Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2007/en

Feedback

This section is for tracking feedback from Wikimedians as it develops to help improve the process for the 2008 elections. Feel free to update the table, but please do not post comments (edit or add new sections below instead).

Discussion	Data	Summary feedback
Board election endorsements	Foundation-l 18 June 2007	Endorsement period Endorsement should not wait for confirmation; just remove unconfirmed candidates later. Do not overlap periods for presentation deadlines, questions, and endorsements. Require personally-collected endorsements before candidate presentation? Looks like a vote; cap at 12 valid endorsements?

Grammar

ERROR: ...in which each candidate will need to obtain a specific number of endorsements supporting their candidacy. => HIS OR HER

The sentence is correct; see w:epicene they. —{admin} Pathoschild 14:36:19, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

The election must be conducted by a third party

Considering the situation in the 2006 election where results were leaked to an unknown number of people, including candidates, and including people who changed their vote after learning the half-time results, I strongly suggest next year's election is conducted by a third party. Wikimedians, election officials, board members, and staff should not be given access to any results prior to the end of the election and the official announcement of the results.

Benjamin Mako Hill, has written an election methods library and built a web-based voting solution. This supports various election methods including approval voting and offers both voter verifiability and a high degree of anonymity of the votes themselves. He believes this would be tamper-proof and resistant to the result leakage we had this year.

Angela 02:02, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It is possible and probably useful to discuss election improvements without the accusations...

Above it sounds like Angela is suggesting that we turn over elections to a single Wikipedian and just trust... And frankly I don't see that as any sort of improvement over what we have now, in fact.. I'd call that a step backwards.

It is possible, by using technology such as the w:IBM_4758, to make a voting system which is provably secure against people reading the results in advance. But I am unaware of the existence of such a service today.

Overall, I think that the possibility of an early leak in the results is totally unimportant compared to the overwhelming risk of voting by sockpuppets. Having the election conducted by an outside group would do nothing to resolve that issue, and in fact would probably increase the risk. If I had been unethical I could have single handily changed the outcome of this election without detection and with little difficulity, and that's something you cant say could have been caused by a simple leak. --Gmaxwell 02:49, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I support Angela's suggestion (with appropriate safeguards) and if we do not do that, I think that we should come up with a different method. Until now, I had no idea that this had happened. Why were we not informed? Was there an investigation? Was anyone punished? -- Kjkolb 09:08, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I just wanted to note that there are private companies that offer remote electronic voting systems for private board elections. I am not familiar with the process for the Wikimedia Board elections, but having an independent third party assist in managing the election process does not require trust of any one member nor does it mean the Wiki community need be removed from the equation. A partnership with an established vendor could greatly increase security and decrease concerns over improper access. Election Technology 03:34, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. At this point, it is nearly confirmed that a third party will be involved. Details are still being hammered out, but will be publicized as soon as they are known. Philippe 16:48, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Kat and Oscar?

Kat and Oscar were appointed, will they have to stand in the election if they want to stay on the board? IV.3 -- Jeandré, 2007-05-25t12:31z

IANAL etc., but as I read the bylaws, they'd rather need to be re-appointed by the board than re-elected. --Mbimmler 13:12, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[Foundation-l]: "We will therefore hold elections for these three seats in the coming months."

Oscar will run. -- Jeandré, 2007-06-04t18:06z

In retrospect, both Mindspillage (Kat) and Oscar ran. Mindspillage was elected to a new term, while Oscar was replaced by Frieda. —{admin} Pathoschild 14:47:40, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

c/p from foundtaion-l

Hello everybody,

If I recall correctly, the term of three board members (Erik, Oscar and Kat) will end in june this year. That will mean elections. I would like to start a civil discussion on what (if anything) should be changed compared to last year in the procedure, so the elections will be as nice as possible.

There are a few points I would like to bring in myself:

1) The number of candidates Lat year, there were 15 candidates for 1 seat. A complaint heard a lot of tmes was that it was very hard to read all the statements. There was just too much to read. This year, there will be three seats to decide over, and the community has in the mean while more then doubled. It is thus very likely that the number of people willing to be candidate will increase even more. How to keep it possible for human beings (i.e. the people who are not able to keep track of this list ;-) ) to read enough of all candidates to make a proper choise, not just based on "he's american, i dont like him for that reason. I know her, lets vote on her. He's French, and we dont want too many french people, so oppose" and other not very rational reasons. Because you force people to irrationalism when you make it too hard to decide rationally.

So somehow we should be able to decrease the amount of information, without breaking down the quality of it. That is possible by somehow making a selection in the candidates. Somehow we should be able which candidates should make a good chance in the elections. But without letting an "authority" decide how imho! (elections shouldnt be influenced by an authority that much)

I see roughly two ways to go there: 1.1) Pre-elections We could have, like in many presidential elections, have two elections. The first would be to decrease the number of candidates. The candidates we want in the final elections would be selected by an election. For instance, we have three seats available. We could have then select the six best in the pre-election, and let them go on the the "Finals". Disadvantage is that you still have to read everything (but maybe not that thorougly) in the first round. 1.2) Pre-*s*election We could state extra conditions to become candidate. For instance, you need 25 or 50 supports of your candidature by different Wikimedians with >1000 edits and 9 months experience on one project. Just for instance, the numbers can easily be changed. It's about the idea. Every serious candidate should be able to get these endorsements, and the candidates who won't state any chance, wont get these endorsements. Disadvantage is that you won't be able to foresee how many candidates there will be. Another disadvantage is that you will have bureaucratic problems with the checking of the endorsements.

