Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2009

If you have suggestions or questions about the 2009 board elections, please post them below under a section name that briefly summarizes the subject (for example, write "Exempt remote staff from edit requirements", not "New idea").

Rules

Exempt remote staff from edit requirements

A technicality in the rules didn't exempt remote staff from the edit rules (none needed an exemption, so the committee decided not to change it). The exception should be fixed as such: "paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation who started working at the officewere hired before 01 March 2008". —{admin} Pathoschild 19:18:24, 03 June 2008 (UTC)

Make that "paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia chapters" notafish }<';> 14:19, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Count contributions across all Wikis

Current guidelines do not count contributions to multiple wikis to satisfy voting criteria. In my case, I've had a few months of decreased activity on my home wiki, which resulted in my inability to vote in the 2008 election, even if when counting contributions across multiple wikis I would have met the 50-edit criterion. -- IlyaHaykinson 23:29, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Seconded. Thinking about it, get rid of the "50 edits in the last 6 months", it seems to have brought only problems. notafish }<';> 14:20, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Agree on both points. The penalty for splitting one's time across various wikis is counterproductive, to say the least (shouldn't working on multiple wikis be encouraged?), and the 50-recent-edits rule unfairly penalizes active contributors who take wikibreaks and return only to find themselves disenfranchised. Both of these prerequisites should be abolished, although a new one requiring voters to have been registered users for at least a year might not be a bad idea. (Should that be a new proposal in its own section?) Rivertorch 05:42, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Enforce either a total-edit count, or a recent-edit count

I feel disenfranchised by the voting requirements in 2008. I count myself an active member of the Wikimedia community, but have not been able to dedicate a lot of time to editing my home wiki. It seems very strange to me that a fairly arbitrary limit was put into place that prevents me from voting in this election — despite the fact that I did contribute, that I retain support for my administrator and bureaucrat rights, and ArbCom membership on my home wiki, and that I still work towards driving Wikimedia forward in small steps. Yet, someone who has gone on an editing spree two days before the election is able to help select a community representative.

In order to help diminish the impact of this edit-count policy, I recommend that the next election's rules only consider one but not both of the edit count rules. Users who have been previously active should perhaps have only one recent edit (to ensure that they're still alive), on any wiki. Users who do not have a high enough edit count historically but have a high edit count recently should be able to vote as well. This will enfranchise the biggest amount of our community's users. -- IlyaHaykinson 23:29, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Do not change the edit count requirements

Fifty edits since January 1 is not a very large amount. If a user does not have the right to vote this year despite being an admin / steward / whatever, too bad. You have not lost your right to vote forever - just your right to vote that year. Next year, make a greater visible contribution to a Wikimedia project, and your right to vote will return.

I would, though, support expanding the scope of what counts as an edit to include other actions such as deletions, account creation, blocking, renaming, account flagging, page patrols and so on, as these are all contributions. Proto 13:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Count code contribution as edits

I would very much like to run for the Wikimedia Board, but unfortunately I don't spend most of my time editing Wikipedia. I do however, spend most of my time writing code that goes into run the mobile version of Wikipedia. I am not the only one. There are hundreds of volunteers that work on the different Wikimedia software projects and I believe they should be eligible for board seats. --Hcatlin 18:20, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Voting period

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The voting period should be 3 weeks as in the last elections. HannibalForever 19:50, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - we have expanded it by about six more days - finding the time in the schedule to do three weeks has been a real challenge, but we certainly appreciate the feedback. Philippe 22:03, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Edits

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If you're going to bottleneck the edits on this page (which, is not a good thing... the licensing update had a ton more participants than any board vote, yet we kept the pages open for the most part), please be sure to update everything when you change something. :-)

• first line: "between August 3rd and August 10th 2009." should be updated
• "A detailed description of the responsibilities of a member of the Board can be found at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_member." should link to the board manual, per the above section. That page is very detailed and they have been working on it for years, keeping it updated and current.
• "28 July –10 August 2009: elections." eww, space?

Cbrown1023 talk 15:37, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Done, and thank you. :-) Your observation as to bottle-necking is noted, and thanks for pointing out the necessary changes. Philippe 22:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Contradictory terms

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In Board elections/2009, I just translated that we elect board members for a 2 years term. Elsewhere, I translated earlier today, that the term ended some time in mid 2010. Only one can be true. --Purodha Blissenbach 21:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Can you find the page that says mid-2010? It may have been fixed since then. —Pathoschild 01:37:23, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Board elections/2009/Results/en and the translated versions of this page said mid-2010. But this has already been fixed. Markus Schulze 01:54, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. —Pathoschild 01:59:45, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Make candidates have better disclosure on active wikis

I feel that if candidates say they are active on a paticular wiki, they should have to say how long they've been active (first edit), and how many edits they've made. For example (this is just a random example, and is not meant to pick on anybody) KevinOKeeffe claims to be active on wikimedia commons. This implies that he has done some work there. If you look at his contribs you notice he has 4 edits in total there. This is not what i consider active. If candidates specified how active they were (Edit counts) than the active status would be much less misleading. Bawolff 06:46, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

On a related note, i think candidates should be required to disclose if they were blocked, as if someone was blocked, implies that they were not able to get along with the community (lets face it, its quite easy to contribute without getting blocked). I wouldn't want to vote for somebody who can't even contribute somewhere without getting blocked. Bawolff 06:46, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I have to say that I disagree with your second suggestion, as I've seen many cases of people who have been blocked by mistake or by unfair (sometimes even personal) reasons. Such information would create a negative bias against the candidate, as you have demonstrated yourself. Alternatively, you can use the questions section to ask candidates if they've ever been blocked, which will give them the chance to defend themselves in affirmative case. --Capmo 06:57, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

CentralNotice and extending the Board nomination period

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I sent the following to foundation-l, but I am reposting it here as well since people associated with the election may not all be subscribers there:

CentralNotice scripts live on the image file server. As some of you may know, that server has been having serious performance problems recently. One of the steps taken early on to reduce load while people work on fixing the problem was to disable CentralNotice on all wikis (save Meta).

As a result, the "Candidates are currently being accepted for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election" message that started on the 7th has not been visible anywhere except Meta since the 11th. I don't know whether the server will be fixed before the nomination period was supposed to end on the 20th. Assuming it is not fixed, the planned two weeks of candidate solicitations will have been reduced to less than five days. (This also explains why there have been no new candidate statements since early on the 12th.)

In my opinion, that is simply not adequate.

I know it would throw a giant monkey wrench in other plans, but I want to raise the possiblity that the technical problems with the site notice should justify pushing back the rest of the Board election timeline. The Board of Trustees is one of Wikimedia's most important institutions, and I don't think this is something we can justify rushing through.

Dragons flight 12:17, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Concerning the fact that it isn't clear whether the problem with the CentralNotice will be fixed soon and concerning the short period of time, I suggest that we should send email notifications with the "Candidates are currently being accepted for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election" message to the eligible Wikipedians. HannibalForever 13:21, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Dragons flight, for bringing up this critical issue. As you have hopefully heard by now, we've moved the closing date for candidate submissions to July 27. Luckily, we had an extra week built into the schedule. I speak not just for myself, but for the whole committee, when I say that it is critically important to us that all potential candidates have as level a playing field as others. No one should, for example, not be informed of parts of the process.

We took our strongest action: actually shifting the dates of the election while the cycle was playing out. We appreciate again that you brought it forward.

For the committee,

--Philippe 13:00, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

July 20?

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The section "How to submit your candidacy" indicates that people can submit their candidacy up until July 27, however the section beneath it says candidate submissions close July 20. John Vandenberg 10:45, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

The section below had not yet been updated to reflect the recent announcement. Statements will be accepted until July 27, 23:59 UST. I have updated that section. --Philippe 13:09, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Translation

"election has not begun" warning message

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I have moved this message into a separate template Board elections/2009/Warning/en so that it can more easily be translated and removed from all languages simultaneously when the elections do begin.

