and suggest inquiring over its persistence. Unless you want to ask for the page to be "unprotected" or control an account in the group of site administrators, you cannot help here any more here, but thanks anyway. --Chealer (talk) 12:01, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Please stop making unsubstantiated claims. Despite the page title these are the actual rules set up by the election committee and you may not make any changes to them without approval. It is you not Ramzy who keeps violating our rules, please stop making such accusations. Continuing such disruptive behavior may lead to a block. Johannnes89 (talk) 14:04, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Please focus on respecting our rules rather than making pointless requests. If you think the page title is wrong, feel free to change it, but that alone won't turn its content into actual rules. It is neither me nor quite Ramzy who is violating our rules, but Ramzy, you and Pppery―and indeed, continuing to do so without amendments may lead to you being blocked. Continuing unsubstantiated accusations against contributors may also be considered as personal attacks and lead to sanctions. --Chealer (talk) 11:54, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Update to the timeline

Hello,

I am writing today to provide an update to Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024#Timeline.

The administrative process that follows the SecurePoll vote is taking longer than was anticipated by the published timeline. This means that the Preliminary announcement of results, originally anticipated by October 9, is now anticipated by the end of October 11. This has been updated in the timeline.

We have also updated the date range for the entry Scrutiny, tally, verification, and preliminary announcement of voting results to end on October 11. We overlooked updating this entry in June and apologize for any confusion this may have caused about the timeline.

Xeno (WMF) (talk) 23:59, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Question about counting

At step 6 of the process, why was Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight eliminated? Shouldn't it have been Bobby Shabangu, since this candidate had fewer votes at the completion of step 5? This, that and the other (talk) 19:25, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

@This, that and the other: You can see this graph to know how the Single Transferable Vote work in this poll. SCP-2000 02:55, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh I see, I was confused by the presentation at Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024/Results. I thought that the row of the table titled "6" depicted the elimination of Rosie and the subsequent transfer of her votes to other candidates. But I can see that it actually depicts the transfer of Tesleemah's votes to other candidates and the subsequent elimination of Rosie. A strange way to present STV results! This, that and the other (talk) 03:00, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Some stats about the vote

I was told to link this page here as well. The Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024/Stats page is already occupied by WMF data (more to come?), so here is the "unofficial" stats page – User:Nadzik/BoT elections 2024 stats – with data from the vote.wiki dump. Nadzik (talk) 09:55, 23 October 2024 (UTC)