2) the time Last year, the elections took three whole weeks. I think it should be possible to shorten this period. In real life elections usually take one day. I can understand that it should take some longer in an online community, as people can be at work, temporarily very busy etc. But on the other hand, these elections demand quite a work from the candidates, and I think it will also mean usually that the board will not decide a lot of things. (As it is not very good to decide while being voted on you) Thus, a three week period seems a bit long to me.

I think it should be possible to have the final elections in 3-10 days on the condition that it is outside the summer vacation.

I hope for all your ideas on this, and I hope that the discussion will be fruitfull. I don't know exactly who will be arranging the elections, and who is final responsible for the rules etc of it, the foundation or the community.

Yours sincerely, Effeietsanders (april 6, 2007)

Update?

Since they are the only ones allowed to edit the page, one of the election committee members may wish to change the two occurrences of "Begins on Sunday, 0:00 June 10, 2007 (UTC)" to "Began on Sunday, 0:00 June 10, 2007 (UTC)." Picaroon (Talk) 02:25, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, and done. Philippe 02:46, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I disagree and undid your version. And this kind of update is inappropriate from mainly two reasons I think:

• The document is dated: It was released at "22:42, 9 June 2007 (UTC). The tense should match at the indicated date, not when you are reading.
  • This kind of frequent "update" might cause confusions.
• The document is singed as a sign of agreement, and approved as is by the Board through the formal process. It is not same as community essay you can edit, but rather a documented construct or announcement about a legal entity. You have no good reason to modify this kind of text on your sole discresion, even you think it "minor change". The document is now set-in-stone. --Aphaia 07:39, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, I would however like to ask to fix the "Thursday 7 july" to saturday... :P This is somewhat confusing :) Effeietsanders 08:40, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Fix away. Jon Harald Søby 08:49, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for confusion, fixed. --Aphaia 09:14, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

What is the required number of endorsements? I read a few times those words, but i am unable to find the number itself. Effeietsanders 08:44, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

We haven't decided yet, but it's between 10 and 15. Jon Harald Søby 08:49, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Update: 12 or more. Announced on foundation-l and Board elections/2007/Endorsements. --Aphaia 01:48, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

"Statements must be submitted no later than DATE AND TIME" What are the DATE AND TIME here? :) Effeietsanders 08:45, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Not decided yet. Jon Harald Søby 08:49, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Conventionally it is equal to the date acceptance closes, so Saturday, 23:59 June 23, 2007. I've read it so, and haven't thought it was not decided. It has to be clarified. --Aphaia 09:08, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, of course; I didn't think before replying (always a good thing to do…), and just assumed it was something that wasn't decided yet since it wasn't filled in. My bad. Jon Harald Søby 12:34, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Categorisation

Currently none of the candidate pages are in a category, which would be best? Lcarsdata 14:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for noticing us, I'll take care of that. --Aphaia 12:28, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Hm, you didn't mean the presentation pages by language, but rather presenation of each candidate by language? Honestly I am not sure if we would like to categorize them at this time, but if someone wants to care for them, I don't mind. Categories could be

added as "noinclude"

at least two categories are required, that are:

1. Subcategory of Category:Board Election 2007: as logical consequence and further convenience (there will be many candidate presentation subpages).
2. category by language (e.g. Category:FR to French pages), that is meta convention to sorr pages by language.

Just a thought. --Aphaia 12:35, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Candidacy

Hello, I noticed the recent candidacy of Board_elections/2007/Candidates/ÁWá/es, here. He does not match the criteria (400 edits, first edit 1 year before 1.7.2007) on none of the mentioned wikis: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&target=%C3%81W%C3%A1 http://es.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Especial:Contributions&limit=500&target=%C3%81W%C3%A1 on es.wiki he is blocked and has not enough edits there anyhow.

I notified him on User talk:ÁWá, You might however want to remove his candidacy from Board elections/2007/Candidates/es,

best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _{(:> )=|} 14:55, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification. We'll look into it. I appreciate you bringing it to our attention. Philippe 15:13, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree the points you rise here is wise to consider, but speaking only my personal opinion at this moment, I would like to rather reject that since this "presentation" doesn't follow the procedure we give the community on the Board elections/2007/en (not using the format, not submitted to the page or even equivalent, seems not to given the full name etc.). I wouldn't accept it as a regulated submission -- so we needn't bother that until it is formally submitted. I would however like to be aware that my colleagues could conceive different ideas from mine and would love to be open to discussion (for neutrality, only with them at this moment. After the election we could have an occasion to discuss if such bureaucracy is appropriate in this context project-widely). --Aphaia 01:27, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