However this message has a problem. It not only says "election has not begun", but "Candidates and votes will not be accepted".

That means that we'll have to remove it as soon as candidates are accepted (6 July 2009 if what I read was correct).

Are we going to have no message at all from that day on ? Don't we need to prepare additional messages and their translations ?

I suggest to create Board elections/2009/Warning2/en with the following message :

Voting has not begun. Votes will not be accepted.

and Board elections/2009/Warning3/en

Voting has begun. Voters can vote now.

and Board elections/2009/Warning4/en

Voting has ended. You can no longer vote.

Teofilo 12:13, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

across across

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Please fix "across across" misstype (if it misstype). --Kaganer 17:31, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Done. iAlex 07:30, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Non-semantic link anchors

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Page Board_elections/2009/Results/en has some nonsential link anchors, such as "here" and the like. Beware! The target page of a link is never ever about the subject matter "here". So please amend, and please avoid such mistakes next year! See also last paragraphs in mw:Internationalisation#Link_anchors --Purodha Blissenbach 10:55, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out; I fixed the text. —Pathoschild 17:53:01, 08 July 2009 (UTC)

Translation table is off

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The table is a bit off somehow. Anyone one know how to repair it? -- Cimon Avaro 10:54, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I made a few edits, including a few mistakes, yesterday, now corrected, as I hope. Teofilo 14:51, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Warning msg need update?

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Maybe update Warning template for sinc. with current status: candidate submissions in progress? --Kaganer 22:29, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think a new message is necessary, since there's a message to that effect at the top of every wiki page. —Pathoschild 12:54:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Centralnotice

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I don't know this is the right place to ask, but where can I translate the centralnotice "Candidates are currently being accepted for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election"? Tân (talk) 11:23, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

The CentralNotice page is at Board elections/2009/CentralNotice‎. Thanks for your efforts with translation. Regards, Daniel (talk) 11:24, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Translation time table

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In Board elections/2009, there is a time table saying that translations were to be made until the end of last month, and the committee were actively seeking translators during this time. Because this did not function as intended last year, I must complain again. I do translate, I am the only translator registered here for ksh and once again I was not actively approached. In fact, I stumbled again over the election stuff somewhat accidentally in the early hours of today. That means my start of translations is 9 days after the planned end of translations, again. That also means, folks reading my translations, who cannot read English, and did not stumble over the election by accident as well, are once again deprieved of roughly 50% of their time to find out, make a decision, apply, and have their statements ready. Leaving aside that the number of potential candidates in our community is pretty small or zero, and those incapable of reading English is also pretty small. This is kind of luck in our case, but the unfair treatment of small language communities remains, that I sadly had to complain about during the last elections, despite the promises made last year. --Purodha Blissenbach 21:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Purodha, like you I am saddened that it didn't go better for you this time round. Obviously we've identified an area where we need to continue to find new and better ways of getting the job done. I very much appreciate you stepping in and doing the translation, and apologize sincerely for the difficulties you've had. --Philippe 12:53, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

"election has not begun" and other warning messages (2)

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As Board elections/2009/Warning/en has been edited, I created Board elections/2009/Warning2/en so that the older version is removed from all languages and so that the new version gets translated into other languages, if the translators are so kind as to do that.

I strongly suggest to prepare in advance

Board elections/2009/Warning3/en

so that we have something ready in all languages when the vote begins.

I already said that earlier, above on this discussion page, but nobody seems to have paid attention...

Teofilo 16:22, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Based on this version of the 2008 election, I propose to prepare the following message as Board elections/2009/Warning3/en, to be used after the vote has begun :

The election has started. Votes will be accepted until 23:59 10 August 2009 (UTC).
Translation of candidate statements is continuing.

Based on this version of the 2008 election, I propose to prepare the following message as Board elections/2009/Warning4/en, to be used after the vote has ended :

The election ended 10 August 2009. No more votes will be accepted.
The results will be announced on 12 August 2009.

Based on the last version of the 2008 election, I propose to prepare the following message as Board elections/2009/Warning5/en, to be used after the result has been announced :

The election ended 10 August 2009. No more votes will be accepted.
The results were announced on 12 August 2009.

Teofilo 09:41, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Problem with the header template

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The main template, in the section of the multilingual box has an error; it does not redirects to the corresponding language section, but to the source one only. For example:

• If I´m on "Board elections/2009/Results/en" and I want to click on the spanish version, it doesn´t leads me into "Board elections/2009/Results/es", but instead, the link takes me to "Board elections/2009/es".
• The same occurs for any other sub-section (like "Board elections/2009/Committee/en")

I´m not very sure how to fix this, I could find out, but it will take me a little long, so I thought it would be better if I post this message here instead, so the person who put the source code or the one who is familiarized with it coud fix it faster. Therefore I can keep my work here on translations. - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 18:50, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I made a small change to Template:Other languages/Board elections/2009 and I believe it's now fixed. Capmo 07:22, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it´s much better now, thanks. - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 05:28, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Translation of the new schedule

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How do you ensure that the schedule change gets translated into all languages ? I suggest to rename all language versions with the following pattern :

• rename Board elections/2009/fr into Board elections/2009/fr/old
• delete the redirect link on Board elections/2009/fr so that it becomes a red link again and shows up as a red link on the translation table on Board_elections/2009/Translation
• add a new column on the translation table on Board_elections/2009/Translation in order to show both the old and the new version (so that translators can find the old version and use it as a source for most of the text) ; the added parameter could be ''|intro and rules/old =

• do the same for all languages (not only "fr") where the "intro and rules" text is not missing. Teofilo 09:41, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

The schedule change has already been translated into all languages. Markus Schulze 14:20, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I thought in some languages it might have been more difficult than simply changing 20 into 27, but obviously it was not. Teofilo 15:16, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Unnecessary language versions

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In the german version and a section of the english version of the candidate statements page there are some unnecessary translations in the statement section of a candidate's nomination table. I mean, if another language already exist for the whole page translated, then placing different language versions of the statement within the table is unnecessary (case of the german version). I think that all of them shall be removed, but the one in the english version is something written by the candidate, so shall it be removed too? - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 15:45, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree. I'd remove all English versions from the German page and leave only the links to the original versions. The same should be done to the original French text by N'abbi Saad on the English page. Capmo 17:09, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd agree with Capmo too. Cbrown1023 talk 15:45, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I'll see if I can find out the mind of the committee on this one. --Philippe 18:09, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I have removed the unnecessary language versions on the german page for candidates, but be careful if you (anyone) do this: I have basic german knowledge and I can read most of the text, and at first view, sometimes it may seem that a candidate's statement has an unnecessary translation, but actually is only a non-yet-translated paragraph (a section that must be there, but hasn´t been translated yet), such as that of Dan Rosenthal, Ralph Potdevin and Steve Smith. - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 18:43, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Simple English translation

A simple English translation has been proposed and refused on the translation page (diff) and User talk:Tb240904 by User:Mardetanha, member of the 2009 Election comittee . If this decision is kept, it should be remembered for next year and announced early enough. Are Simple English users allowed to vote ? Are they allowed to become candidates ? Even if we don't have clear answers to these questions this year, let's hope we have them next year, early enough before the election procedure starts.

"Simple English" is the language used on http://simple.wikipedia.org .