---

Hello. I have read through the Board elections 2007 and I was bound to present my name to the candidacy, but I would like to know if I am suitable of that or not. Is it possible to have a serious opinion first? My activity is mainly in Es. I have participated in the development of Km and sometimes in En and others, especially with Interlinks. My languages are Spanish, English, Italian, Khmer and knowledge of others. Thanks beforehand to anybody who can give me an opinion. --Albeiror24 08:22, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the many answers I got. --Albeiror24 14:03, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Endorsements- time period

Not that it can be changed now, but for future elections, wouldn't it make sense to have the endorsements period last at least a day after the candidate entries close? Otherwise, late entries would be unlikely to have enough time to garner 12 endorsements. Ral315 (talk) 23:19, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Ral, and thanks for your comment. We actually discussed that, and (others may chime in here if they disagree) I believe we agreed that those people who are standing for election don't typically jump in at the last moment unless they already have their endorsers substantially lined up and that we could revisit it if we saw an issue after this election. Obviously, when we do our "post-election wrap up" we'll revisit schedules to see what worked well and what didn't, and will pay particular attention to this issue. Philippe 00:44, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

couple of issues

Might want to mention the total number of board memebers there will be after the vote has finished. Also I feel that 0:00 June 28 looks odd.Geni 23:02, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Please release software screenshots before voting opens

So that communities can use these to create voting help pages. thanks, pfctdayelise 08:57, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Required number of endorsments?

Point 3 on the requirements for candidacy: "You must obtain at least the required number of endorsements from eligible voters. Endorsements must be placed by the endorsers on the dedicated page during the candidate acceptance period." ... what is the required number? It doesn't say anywhere on the page I could see, nor on the endorsement page itself. Might have missed it though! Thanks. ++Lar: t/c 16:38, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

12. See Board elections/2007/Endorsements#Criteria for Endorsement. Angela 16:46, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I suggest this page be updated (by a member of the Wikimedia Board Election Steering Committee, the only folk who may edit this page) to say "required number (12) of endorsements" or similar... the information is scattered over several pages and can be a bit hard to find. Or maybe it's not needed. ++Lar: t/c 18:53, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Eligibility to vote

I followed a dumb link from en.wikipedia, read pages of statements, questions, responses... And I am blocked from voting?

Why was I directed to this page?

I don't care about voting anymore, but I'd like an apology from whoever is responsible for wasting my time. Jd2718 03:07, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Ditto, almost. Forget the apology, but please make a note to incorporate the posting requirements in whatever routine you use to tell us that we're eligible to vote. GaryBats

Multilingualism regression

File:ComparaisonVotants06 07parLangues.jpg Increase of english speaker participation as a consequence of linguistic iniquity (from 40% to 60% between 2006 and 2007).	Wikipedians by languages (based on List of Wikipedias)
The proportion of english voters just reflects the proportion of users by languages (about 60% en-users)

Please read Régression du multilinguisme (in french) (summary: linguistic iniquity is increasing ...). I've no time to write it in english, so only french speakers will know ... You can also read

• Linguistic diversty
• Halfway thoughts (2006)

Arno Lagrange ✉ 06:51, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

It wasn't linguistic iniquity that caused that. Gmaxwell spammed thousands of users on the English Wikipedia asking them to prove to the Board the English Wikipedia was important by voting. Angela 13:01, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

...as a minor point of accuracy, I also wrote to commons with a different but similar message. Although that was a far smaller number of people because I didn't also write to people I was writing on en, and because commons is a much smaller projects. It's also rather unfair to summarize my email that way, when you could have simply linked to one of many posted copies of it. --Gmaxwell 16:43, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

You may have a long discussion (in English, of course) about why a language which is native for less than 6% of the whole humanity increase from 40% to 60% between wikimedia votants. For me it is clear that the fact that all discussions, mailing lists, main informations are first edited in English and only later perhaps translated in some other languages is the main cause for this overrepresentation. As long as the question is not solved the situation will be worst and worst for non-english speaker. It's simply the same situation as in the Roman Empire where Latin had the same dominant situation over all the spoken languages, untill it became the only one spoken in the whole Empire. Arno Lagrange ✉ 06:52, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Given 6% native speakers, we would expect an additional ~18% [1] speak it who are not native speakers. Once you factor in differential access to computers, biases created by levels of education, that larger Projects will draw people to edit in them even if they are not their native language (enwiki has large bases of editors who's native tongues are various languages from India, for example), and other factors which are not in our control it becomes obvious that English will be the most edited language. If we are to have any hope of making it more equal, we'll either need to increase editors in Chinese and Spanish *drastically*, or reduce editors in all our current languages. Decreasing English's share to increase German or French would simply be shifting the imbalance in these terms around, not improving it.

Do you know where I can find a list of what percentage of the world is able to speak each of our languages? I can find estimates for only the largest few. I think 'able to speak' is a more useful comparison for many of our projects, because many editors edit in non-native languages.

I'm still very concerned with the graph you posted. The numbers do not match your numbers from last year at all. They also do not match the numbers I have counted. --Gmaxwell 13:37, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

The fact that English-speaker (native or not) are overrepresented in the economy, in internet, in wikipedia projects is not to be discussed : it's just an evidence. I just emphase the comparison between less than 6% native English speakers and 60 to 80 % in some spheres (as Internet and Wikimedia projects) to show how it's difficult for non-native English-speaker to access to knowledge and to participate in a democratic discussion. Instead of reinforce the phenomenon, I think it would be better to correct it promoting a true multilingualism : that means every body could express himself in his/her own language and have same chances to be heard. Imagine if I would posting my thoughts in Latvian or in Cherokee (or even in French) who would care about ?

I don't find my statistics so different from yours. See Image talk:ComparaisonVotants06 07parLangues.jpg. See also Linguistic diversty. Arno Lagrange ✉ 07:05, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

A true multilingualism, where everyone could speak whatever language they knew best and everyone could read the speakers words in whatever language THEY knew best, would be a wonderful thing. But it's not something (absent the existance of an automatic universal translator that works really well and is cheap and reliable) that we can have today without expending massive resources... for every comment we would need 100 or more volunteers to translate it. That is WAY out of scope for the projects, in my view, at this time, and certainly way out of scope for this discussion. The question here really, given that the world is what it is, that we have self selection of participants and of what languages they choose to speak, and that English is, rightly or wrongly, a dominant language in international commerce, in technical writing, in literature, and in many other areas, is this. What is the proper way for projects to have representation? One man, one vote? Or a system of preferences in which smaller projects, smaller languages, get additional say over the larger ones? The US founding fathers could not decide, and ended up crafting a system that had aspects of both (the US House is roughly proportional, the senate is disproportional by state to give smaller states more say). I think a bicameral legislature at WMF is a bit much, so we have to pick one or the other, or a blending. Personally, I prefer one man one vote, strongly, for reasons articlulated here already. THEN the question becomes, are we achieving it? And the answer at least to me is clear, we are not. English speakers are underrepresented in the voting compared to their proportion of activity and presence in the projects. It is not clear what the various get out the vote efforts did to change that. Some of them, it could be speculated, made the skew worse (hypothetical get out the vote campaigns on es for example, would be expected to increase the proportion of es votes, not increase the proportion of en votes) and some man have made it less skewed (Greg's urgings to en project participants, for example). ++Lar: t/c 13:42, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

A half way is to be found between one language domination and integral unrealizable multilingualism. Important documents and summary must be translated accurately in some other languages, so that more people could take part in discussions and decisions, not only good English speakers - I can understand English but it takes me much more time to understand and to write texts in English than in my mother tongue-. We also could think about representation by languages or group of languages not necessarily with system of preference. Arno Lagrange ✉ 10:00, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

In fact, a major factor was project dis-proportionality. Under most measures of the number of users per project we would expect that in a democratic election English Wikipedia would represent someplace between 48% and 58% of the voters. When I discovered that Enwiki was in the mid 30% range (at around mid-election) with a shockingly small turnout, I concluded that there must be factors creating a systematic bias against our largest community, and I encouraged people to participate in an attempt to both counter it and increase overall turnout thereby reducing the influence of other biasing factors such as socks.

I don't think it is fair to mention my actions without mentioning the vote drives on dewiki and itwiki which happened long before I took any action,... except for the fact that those drives, unlike my message, recommended specific candidates. We have no objective data to show that there exists a difference in how, for example, a dewiki user votes or an enwiki votes... but most of the early campaigns could have been expected to create such differences where they did not otherwise exist, while that would be much harder to argue for my actions.

I'm not sure what that graph above is expressing: It appears to be expressing the turnout this year and last year between the projects. .. but it isn't. Last year English was 45% of the voters, according to the statistics posted on Meta. I can not validate those numbers because the list of users is no longer up, I have requested the data but received no response. If the graph here is attempting to show the distribution of voters it is clearly incorrect. People interested in voter distribution may be interested in the election graphs I generated.

Directly related to this subject is the page I am writing on the possible impact of the mailing on proportionality User:Gmaxwell/WMF2007_vote_distribution. The document is incomplete, I hope to post several other metrics today. For example under the assumption that voter distribution should follow the distribution of the number of users per project with 5 edits in the last month or two, the mailing was even more clearly correct in terms of improving proportionality.

Keep in mind that my comments above are above are about proportionality, that is the distribution of votes tracking the distribution of participants. Some people may think is is, instead, desirable to make representation in the election intentionally disproportionate in order to increase equality between projects (that is, so that ruwikisource has the same influence over the election as dewikipedia). Even if we ignore the devastating effects this would have on our vulnerability to takeover by outside interests, I still must reject this notion: We claim to have a democratic election process, to intentionally produce or allow systematic bias against our participants would make the process a lie and a sham. If that is what we are to do, then we should at least be explicit about it, and not hide it. Obviously, since the overwhelming majority of our community is concentrated in the largest few projects by any reasonable measure, the vast majority of the community could be expect to strongly reject any measure which would increase equality at the expense of proportionality, since it would result in substantial disenfranchisement. There is only one method which could improve equality without hurting proportionality, and this is bringing more participants to the other projects... a laudable goal, but off topic for discussions about the elections.