Teofilo 10:09, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

This is the first I've seen of this. My instinct is that the official English pages should work for users at Simple, but perhaps I'm wrong in that. I'd like to have a conversation with someone who can explain to me the pros and cons. Can you suggest some such person from within your community? Simple English users who meet the other criteria 'are allowed to vote'. Simply English users who meet the criteria 'are allowed to become candidates'. --Philippe 13:12, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the Simple English Wikipedia and I am not a member of the Simple English Wikipedia community. I don't know which English words are considered simple enough and which are not. But what would be wrong with having the Email (Board elections/2009/Email/en), for example, "translated" into something more simple ? Aren't words like "eligible", "trustee", "sustainability", "notification" difficult words ? If these people are allowed to vote, why should they not be allowed to receive documentation in their language ? Should we not suppose that they are unable to read the normal English documentation ? On the other hand, if they are able to read normal English, what is the purpose of a simple English Wikipedia ? Teofilo 15:42, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

"Simple English" is not a language, so they wouldn't be "not receiving documentation in their language". Simple English Wikipedia is supposedly for people who are learning English but are already fluent in another language (remember that if creation of simple.wp was requested now, it would be denied). Cbrown1023 talk 15:45, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Why would not they not be allowed to vote? If there's no translation into олык марий, that means that people of mhrwiki can't vote? No, the translation is not wiki-based but language-based. (I'm not really sure why you would think that not translating a page into a certain thing means people aren't allowed to vote...) There's no point duplicating work and translating it into "Simple English" (a language that really doesn't exist), the English pages are already written to not be overly confusing. Did you know that the first "translation" that he made was a direct copy of the English version? Cbrown1023 talk 15:42, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

A situation where there is no translation because no volunteer turned out to offer translating, and a situation where there is no translation because translating has been forbidden by the Election Committee are not comparable. There is an intentional element in the latter case which lacks in the former. If there is a decision to ban all translations in "language[s] that really [don't] exist" it should be made clear at least for next year that translating into Esperanto, for example, or perhaps into Latin is forbidden. And the presence of two chinese texts makes one of them a "language that really doesn't exist" (as a separate language independent from the other one). I guess that all Esperanto practicing people or all Latin practicing people are already fluent in some other language. What if the other language known by these people is not used on any Wikimedia project ? If Esperanto is the only language that enables a person to communicate with the Wikimedia projects, can Esperanto be banned without meaning that these people are not allowed to vote ? If people are said to be "allowed to vote" but are intentionally left without the tools that would enable them to vote, is it not the same as forbidding them to take part in the vote ? If we tell these people "learn English first", why not tell the same to everybody, and ban all languages different from English. Why not tell the French "learn English first" ? Why not tell the Italians "learn English first" (and you can vote after you have taught yourself English) ? Teofilo 11:55, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

You are just trying to make a point now and warping my words. "Simple English" isn't even a constructed language, it's a "watered-down" version of one language – English. If a complicated word was used in the original version, that's because it was the only one that put across the correct meaning. I'm done with this pointless arguing though. It's even more counterproductive. Cbrown1023 talk 15:38, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that I am loathe at this point to spend resources translating to Simple, only because we took great care with the election documents when they were written. They were created to be as easy to read as possible, while still being absolutely factual. Yes, words like "trustee" can be difficult, but there are often not other terms that legally describe the position. At this point, I'd like to keep these documents as they are, without a simple translation. Because Simple is a part of the overarching foundation, users there are of course welcome to vote, provided that they meet the other requirements. --Philippe 18:08, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think anyone asked to "spend resources" translating into Simple. Saying "you can do it if you like" costs only the breath for saying 7 little words, so this is not costing resources. And if nobody performs the translation after the permission is given, nobody will complain either, I guess. Did anyone complain last year because of the missing Turkish or Africaans translations showing as red links on Board elections/2008/Translation ? If the normal English text is considered as being already "Simple", allowing to duplicate it (aren't both Chinese texts in some way duplicates of each other ?) seems less problematic than creating a precedent for discriminating between allowed languages and forbidden languages. Teofilo 11:55, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

What Simple English volunteers (if they exist) could probably do next year if nobody successfully lists the Simple English projects on Proposals for closing projects during the meantime is

• create valuable entries for the more difficult words like "trustee" in simple.wiktionary.org
• create an English version where difficult words are linked to these entries. Teofilo 12:27, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Statement character count?

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Is the character count for board statements meant to be with or without spaces? :) -- phoebe 20:54, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I heard that it was without space, but IANACM (I am not a committee member ;-) Cbrown1023 talk 21:44, 19 July 2009

The character count does not include spaces. Daniel 12:34, 20 July 2009

About eligibility and the waste of volunteers' work

I strongly suggest that the process of submission of candidacy be changed next time into two steps:

1. People submit their candidacy in a separate page, waiting for requirements to be checked and for translation of their submission to English, if necessary.
2. If candidates meet the requirements, their English text is moved to the Board elections/.../Candidates/en page.
3. Translations can then start to be done, only for the approved candidates.

The way it is today, many hours of volunteer work are being wasted simply because the election committee is not being speedy enough to remove ineligible candidates (two of them up to now, just one removed). Capmo 14:20, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Either that or the committee just pays more attention and realizes that this is something important to keep an eye on. It looks bad and makes a more work for the committee and the translators, time that could be better spent elsewhere. Cbrown1023 talk 15:30, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, we screwed up. It's not fair to waste volunteer time, and I personally feel badly about it. It's not an excuse, but there's been a ton of activity around this election in the recent days, and we're volunteers too, so sometimes jobs and family take precedence. But please, accept my sincere apologies. We'll try to do better. --Philippe 16:19, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi Philippe, I understand your point, and that's why I suggested the two-steps system, so that the committee doesn't have to act in a haste when someone submits a new candidacy. Regards —Capmo 17:08, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

A misspelling gets propagated

Ting Chen (Wing) misspelled, in his statement, the Nominating Committee, and all translations so far copied the misspelling. I think, it should be corrected everywhere. I also suggest to make it a link, since many may not know what this committee is doing. Tx. --Purodha Blissenbach 14:51, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Warning3a translation prohibited

The warning3a text box is currently being displayed on candidates statement pages of each language in English, untranslated. This is not acceptable. It has to be tanslated.

When I added warning3a for translation on Board_elections/2009/Translation, user Daniel quickly reverted my change with a somewhat unclear (to me) edit summary, when I complained on his tak page, he replied again something pretty incomprehesible (to me) which basically appears telling me that he claims to have the power to deprieve every culture in the world but English readers from understanding what is going on at the moment. I bet, this will be once more not being acted upon, and once more an unfair advantage has been generated for the predominantly Anglosaxon Whites that run the show anyways. --Purodha Blissenbach 10:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

The warning is going to be there for another one hour. It does NOT need to be translated given this, as doing so is a waste of translator time. Please take your generalised attacks on Committee members elsewhere; consider this your final warning about using language such as the type you used in the final sentence of the above post. Daniel (talk) 11:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I sympathize with Purodha's thoughts. Creating a message that will be displayed in English only, even for a few hours, is inadmissible in my point of view, even more so when there's a community willing to do the necessary translations. For the next elections it would be good to define previously the warnings schedule so that all of them may be translated in a timely manner. Capmo 17:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

The best laid plans.... we thought we had established the warning schedule. That one came in at the last minute when the technical side simply wasn't ready. We had to do it on the fly. Can we all remember that there is no malice here and that this committee works really hard to get the most efficient and most intra-lingual election we possibly can? --Philippe 18:19, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I team up with several of the candidates who say - somewhat more politely, maybe - basically the same. Btw. I never claimed that anything needed to be translated in an absolute sense, this would be a misunderstanding. I do claim that texts should be available for translation, the process of translation should be open and transparent, and it be up to translators, or communities, to decide what they want translated. If a message is only shown for 3 days, or outdated after a given date, it is of course useful to say so, so that translators can decide what to spent their efforts on. When you run a press campaign "Wikimedia votes", for instance, stressing that voting is possible even in that local underprivileged language zxx, giving out an URL, you of course want to avoid even a minute of that page starting with an English announcement. Blame, personal attack, ignorance, power play, waste of translator time, each are imho counterproductive, and not my intent. I only want (and wanted with the trenchant quote, that I translated as the last sentence above) to raise awareness towards the possible perceptions & implications of facts, no matter how unimportant they appear from our perspectives. --Purodha Blissenbach 13:51, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

We made a purposeful resource allocation decision to not have that translated, so as not to over-tax our (already over-taxed) translators. It was an extremely short use, and it's a decision I stand by. --Philippe 15:23, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

...and it's a decision that I would have to agree with from the translation coordinator's point-of-view. Something that is going to be showing for such little time is not worth setting up all the translations for. For most languages there was still Candidates to finish and the vote interface to proofread, which are way more important and we needed to focus on that. Cbrown1023 talk 20:57, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Understanding the decision, and its reason why, is easy and obvious for me. I believe, I had decided likewise in the situation. Also - once having been made aware, I pretty quickly managed to have the message translated and shown in our case which could/should have been a night and few hours earlier, okay, so what? - harm is limited. Okay, a less technically savy translator may have had a harder time to find out what to do.
These warnings overlap to some degree. How about putting them all together in a single template per language in the future, wich only passes translated strings to another, central, language agnostic template? This central template then has a series of #switch:es which yield the correct warning box, depending on UTC date, and possibly one or two election committee made settings. I would draft one soon, unless someone tells me that it was a stupid idea. --Purodha Blissenbach 12:13, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

No red links for past warnings

I added some code to Template:Board elections 2009 translation/cell so that warnings that are no longer needed and had not been translated don't show up as a red link in the Translations table. The idea is to avoid having people translate things that will no longer be necessary. What do others think of this feature? Capmo 01:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea, but I tweaked it to still let them translate it. I would hope that we'll use a similar set of messages for the next election, so we can reuse the translations they do now (while they're here and want to translate) instead of leaving the work for later. :-) Cbrown1023 talk 05:09, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Well reminded, these messages can hopefully be reused. Capmo 12:19, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Documentation / notification

Better document vote tallying method

Choose whatever voting method is best but... Please make sure there is a page explaining it where it is understandable by all. Sorry, but the article on the Schulze Method on Wikipedia is absolutely not for the "not highly trained in statistics and other weird formulas" people. Like me :-). Thank you. notafish }<';> 14:23, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Don't bother the ineligible

Since the requirements for who can vote are well-known in advance, please don't pester me to vote on every page when I am not eligible to do so. I wasted a good 15 minutes (which is a long time to some people BTW) waiting for the whole process to unwind before finding out my admittedly minor contributions do not qualify me to have a voice in who runs wikipedia. As noted, since the requirements are well known, just calculate the eligibility on a user ID basis; and omit / include the vote request on pages loaded by that user ID. That's all the voting wiki does but only after one has wasted their time. Just my 2 cents. 72.73.13.29 22:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
P.S. Here's another thought (I like to solve almost as much as whine!  :-), why not dump us amateur editors into a "Friends of Wiki" category. That way the powers-that-be can gauge the sentiment of thousands of other-wise ineligible voters. Why toss out good information once you've asked for it, eh? 72.73.13.29 22:39, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Use human-readable vote summary page

After the user votes, they should be shown a human-readable summary of their vote. This makes it easy to understand what their vote numbers actually mean, and to change it if they made a mistake. For example:

Your vote (click here to change):
Favourite (1): Billy Joe
2^nd choice (30): Joey Bill
2^nd choice (30): Bob Apple
3^rd choice (99): Jane Apple
 
Don't want at all: Other Guy
Don't want at all: That Guy

—{admin} Pathoschild 12:39:13, 04 July 2008 (UTC)

Number of eligible voters

How many eligible voters are there this year? HannibalForever 00:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

That's an interesting question. I'll find out. It won't be immediate, though, so prod me if I neglect to come back here to get the answer. --Philippe 12:50, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Link to Board manual?

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A few of us on the Board have been working over the past year on a Board manual, designed as a thorough intro for prospective and new trustees to governance at the Foundation, the role of a Trustee, and how things work day-to-day. It's on Meta at Wikimedia board manual. Instead of linking to the outdated page at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_member, I suggest this page instead link to the new manual and likely even remove the duplicative "Responsibilities as member of the Board" text. Stu 23:51, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I just added a some additional detail on expectations for trustees to the Board manual. Stu 05:32, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Done, and thank you. :-) Philippe 22:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

How to vote

Here we say: «Follow the instructions on that page». But the page does not explain what to put in the boxes, and various it.wiki users complained about that. Schulze method is not universally known, so perhaps it would be useful to expand the "how to vote" section. Thanks, Nemo 06:58, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Will putting the text at Board elections/2009/Vote interface/it help? I've asked someone to update SPI with the text there. Cbrown1023 talk 15:15, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. I've also added a note here. Maybe such an explanation will be useful for other communities, too? --Nemo 00:56, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, the "vote interface" should be the same for everyone already, it just seems that the Italian version was a little outdated (we reused the translations from last year and asked people to review them so there was less work, we didn't get the vote interface text until the day before the election). Is the note still needed or does the updated "vote interface" work? Cbrown1023 talk 01:29, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Candidates

No female candidates

The following discussion is marked as answered (female candidates are welcome). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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Any and all of the 2009 canidates appear to be wonderful choices. What about female canidates? Even though I am not eligable to vote, I'd like to see at least ONE female canidate. --99.171.101.69 17:41, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello 99.171. Feel free to encourage eligible females to participate. :) —Pathoschild 17:51:19, 08 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, I dislike the absence of female candidates. - Damërung ^{...ÏìíÏ...}_{_Ξ_} . --  14:31, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, however this does reflect the nature of our editing community which is heavily male biased. AndrewRT 21:33, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Become a candidate

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The message header on the english wikipedia links the phrase "Become a candidate" to Board_elections/2009/Candidates/en. This is just a list of candidates. Could we either:

1. Have an introductory paragraph on that page which says who the qualifications, duties, requirements and powers of Board members are, and invites people to add their names to the list below, or
2. Change the link to another page that does that job.

Thanks AndrewRT 21:36, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree.— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.190.139.217 (talk) 04:01, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

It might be better to link to Board_elections/2009#How_to_submit_your_candidacy ? Teofilo 15:45, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

It links to the information page now. Thanks for the suggestion. —Pathoschild 02:08:12, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Invalid candidate (User:Ανθρωπιστής)

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Candidate Ralph Dominguez (User:Ανθρωπιστής) has only about 200+ combined edits in all the projects that he mentions in his candidate summary. AFAIK this means, that he is not eligible, and can not be elected. Also, he has not answered to the inquiry that User:Capmo left on his talk page.

How can he be on the list? Please remove him as soon as possible, because these texts are right now being translated to numerous languages, and his summary is in my opinion the hardest one to translate, so there is no use wasting efforts to translating a text of a user that can not be elected. Thank you, Hydrox 07:20, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

And he has registered his user account as recently as May 3, 2009 (see SUL util). –Ejs-80 20:08, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, he has also used account Ανθρωπιστης. Still, too low edit count. –Ejs-80 15:43, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Ralph Dominguez has recently edited his Spanish, his Portuguese, his French, his Italian, and his Russian presentations. Does he know that his eligibility is challenged? Markus Schulze 21:18, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

If he has edited meta, he will have seen the message on his talk page, so we should expect an reply soon. John Vandenberg 07:35, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, people!

I misestimated the admonition of Capmo because I did not see his signature at the foot of the same. Without a doubt, because of it, I did not perceive it as an admonition originated in Wikimedia Foundation. I offer many excuses.