As an aside, I'd also like to make ask that all representatives of the Wikimedia Foundation, its board, advisory board, or elections committee to please make it clear if you are speaking on these matters behalf of the Foundation or simply on your own. It has been clear to me that there is substantial confusion being created on this front, and if my actions are being criticized by an official body I do not wish my ability to respond in kind to be limited by later after the fact claims that the statements were really personally views. Thanks. --Gmaxwell 15:48, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

exactly how many emails did you send? the exact quantity is still unknown afaik, despite all the graphs and statistics published so far, and despite my repeated questions? (fyi every one of my emails concerning this has a disclaimer on it) oscar 18:45, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

As a current Board member standing for re-election as we speak, don't you think it's utterly inappropriate for you to be asking these questions? That'd be like Bush demanding intimate details of Kerry's get-out-the-vote campaign before the results were in. It makes no sense whatsoever. The election committee deals with the elections and you stay out of it. --Cyde Weys 19:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I think a more accurate analogy would be "demanding intimate details of the League of Women Voters ( a non partisan group) get-out-the-vote campaign" as your analogy seems a bit more partisan than was actually the case. Greg's email (I did receive a copy since I was a slacker and didn't vote promptly... to my chagrin my wife voted well before I did! :) major loss of style points there! ) did not advocate any particular candidates. But ya, I think you may well be making a good point when you suggest it ought to be the election committee taking the lead here. ++Lar: t/c 20:04, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

+1 Lar. :) Beyond the points you already raised: Some other projects did campaigns that recommended specific users, yet these campaigns appear to be under no scrutiny at all. I do not think the people who did these did wrong, especially since understanding the candidates is hard for people who are not fluent speakers of English (Q&A in English, the translated statements did very very little to distinguish the candidates in some peoples views), but I think it is clear that a neutral message is more defensible. --Gmaxwell 20:23, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't know exactly how many I sent, I still have not counted. I need to figure out how to export my mailbox from Gmail to tell what I actually sent because many users did not have email enabled. Gmail only tells me 'thousands' which is not helpful. The absolute maximum amount I could have sent would be 20,921 since that is the total number of recently active users from the projects I mailed with no accounting for users who had already voted (whom I didn't mail) or who were eligible from multiple projects (whom I only mailed once).

I was unaware of your further queries: I unsubscribed from foundation-l because I saw no cause to subject myself to further disrespect from you and Anthony, and I have received no messages from you since doing so. While I am sure you do not intend to be disrespectful, it was the impression I kept recieving. I hope you can forgive my impatience.

I'm also concerned that there may be an intention to specifically reject the election on grounds of process only after after seeing the results. If the board does so, there is no way for someone to establish without a doubt that the rejection on the grounds of process was not simply a cover for a rejection due to non-preferable results. While I personally doubt that anyone involved in our orginization would intentionally engage in such a behavior, my simple request that the board and the election com. affirm the validity process of the election before SPI discloses any results, has gone unanswered. This failure will quite possibly convert any rejection of the election results into a spectacularly bad PR event which will tarnish the reputation of Wikimedia and possibly SPI.

Because my first allegiance here is to stability and longevity of our projects and all our users, my first priority at this point is to make it clear, though careful, honest, and repeatable analysis, that there is no reasonable and objective basis to claim process itself as invalid, if that is actually the case. As such, collecting data which, if used honestly, could neither prove nor disprove this hypothesis is not my first priority. I'm sure you share the same goals with me, but we probably have differing ideas about how to achieve them, and I need to be responsible for my own labors first.

And indeed, the exact number of emails sent is irrelevant to this matter: While there is no question that there were many, we can never know what their actual impact was, other than there almost certainly was an impact on participation. Connecting that with an impact on election results is much harder still to justify... Nor can any third party know that I'm not wrong about the number sent, ... except via checking Wikimedia's own logs, which is isn't a method of counting which needs or benefits from my involvement. It's also the case that other projects engaged in vote drives, some pushing for specific candidates, and I can see no similar effort being made to gather data on these other efforts.--Gmaxwell 20:23, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Instructions on how to vote

The instructions need to specify that users need to follow the link to Special:Boardvote on the project in which they qualify to vote, rather than following links to the election pages here on Meta and then from there to the vote page. Ie, if someone qualifies to vote on Commons, they need to go to commons:Special:Boardvote and not m:Special:Boardvote. The latter will only work for users whose Meta account qualifies, which is not the case for almost everyone. --bainer (talk) 07:14, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

A question about election security

I have a question that I haven't found addressed in any of the FAQs and announcements. (Have I just missed it?) What is being done to ensure that each person (not account) gets to vote once, and only once? It seems to me that "sock-puppetry" is tricky enough just at the English Wikipedia, without having to deal with accounts from other Wikimedia projects. Is checking IP addresses the only security method? Are voters allowed to vote through an open proxy? I admit, the potential security flaws have me a bit concerned about this election. (Feel free to respond on my main talk page at En Wiki: here.) Charlie-talk to me-what I've done 13:12, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I prefer not to go into all the security blocks publicly, but be assured that there are multiple security steps in place, and checking IP addresses is only one part of that security plan. Philippe 17:57, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Voting Down?

Looks like the voting site is down. Any word on when it will be back up? -Election Technology 21:19, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Problem with voting?

I'm having a problem with en:special:boardvote. When I go there, I get a malformed link beginning

https://wikimedia.spi-inc.orgindex.php/?title=...

Note the lack of a '/' before index.php. Adding this manually allows me to continue to the proper site, but it fails to recognize the EnWiki account I came from, and I can't login there. Is anyone else experiencing this, or have any suggestions? --InkSplotch 21:20, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Is this still a problem for you? Philippe 17:55, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

It appears to be working now...I could not say from when, but all is well. --InkSplotch 04:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

How many can I vote for?

In the article, voters are told they can vote for three candidates only. The voting page states that you can vote for as many candidates as you want. I voted for four and the software didn't object, recorded my vote and reflected it back to me as a special page with GPG data on it. How come? AshLin 13:07, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

I believe that limit applied to the endorsement phase of voting which is over. During the actual election you can vote for as many as you want. (Not an official answer). --FloNight 15:49, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, FloNight. Now you can vote for as many as you wish. --Aphaia 21:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Including zero, which, voting being evil, I just did. Angr 17:42, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Hebrew inteeface malfunction

From SPI Wiki, The links from the hebrew vote page are wrongly to the 2006 elections, instead of 2007. 89.0.213.170 15:21, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

I hope it fixed now. The text is somehow outdated, you can help renew it, at Board elections/2007/Interface translation. --Aphaia 18:13, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Process to redetermine eligibility?

I think some computer neglected to add my photo contributions to my edit count. Is there some one or some place I can contact to seek redetermination of my eligibility to vote? r3 03:02, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi r3... from which wiki do you believe you are qualified to vote? Philippe 17:54, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

Is there a way to code the "All eligible community members are invited to vote in the Wikimedia Board Election" line so that it only appears for those who are eligible to vote, and for those who have not already voted? I am not eligible to vote (not enough edits) and the "dismiss" function is not working for me (I have already followed the suggestions of those at the Wikipedia Technical Village Pump) - the prompt keeps reappearing. Thanks! Rockerbaby 19:43, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

If not update, then move

It has been said above that this is not a community page but a "dated ... documented construct or announcement about a legal entity. ... The document is now set-in-stone."

However, that is not its function here. It actually is the main page, the hub for this election, the page to which all voters are directed (at least in the e-mail notification, which says: "You can find out more about the election at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/en").

I agree that it should be preserved as a document, but the main page needs to direct voters and other readers to all important current information. The current abuse of this information hub as a dated document leads to absurd consequences, such as that this page doesn't even mention how we actually are supposed to vote!

Therefore, I urge the Steering Committee to do something that allows editing the page with the address "Board elections/2007/en". This could be either by moving the set-in-stone document to a different address, or by putting it in a box like the one we use for closed votes. SebastianHelm 17:50, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Bot accounts

I presume accounts with the bot flag are restricted from voting? Not all bot accounts end with the word "bot". The wording of the info about voter eligibility talks about accounts across multiple wikis but doesn't address the situation of having multiple accounts within a single wiki which are eligible to vote. pfctdayelise 06:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

You know, I'm not sure whether bot accounts have been disabled by virtue of the bot flag, and that's a great question. I think it's fairly clearly understood that people should only vote once, but I agree that a safeguard of that nature would be yet another barrier to stop illicit votes. Thank you for the suggestion, and I'll check to see if I can get a more definitive answer about the bot flag. Philippe 06:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this is a good precaution. Bot accounts shouldn't be voting. My bot was eligible to vote, but of course I didn't use it to vote, because I'm not going to vote twice, and also, it'd be really obvious since my bot's account name is Cydebot. But if the account name wasn't so obvious, I probably could have gotten away with it. Nobody taking a cursory glance over the list of valid voters would have noticed. --Cyde Weys 17:53, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Struck votes

I noticed that the list of votes struck, as mentioned in this message, apparently included that of Jan-Bart voting from the board wiki. This conflicts with the voting eligibility expansion announced earlier, which indicated that all board members are eligible to vote by definition, regardless of how many edits they have made. I'm concerned that in attempting to correct one mistake (the incorrect eligibility list), the election committee may have made another, by removing people from that list purely on the basis of edit-count eligibility without accounting for subsequent additions to the eligibility criteria. I don't know if there are more people affected whose votes may have been incorrectly struck, but I hope the election committee can straighten this out. --Michael Snow 06:53, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing it out. Technically under the edit count criteria, Jan-Bart (and Midom) are not eligible. Their vote will be survived, because of the rule you refer, but on the other hand it is still true their names are included on the list. I'll make a remark on the list about them and eligibility expansion. --Aphaia 06:57, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