For the respecting to the date of my beginning in Wikimedia Projects, already from some months before it had been working with the user name Ανθρωπιστης, without the orthographic tilde, also with the IP direction of my system.

Never the less, in the view of the which, I assume my own responsibility of which those contributions are not directly attributable to me.

Thanks for your comprehension! Ανθρωπιστής 16:04, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Dear Ralph Dominguez, do you agree that you are not eligible? Or do you question the claim that you are not eligible?

In the first case, I recommend that your presentation should be removed from the list of candidate presentations. In the latter case, I need more information. Markus Schulze 17:59, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Dear Markus Schulze, dear everyone in the team,

if, according to the statutes of Wikimedia Foundation, I am not eligible for this electoral process, I agree without any reserve. I lament the troubles that I could have caused to the Wikimedia Foundation team during all the process. I'm going to do the indicated to "got the weight" (to fulfill and to surpass the expectations widely) in the next year. Ανθρωπιστής 16:32, 20 July 2009 (UTC).

Why is this page protected?

The following discussion is marked as answered (because it has the official rules and is the source for translations). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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I was going to add a mention in the top box of the dates for candidate submissions and voting, but was surprised to find that I can't edit this page? Why is that? Mike Peel 18:36, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Nobody knows... I'll unprotect it tomorrow unless it's explained in a convincing way why that's a bad idea.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 04:36, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, Yann as again asserted that only election committee members can edit the page. Again, there is no actual rationale. Sometimes I wonder why we use wikis if we're not going to let people edit things.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 23:42, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello Mike. The page is protected because it contains the official rules and is the source for translations. It's automatically loaded whenever a new translation is started, which is why a stable verified source text is ideal. Changes also trigger updates to all the translations, which is why we prefer that it not be changed without discussing it first; if it's later reverted, we'd need to sort through the changes to the translations to figure out what needs to be reverted too, and ask translators to change any new translations to match the correct text.

Also, the top box Mike Peel mentioned is actually transcluded from Board elections/2009/Warning2/en (and other subpages), which is not protected. —Pathoschild 12:44:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Board elections/2009

The following discussion is marked as answered (no follow-up). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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somebody can help me with the board elections please? Thanks 94.162.37.158 10:29, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello 94.162. What do you need help with — voting, or submitting a candidate statement? —Pathoschild 17:55:09, 08 July 2009 (UTC)

Random order

The following discussion is marked as answered (done). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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Can someone please activate the order randomization from the prior elections? It's unfair to the alphabetically challenged to only display in strict alphabetical order. --Gmaxwell 12:08, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Why unfair? - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 15:50, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Gmaxwell, I don't recall that we rotated them until the actual election. Am I mis-remembering? --Philippe 18:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

You're misremembering. The candidate statements have been in random order in the past.

As for unfair— There is a lot of material to read in the candidate statements (and will be lots in the questions). Some people are going to read a couple and stop, as a result candidates who are alphabetically first will get more exposure. Numerous studies have shown that even simple name recognition is a powerful influence in the voting booth.

It also determines who gets the first say. If everyone says that motherhood and apple pie are good things, it probably sounds inspiring when the first person says it but boring and repetitive by the last. Switching the order up is simply a more neutral ordering than alphabetical although any ordering imparts a bias on average the random ordering favours no one.

The ordering of the candidate statements is undeniably a biasing factor (although perhaps a small one) but it is easily removed by simply wrapping the statements in a couple of div tags as the randomization JS is still in place. Take a look at prior years. --Gmaxwell 15:13, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I've activated the random ordering myself. --Gmaxwell 15:27, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Gmaxwell - did you, by any chance, do it on all the language pages, or just the en? --Philippe 17:20, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I'll gladly do it on all a bit later. Thanks for pointing out my oversight. --Gmaxwell 17:23, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, it seems to be enabled for all languages now. —Pathoschild 23:43:22, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Practical conditions

I've had a long and fruitful assessment in my home chapter, the end of which being, I simply don't meet the condition of attending the several yearly meetings. I would like to know if there's any chance for future candidates to raise the money at all to be a candidate. For me, I have enough ideas that I can bring to the fore without being a member of the board, anyway. Greetings, - Art Unbound 20:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the question... could you restate it for me? --Philippe 22:40, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Hoi. Voor de internationale bezoeken vergoed de Foundation reis- en verblijfkosten. Dedalus 22:52, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Philippe, what I meant was that I don't have the income for those trips needed to attend the meetings. Dedalus just said above that the Foundation would be able to repay trips and stay. - 194.109.245.121 18:53, 22 July 2009 (UTC) Sorry, I wasn't logged in yet. - Art Unbound 18:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, so you have a question to, and - as I understand it - that question is "Does the Foundation provide money for the costs of transportation and substinence to members of the Board of Trustees on Foundation businesss?" If that's the question you're asking, the answer is "yes, in accordance with the Foundation's Travel policy." --Philippe 20:00, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

600 edits

600 edits is way too much.The requirements should rather be that a person joined wikipedia at least a year before 2009 - and has made, lets say 50-100 edits before 2009.Some kind of an edit recorder or such would be very helpful to determine the length and original content of these edits. Most wikipedians, under these conditions cannot vote.If a person does not spend a lot of time here doesn not mean he is less intelligent or he's opinion is any less informed or valuable?

(My opinion here; the election committee may have differing views) I see having *any* count limit as an unfortunate but necessary step to prevent sock/meatpuppets. Without a limit I could simple create hundreds of accounts (via proxies, perhaps) and pick the winners. With a small limit like 50 it wouldn't be much more difficult. As the limit goes up it looks more and more suspicious when a voter has only super-simplistic edits. Since a few days of concerted editing on any of our projects will get a single account to the required level— even if it is not just doing simplistic copy-editing I don't see the current criteria as especially burdensome.

And, yes, I think people who have been around less are on average less informed. While I don't think increasing the average voter competence is a goal of the limit, I think it probably has a slight bias in that direction. --Gmaxwell 20:11, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree. Edit count limit is necessary to prevent abuse. AdjustShift 09:43, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Edit count is the worst measure we have, except for all the others. :-) Speaking honestly, though, I'd love to have found another way to do exactly what Gmaxwell points out above, but haven't been able to come up with one yet. So, edit count it is. It's a crappy measure, but it's the only one that I can think of that works - and don't think election committees for the last three years haven't debated exactly that (I can only speak to those three years, don't know what happened before that). --Philippe 17:20, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Thoughts from ineligible voters

It might be useful for ineligible voters to have a page to leave their thoughts, perhaps Board elections/Ineligible voters - this might also be a good place for a more specific discussion of the intended effect of the limit. One of the unfortunate parts of the current process is that people are encouraged to vote rather than discuss and reflect (even the question process isn't designed to develop any useful new ideas or consensus about important topics within the community) -- and interested voters who are rejected as ineligible are left feeling bummed rather than given something to do. -- sj | translate | vote! |+ 03:40, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

and of course no one cares AT ALL what the massive numbers of IPs think. Even though lots of the activities of a WP editor revolve so much around issues with ips, you could care less. Frankly the notification system doesn't even work for IP's. I know there are PLENTY of people who meet your arbitrary numbers criteria, but have done them without logging in, so that magically means absolutely nothing. Why even pretend to have democracy and vote, if you explicitly DON'T CARE about input or representation from one of the largest (by far) user groups however unruly... also this will only encourage the sad corps of editors who specialize in reverts and rollbacks, even if they're neccessary. No editors should be rewarded for that type of behavior because it promotes exclusionary thinking, and again while its needed (sometimes) in building these encyclopedias, only those who regualary add should be allowed to regularly delete. So basically housekeeping edits should not count towards vote eligibilty if that's even possible. 66.220.124.56 09:09, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Statement beyond character limit?

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I have reservations that I may have exceeded the wordcount and I neither wish to disqualify myself nor work an unfair advantage with my field of candidates. I would really appreciate a tally.
Thanking you in anticipation
B9 hummingbird hovering 08:09, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I get 998 characters, which is well within the limit. --Philippe 19:35, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Aruspice's text

I just want to point out since I can't edit it myself that in Aruspice's text, he says 'articles for suppression'. I am sure he's referring to the French word 'suppression' here and the English should be 'deletion'. -Munci/currently141.35.20.90 11:32, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I am fairly certain of the same thing, but am loathe to change a candidate's text, and as an election committee member am uncomfortable suggesting alternative text to a candidate for office. It's entirely too close to the ethical limit, I'm afraid. Have you considered contacting him directly? --Philippe 19:29, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Skype Extension

The following discussion is marked as answered (this extension is not enabled on Wikimedia wikis; it can be proposed on Foundation-l or Wikitech-l). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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I am endeavouring to plug in the Extension:Skype and I would really appreciate some assistance. Is it possible that there may be some active capacity building in suite with the other candidates to ensure that they too have this enablement? An equal field is beautiful. Special:Version
ThanXta
B9 hummingbird hovering 13:13, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe that meta currently uses the skype extension. --Philippe 19:30, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Belief doesn't entail knowing Philippe.

B9 hummingbird hovering 17:50, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

It's not going to be enabled like this, the community has to agree and the extension has to be checked out by the developers. There really is no reason to enable it, and I'm not sure what you mean by "an equal field is beautiful"... none of the other candidates use this extension because it doesn't exist on meta. Cbrown1023 talk 18:26, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

B9, you are quite correct that belief does not equal knowledge... but please understand that the skype extension is very low on my list of priorities right now. We've got an election to launch. --Philippe 19:19, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

The Skype extension is not enabled on Wikimedia wikis. You can discuss enabling it on the Foundation-l or Wikitech-l mailing lists. Thank you for the suggestion. —Pathoschild 23:25:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Candidate removed from English candidate list, still present on he, lb, hi, eo

The following discussion is marked as answered (fixed). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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See English removal diff and WhatlinksHere tool applied to the user page. Teofilo 09:55, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps, we could use next year a subpage system, permitting to add or remove a candidate from all language versions simultaneously. Teofilo 11:32, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, I have removed the candidate from those other pages. Your suggestion for next year will be included in our post-election documentation. --Philippe 19:27, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Template:Other languages/Board elections/2009

The following discussion is marked as answered (fixed). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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It seems that only the first 30+ languages are displayed (up to sk). Can anyone fix it?—Bencmq 12:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks for bringing that to our attention. Daniel (talk) 12:20, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

SPI

I probably should have mentioned it sooner, but honestly it had never occurred to me that someone would blank the entire wiki just to start a new vote.

LiCom made a number of enhancements to the SPI wiki during the vote including:

1. Removing the anon login line
2. Reformatting the sidebar so it was relevant
3. Creating an onscreen language translation bar so people could easily change languages at the vote page.
4. Installing javascript to automatically apply RTL orientation to the entire site when someone was using a right to left language preference
5. CSS enhancements to the List interface to ease the work of vote admins.
6. ... and probably other things I am forgetting

If the original site still exists somewhere, I'd suggest you look into copying those features. If the original site was destroyed, then I think that was a waste. Dragons flight 21:52, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Newbies invited, then rejected

When I click the link at the top of every page that urges me to vote in this election, I am told that I am not in the predetermined list of users who are authorized to vote. Can't the message be suppressed for users who are not on the list? If not, the message should be more informative. A link to the voting requirements would seem to be called for. As it stands, new users are given a terse message to let them know they're not in with the in crowd. I think we want to be more welcoming, don't we? ReverendWayne 02:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

It's not possible to only show the message to qualified users, but I agree with you that for next election we should have some sort of link in the "You are not in the predetermined list" message to the voter requirements (it's here for this election). Cbrown1023 talk 05:12, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

And also a link to ways they can take part in the election without voting -- turning away any editor or contributor who is interested in the Foundation is a mistake, and the current turnout rates among the eligible are so low that we should be actively looking for ways to improve engagement. -- sj | translate | vote! |+ 03:59, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Now that bug 18979 has been fixed, it seems it should be possible to make the rejection message contain a link to the eligibility criteria. I don't really know how the vote interface translation process actually works, though, so I'm not sure what it would take to get this set up. --Ilmari Karonen 11:33, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Email invite, then rejection

I get invited to vote, and then the page says I am not on the list. I have been active on WP for a long while, so I would expect to be eligible. please help Chendy 17:12, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I too got an email stating that I am eligible to vote, then got a SecurePoll page that said I am "not in the predetermined list of users authorised to vote in this election."

Not only that, but I also got a sitenotice when I logged in to Wikipedia a couple days ago, and was able to access the voting page then; but I decided that I wanted to review the candidates more first. Now I can't go back and vote? Tuvok[^T@lk/_en.wp] 17:44, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Note the absence of any response. That would be indicative of either a rigged election or a botched election. -- Thekohser 03:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I got an email on 8 August - only two days before the close of the election. Like a lot of people, I'm not necessarily available on Wikimedia projects 24/7…I would like to have voted, and wonder why these automated notices weren't sent out when voting opened, rather than just before it closed.Proabivouac 03:45, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That would also be indicative of either a rigged election or a botched election. -- Thekohser 03:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Voting user interface

In the absence of something like what Pathoschild proposed above (see #Use human-readable vote summary page), which I think is important for next time, I think we should emphasize that ranking your least favorite candidate "99" or something similar still means that any unranked candidates would be considered less desirable than any ranked candidates. I would suggest adding a sentence after "It is presumed that you prefer all ranked candidates to all not ranked candidates and that you are indifferent between all not ranked candidates" if at all feasible, something like: "In other words, even if you rank your least favorite candidate 99, it will be presumed that you favor them over any unranked candidates." This is my impression based on using the UI, I'm not sure if it's shared by others.--Eloquence 02:24, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

This doesn't have to do with what you said, but what happens if you rank your least favorite candidate 999 and then leave the others blank? Does ranked 999 = unranked? Cbrown1023 talk 05:10, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Eloquence, noted. Good catch. --Philippe 20:32, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Email Notification

When will the email notifications be sent? HannibalForever 01:44, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Still being determined. --Philippe 17:23, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello. I just wanted to say that e-mails are being sent to flagged bot accounts too stating that they are eligible to vote, which is false per the requirements (at least, I have received an e-mail stating that my bot account is eligible to vote). Yours cordially, — df|  09:27, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, a mistake was made this year which meant the email went out to the bots account associated email address as well. KTC 10:52, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

It's also been sent out to editors who have already voted. That's called spam. -- John (Daytona2 · Talk · Contribs) 12:26, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I think I'd prefer to think of it as "over-zealousness". The committee went to great lengths to assure that everyone who was qualified knew it, and in our zeal, we over-notified. It sure beats under-notifying. I'm sorry it was a bother to you. --Philippe 19:31, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about anyone else, but the first email I received advising me of being able to vote was sent on the evening of Friday, August 7th... And for some reason the banner advising to vote that would post after login, was removed on or before August 7th... I was trying to vote yesterday (the 10th EST) and the day before (the 9th EST) (and without checking my email which would have provided the link) and no longer could find any onsite link through a posting, to do so. Did anyone else observe that the link was no longer posted after the 7th? Stevenmitchell 01:55, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Candidates' questions