My vote was struck because I had not enough edits in the German Wikipedia. I have thousands of edits in the Emglish Wikipedia, and the regulations said, you can not vote for every account in different Wikipedias, but only once per User. My accounts are clearly identified by my e-mail-box as of the same User, besides they have all the same name : Kraxler, and I just voted using the account in the German one. This is real BULLSHIT. It means in practice that I could have voted from the English, French, German, or whatever Wikipedia because you do not cross-reference? PUT MY VOTE BACK IN! As coming from English Wikipedia then. And don't tell me abiout the rules, you MISSTATED them, and you don't even KNOW your own rules, you can't even count up to 400, your shitty software confused 200 with 400?????? You are absolutely crazy. This whole thing is preposterous. I propose to annull the whole election and start from scratch, and this time put somebody in charge who knows what he is doing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kraxler 22:54, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Maybe somebody stoops down to answer me. Kraxler 21:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC) kraxler@dewiki, kraxler@enwiki, kraxler@eswiki, kraxler@itwiki, kraxler@ptwiki, kraxler@nlwiki

The election committee are volunteers. What answer did you want? You should have voted starting from en, I think, where your major contributions are. Was that unclear? As to voting from one wiki but being eligible based on contributions from another, the software did not have a way to read user pages or email settings or any of that to determin that. That doesn't mean it's defective, or the committee members are crazy, or that the entire election should be annulled, it means you voted from the wrong place. It's too bad you are frustrated but your tone is not going to get anyone enthustiastic about answering you. Perhaps you could suggest how the instructions should be reworded for next election to avoid the same thing happening again? ++Lar: t/c 22:17, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I gotta say, I'm with Lar on this one, and I'll remind you that while we didn't answer quickly enough to you, we also had an election to certify. So: yes, you should have started with the wiki where you have the most edits. I'm sorry you didn't think the instructions were clear. Lar is correct, it was software driven, and the software doesn't read your userboxes or cross-reference user pages. Our software didn't confuse 200 with 400, a member of the committee did, it was human error. That happens, particularly with volunteers. The election will not be vacated based on your complaint. I apologize that you are unhappy. Please, as Lar suggested, help us find solutions, rather than calling volunteers names. Philippe 22:37, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Fact is that YOU opened the link that permitted me to vote from the German Wikipedia, I did not bother to count my edits, knowing that I'm eligible to vote anyway. So, JUST COUNT MY VOTE! And besides, it does not make any difference, so forget it. If logical argument is lost on you, and you hide behind nuances in tone, I can't help you. Anyway, writing on wikipedia, I'm a volunteer too, but if I make a mistake, I just correct it. Kraxler 04:14, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Vote is corrupt

Hi,

on June 2., I was able to vote.

But now I read something about 400 edits... Please have a look at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~chm/stimmberechtigung.php?user=Cletus&day=5&mon=07&year=2007&hour=08&min=00

cletus@dewiki

I would like to know which vote you are talking now. The page you give us seems not to relevant to this Election, but local voting. And I would point out if your edits were deleted after that, you may fail to reach the required number of edits, hence may lose eligibility. --Aphaia 08:38, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

The page show that I have done less than 400 edits (about 320). And so I should not be able to vote for the board. cletus@dewiki

I counted your contributions in sight ... you have edits less than 400, so the website quoted on the above sounds right to me. Deleted edits are not counted as edits with which we examine your eligibility. --Aphaia 09:33, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

For future reference, this was later recognized as a bug and fixed. For some reason, Aphaia's mailing list announcement was not archived, so I'll quote it below.

from:	Aphaia
to:	Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
date:	04 July 2007 22:24 UTC
subject:	[Election] Unqualified votes striking
replies:	batches 1, 2

---

Hello,

The Election Committee regretfully announces that we will have to remove approximately 220 votes submitted. These votes were cast by people not entitled to vote. The election rules state that users must have at least 400 edits by March 1 to be eligible to vote.

The voter lists we sent to Software in the Public Interest (our third party election partner) initially were wrong. There was a bug in the edit counting program and the sent list contained every account with 201 or more edits, instead of 400 or more edits. So large numbers of people were qualified according to the software who shouldn't be. The bug has been fixed and the list of voters has been amended by the SPI.

Our first (and incorrect) list contains 80,458 accounts as qualified. The proper number of qualified accounts in the SPI list is now 52,750. As of the morning of July 4 (UTC), there are 2,773 unique voters and 220 people have voted who are not qualified based upon this identified error.

In accordance with voting regulations the Election Committee will strike the approximate 220 votes due to lack of voting eligibility. The list of struck votes are available at <https://wikimedia.spi-inc.org/index.php/List_of_struck_votes>. The Election Committee is trying to contact those voters separately by email.

It is possible that some of those people may have accounts on other projects where they have more than 400 edits, and they may still be eligible to vote. We strongly encourage them to vote again with their other account. For those people who don't have any other accounts eligible to vote, we hope they reach the criteria in the next Election, and will be happy to see them participate in the future Elections.

Your comments, questions or messages to the Committee would be appreciated, and can be made at [[m:Talk:Board elections/2007/en]]. Again, we would like to deeply apologize for any inconvenience.

Kizu Naoko
mailto:...
For Wikimedia Board Election Steering Committee

—{admin} Pathoschild 18:44:45, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Edit Count

How can a Wikipedian determine their number of edits? Maybe that info is staring me in the face somewhere? 203.216.97.212 04:54, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

See en:Wikipedia:WikiProject edit counters --  Netsnipe  ►  05:27, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

why the first march as target date?

I've been voting and don't wondered, cause I have more that 400 edits. But than I got an information, that my vote is a "struck vote", cause I didn't have more that 400 Edits at the first march. But why has this day been chosen? Why not the day, when the election began (or one week before)? -- Michi

March 1 was an error, the correct date is June 1. -- Tim Starling 15:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Results

Voting ends tonight, as far as I can make out. When will the results be made known? Thanks. Cormaggio ^@ 18:26, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Anyone know? --Banana 01:25, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

(Interrim answer until an official answers you). I read that it would be several days. The count is being handled by a third party body. --Kingboyk 02:05, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. --Banana 18:35, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

See Board elections/2007/Results. —{admin} Pathoschild 18:46:50, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Observations

Some observations I have made during the Board election process. I'll sit on these until it's over.

• Opening endorsements before nominations have closed, whilst restricting the number of candidates an individual may endorse, disadvantages later entrants. I've had somebody say to me "thank goodness I haven't used up all my endorsements"; I also see people who I would expect might endorse me who have already endorsed 3. Now they have no possibility of endorsing me.
• To expedite the process, it might be better if identity verification instructions were posted on-wiki. I could have got the ball rolling on this while writing my candidacy statement. Instead, I had to work on that (1 working day), wait for an email (arrived just before bedtime), write to somebody else for instructions (next working day), send my ID, and wait for it to be processed (which was very quick). What took 2 days might have taken only a few minutes if the email address and ID requirements were posted as part of the candidate instructions.

See also: Talk:Board_elections/2007/Endorsements/en#Bandwagon_effect. I support the sentiments expressed in that thread also.

Thank you to the election committee for your stewardship of this election. --Kingboyk 21:54, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments, I admit the structure would be improved, specially about identification, but I disagree with you in some points. To the first point, it is their decision or misunderstanding not to endorse you. The rule did not prohibit them to withdraw their former endorsements for other candidates. Some eligible community members withdrew their previous endorsements actually and endorsed newly entered candidates and it is written they could withdraw their endorsements at any time when the acceptance was open. I don't think they have no possibility to endorse you. It is their choice not to withdraw those endorsements. --Aphaia 00:46, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and at least one person did that for me (withdrew an endorsement and placed it with me; a surprising procedure but allowable). However, endorsements took on something of a "popularity contest" personality; by not limiting the number of endorsements and by allowing endorsements to be live during the phase where candidacies were being announced disadvantaged late entrants imho. Again, I'm certainly not complaining - I reached my required endorsements level without canvassing so am quite happy - but just present this as some food for thought for next time. Cheers. --Kingboyk 11:10, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Turnout

"4713 unique votes have been casted [sic] during ten days". Is it just me, or is that a very disappointingly low turnout? (Well under 10%?). --Kingboyk 11:14, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Who won?--Sefringle 22:09, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

The ballots have not been counted yet, people are still cleaning off the hanging chads]. ;). --Gmaxwell 22:30, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the turnout was very low, none of the larger projects got more than 20%. The actual depends on how you add them up, and it's complicated by the fact that it is hard to avoid double counting people who have accounts on multiple projects. Take a look at the graphs page I produced. Second and second to last (sorry that its hard to read) will be relevant, as well as the ones on the raw turnout page linked from there. Because of the complexities of measuring it fairly I think we can say that the turnout at the end was roughly around 10% of those who had any real hope of voting. I expect this is better than last year. I do not have the data to produce a comparison, however. --Gmaxwell 22:30, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

In the September 2006 board election, I grabbed some data off Special:Boardvote/list and started to analyse it. Unfortunately, I realised that the data wasn't quite complete (I failed to get the last 10 hours of voting), and my initial analysis failed to strip out duplicate votes (which appear on the list at Special:Boardvote/list). See w:User:Carcharoth/Wikimedia Foundation Board election (September 2006) for the rather pathetic and incomplete attempt at an analysis. I find it particularly ironic that someone left a comment on the talk page saying "We want pretty graphics!". Well, your graphs are very impressive. Hopefully there is an official source you can get complete stats on for the September 2006 board election. --Carcharoth 12:00, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

See also Board elections/2006/Statistics, Board elections/2006/Results/en, Board elections/2005/Statistics, Board elections/2005/Results, Participation graph for 2004 election, Board elections/2004/Results. All linked from Board elections --Carcharoth 12:10, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

It appears that some of those older analysis pages are incorrect, or at least reporting something different than I thought. I was able to get the lists from 2006 and 2005. An example 2006 report is here. My first priority this weekend is to rewrite the media player we use on our sites, but after that I have a number of improvements I want to make to these graphs. --Gmaxwell 05:19, 14 July 2007 (UTC)