Is there a page on which a particular candidate can be asked questions? I don't mean the general questions being asked of them all, but where a particular candidate can be asked something relevant only to them? Sorry if it's obvious, but I've looked around and can't seem to find it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:49, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

There is nothing set up particularly for that. You could theoretically, ask on their user talk page, but I'd encourage you to phrase the question in such a way as to ask all candidates; we could get something very useful out of it. :) --Philippe 04:07, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

It's probably too late now. I'd strongly suggest having candidates' questions pages in future, because there are some questions that only pertain to certain candidates. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

...but there are mostly questions that apply to all the candidates, and think of how annoying it is to post it to every single page. The current system evolved after learning from previous years. Cbrown1023 talk 03:24, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

German translation for Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

Als Ingenieur, gegenwärtig stellungslos, und ehemaliger Student der Informatik, Erkenntnisforschung und Elektr(on)ik glaube ich die nötigen Fähigkeiten zur Mitarbeit bei Wikimedia und besonders den Wikipedias zu haben. Ich schätze und unterstütze die Ernsthaftigkeit, Unabhängigkeit, Demokratie und Unvoreingenommenheit der Wikipedias. Regelmäßig vervollkommne ich die französische Wikipedia, vor allem durch Korrektur von Tippfehlern, Verbesserung von schlechter Syntax und Mitarbeit bei der Verfassung von Artikeln. Ich beteilige mich an Diskussionen und Abstimmungen über Seitenlöschungen und ähnliches. Ich verbessere ständig meine Wiki Syntax Kenntnisse um effizientere Beiträge zu leisten. Ich würde in den kommenden Monaten gerne auf diesem Weg fortfahren, als Mitglied der Gemeinschaft und warum nicht auch des Vorstands.

You can post this on Board elections/2009/Candidates/de. Danke! Cbrown1023 talk 20:49, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I have a problem to add South Levantine Arabic language

I added this language but it appear without its name

the language detail:

Identifier: ajp Name: South Levantine Arabic Status: Active Code set: 639-3 Scope: Individual Type: Living شامي South Levantine (Palestine, Israel, and Jordan)—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Khemso (talk • contribs) 08:01, 4 August 2009 (UTC.

I replied to you in a chat. Has probably to do with a lack of info in the CLDR. GerardM 11:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I checked with Nike and it seems that ajp isn't supported by MediaWiki (the software we're currently running) yet (it's not in the CLDR either as, Gerard says). If you'd like to translate MediaWiki into ajp, visit betawiki:Support. Cbrown1023 talk 12:06, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Need better interface.

When I got to wikipedia tonight I noticed the vote link at the top of each page.

After completing my business I clicked on the vote link which opened a page with a link to another page / server where the actual voting was to take place. I clicked on that link and was presented with a page of candidates.

I reviewed each candidate by visiting their pages and related pages as needed and assigned a value 1-5 for each candidate.

When finished -- two hours later -- I clicked on the vote submission button and was confronted by a page that required me to log in.

Since I was logged in when I clicked on the vote link I was a wee bit baffled but entered my login information anyhow.

Ach! Apparently my login information is not valid for voting as it is rejected. The specific message is, "There is no user by the name 'JimScott'" which is very curious since I'd been editing articles for a few hours under that user name prior to clicking the vote link.

I tried to get back to the voting page. If my voting data is intact I can iron out the login problem.

Nyet. All voting information is lost as the back button is unable to retrieve the previous data.

People sometimes think I am negative.

I think sometimes I am tired of page design concepts which do not function properly.

In any event, I am in need of my sleep so sorry to say wikimedia will just have to do without my input this time around. Tant pis.

ciao

Wow. I'm so terribly sorry that you had a negative experience. If you'd like to contact me and include your username and home wiki, I'll be happy to look into it. It's a shame that you did all that reading and now we lose the benefit of your thoughts. I don't know if you truly are on the list of those who meet the criteria to vote, but I'd like to check into it for you, if you'll let me. --Philippe 06:12, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I see you've added your username. What's the wiki that you edit most often? --Philippe 06:16, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

It's a hiccough of the session transfer. Basically, you'll need to start with clicking on the link on your home project once your session on the SPI wiki has expired. Werdna 15:57, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I had the same problem. The voting page says "Welcome Lasunncty!" but when I click Submit vote, it tells me I must be logged in. I try and it says my username does not exist. All my rankings are lost. --Lasunncty 21:02, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I had this problem too. Methinks I'll wait until it's fixed to spend another hour re-reading everything. And then I'll make a copy before I submit. --Alynna 18:59, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Concerns about an extremist candidate

Hallo, I've been informed yesterday on de.wikipedia by another user, that one of the candidates, Mr. Kevin O'Keeffe is known for a far-right positions on several issues. This seems to be confirmed by his presentation on his user page on en.wikipedia.

This article from 2002 seems to confirm that O'Keeffe has been an acitvist for the National Alliance.

Now we, the other user and me, are concerned, whether the election committee knew of this candidates political points of view, why he could participate as a candiate in this election, and whether he in fact would be allowed to join the Wikimedia board in case he was elected by enough voters.

--Rosenkohl 09:28, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict): I was about to state the very same here and I'll add some more substance to O'Keeffe's views, so everyone gets the picture. Though I am not particulary interested in digging into candidates backgrounds in genral, I simply couldn't help noticing that one of them is in fact a known rightwing extremist. Kevin O'Keeffe is not just a free speech supporter and something of a conservative, but an outspoken White Supremacist and activist for the National Alliance. Some of his statements can be found here (somewhere in the middle of the articel) an he has actually been arrested for making threats against Palo Alto's Jewish Community Center. HE did jail time for that, just have a look here as to see what this man has to say about Jews: "Yeah, I am calling about the, uh, shooting event down there in, uh, Los Angeles, I just want to say I think it's an outstanding event, and the only, uh, disadvantage to it is that the five miserable kikes survived, and hopefully, uh, soon we'll be upgrading our weaponry from, uh, rifles to nuclear warheads so we can (inaudible), so we can target places like Tel Aviv and Haifa, and perhaps even New York. But until, uh, that wonderful day arrives, we'll have to settle with these, uh, more minor forays. Heil Hitler."

It is clearly utterly unacceptable for a convicted hatemonger racist and antisemite to be part of the Wikimedia Foundation and I hope we agree on that. Even him runnig for the post sheds a very doubtful light on the project. My question: Is there any way, a candidate can be removed from the list? --Papphase 09:41, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

PS: And I do indeed not think that views such as O'Keeffe's should have "a sympathetic ear" on the Wiki Board, as he intents to act as according to his introduction on the candidates page. --Papphase 12:37, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello Papphase and Rosenkohl.

The election committee only recently became aware of this, and it is being currently discussed. It is proposed that it is not within the committee's role to selectively release information about candidates that would affect the election, or to judge the quality of eligible candidates. The Board of Trustees has also been made aware of this, and reserves judgement on which selected candidates to appoint.

Thank you for mentioning your concerns; we hope that the community and Board together can control the quality of the candidates.

For the committee,

—Pathoschild 17:09:54, 06 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to back up Pathoschild. For a community built upon the notions of free knowledge, open ideas, it would reflect poorly upon us to start parsing the views of candidates to figure out who thinks right. Bored Neo-Nazis in need of attention have as much right to stand, and fall, before us as anyone else. It has also made my "Who will come in last" betting pool much more interesting. --David Shankbone 22:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, in my POV there's a quite a difference between a bored far-righter concerned with free speech, like O'Keefe poses here, and a convicted hatemonger making death threats to unwanted minorities. In a general vote such notions would become public quickly and give the voter the chance to decide informed, here, people might give their vote without knowing the true stand of a candidate. If, just be chance, O'Keefe turns out not to come in last, but indeed gets elected -how'd this be handled? If a board member like him got to public attention, the damage to the reputation of Wikimedia would be severe, I reckon. --Papphase 08:28, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

PS: As long as candidates are not supposed to answer questions publicly, how can a voter be sure not to vote someone, he wouldn't possibly elect otherwise? For example, O'Keeffe simply doesn't comment on question regarding his far-right position. That's a fundamental electoral flaw here. The democratic process is based on available information about the candidates that goes beyond their own promises. --Papphase 08:38, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

O'Keeffe answered that "Far right" question - just on that editors' talk page. --David Shankbone 13:59, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

When sending my initial message, I did not know all of the extend of Mr. O'Keeffe's activities and problems with the law as you Papphase have described it now.

Thanks Pathoschild for trying to answer our questions. I think it is a postive sign that there seems to be a (as I understand your answer: still open) discussion within the election committee.

I'm trying to understand the triangle of election committee, Board of Trustees and community. While I agree that the role of no committee of any election should be to comment on the candidates during the election, on the other hand, I believe that there can be circumstances under which it could become necessary to either stop an election, or the exclude certain voters or candidates from an election. Whether this should be a decision by an election committee on it's own is a different question.

The election committee has already set some Board elections/2009/en#Requirements for potential candidates. 600 edits is not very much, but at least such a contribution, and to be not blocked should be a necessary condition to show that your are able to work on a scientific encyclopaedia. Of course it is by far no sufficient condition.

Thus the committee in fact already has set a standard to judge the quality of eligible candidates to a certain (although small) degree.

Further, I don't understand the project as a state with fully devided powers, roles, and jobs. While the members of the election committee have to act impartial, and try to technically and fairly manage the election, at the same moment, and first of all, they are individuals, who think and act on their own, which sets a limit to the committee's impartiality. I think it would overcharge the committee and its members just to run the technical part of the election and not to have an own opinion on the candidates.

I think it is a good information that the Board of Trustees reserves a final judgement on which selected candidates to appoint.

I can agree with your hope that the community and Board together can control the quality of the candidates, and would like to include the election committe in this hope.

I also would like to note that for controlling the candidates' quality, it can't be enough for the community to take part and vote in a certain way in this election.

So I believe an open discussion within the community about problems with candidates is neccesary.

Also I would like to remind that this project aims to beome a scientific encyclopaedia. Since Neo-Nazsim is excluding itself from the scientific community, I would not subsume it under "free knowledge" or "open ideas". Thus, far right ideas must not be represented as one valid opinion among other valid opinions within the encyclopaedic contents.

Greetings, --Rosenkohl 11:30, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Rosenkoh, you say: "So I believe an open discussion within the community about problems with candidates is necessary". As a sitting election committee member, and as a human being, I agree. Discussion should occur. Have at it. :) Be civil, be constructive, and discuss away. You don't need the help or the permission of the Election Committee to do that. --Philippe 17:25, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

"discuss it away" - What a ridiculous answer! --78.53.86.62 00:16, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

He said "discuss away", not "discuss it away". Please learn the english language before you participate in and with it. --84.137.30.199 14:22, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Maybe O'Keeffes background was not known in the beginning. But now it is and I am stunned and disappointed that someone like him is still considered as a candidate for the board at all. The Foundation has to react very soon. It has to be clear that someone like O'Keeffe (quote: it's really an awful shame that Adolph Hitler didn't finish the job in the first place, from [1]) cannot be a member of the board. --Tsui 01:17, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

A nazi running for the board? Wait until the media finds out!!! FIELD DAY! --Cerejota 02:40, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Although my political position is far away from his, I want to speak up for O'Keeffes candidacy. He has the same right as everybody else to run for a board position. I you do not want him, do not vote for him. If you do not want him being a nazi (if he really is) try to convince him to change his views. If you cannot - bad luck, life can be hard. Do you let yourself be convinced by a nazi standpoint of views? Likley not so, so you are on equal stands. If someone served a sentence in jail, I believe, usually others should let that be over, when it is over, and not stigmatize a person for the rest of their life. Otherwise, or if you say, folks of some political color cannot be candidates, you are as closed-minded as those saying, e.g. black people cannot, or only christians could be admitted, or anything else the like. Democracy cannot be selective on their citizens, because that cannot work on the long run. And you cannot, in a scientific way, jugde political positions, thats one of the basic things that makes us necessarily having elections and votings. It hardly makes sense to have votings on things that are either observable (is the sun shining?) or that we cannot influence (we should have sunshine at midnight!) but all those things that need our decisionmaking. Some say: "Nazi go away" and I can understand that they do. But, also consider: Where should they go? We have only one earth at the moment. So going elsewhere is not an option. Getting along with each other is, likely, the only option we have, and it requires mutual respect, and equal rights, imho. --Purodha Blissenbach 09:46, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

This is, sorry to say, a most naive point of view. How does "mutual respect" work if an opponent is clearly very far from showing respect for others, disavows their basic rights and even advocates their murder? Everyone else turning a blind eye to his intolerance and hatemongering ? Most certainly not. Of course people who by their political position and personal actions actually oppose the concept of democracy and equal rights must not be allowed to represent a system based on those values. It is fallacious to argue that any system should tolerate people actively misusing the system to work against its foundations. --Papphase 22:29, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Philippe, I don't ask for a permission by the election committee to discuss the issue, but wanted to stress that the role of the community can't be solely to send in votes, then remain silent, and wait for the result.

I had already sent a vote earlier.

The form reads

"Each candidate is a respected user, who has spent considerable time to achieve a positive athmosphere in the projects for the free spread of human knowledge." (in German: "Jeder Kandidat ist ein respektierter Benutzer, der bereits beträchtliche Zeit aufgewendet hat, um den Projekten ein positives Umfeld für die freie Verbreitung menschlichen Wissens zu verschaffen.")

I can't anylonger agree with this information.

You write: "be constructive". However as long as the field of candidates isn't changed, I think most constructive is to withdraw my vote. I don't want my vote be counted against possible votes for far right candidates.

Further, I'm concerned that if a high perecentage of users would vote in this election (with this field of candidates), it could help to legitimize and establish far right world views within wikipedia, even in case the candidate is not elected or comes in last.

Unfortunately, though the form allows to change one's vote, it does not offer to withdraw it altogehter. So please let me inform you here, that my vote should not be counted.

Greetings --Rosenkohl 17:03, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

When you change your vote, it works effectively as a revote - so, you are, in essence, writing over your previous vote. If you wish to not vote for a candidate, you have that option - there will not be two ballots counted for you, the new will over-write the old. If you don't vote for a candidate, you will effectively have withdrawn your vote for that candidate. I have read the rest of your discussion, as I know other members of the committee have. If you still wish me to strike your vote entirely (after knowing that you can change it yourself), please let me know and I'll do so. I should also say that I think it's unlikely that a "high percentage" of voters will vote in this election. With current vote counts, we're looking at a substantial under representation of the community. --Philippe 19:21, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

This is how I voted (en-wiki): [2].

All I did, basically, was give numbers to all candidates except this guy. That way, in a numerical calculation, it counts as a no vote. The issue here, however, is that we should have a primary or rounds for voting, because there is a possibility this guy will come out with more votes than the joke candidates, and this will be used as propaganda "we didn't come out last".

I do not think that voting in an election with extremist candidates somehow validates them, however, and his honesty has to be encouraged - limiting political views all will do is drive those underground rather in the open were they can be confronted. I do worry, as stated, about media, but it seems they are beyond the OMGWTF stage with us. So I vote against him and that's it.--Cerejota 23:12, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Well far left or far right is not terribly important, but if a user's editing becomes so disruptive that it warrants a block, then their candidacy should be revoked, IMO. 76.178.200.245 21:13, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

It is not unprecedented for a blocked candidate to stand for election. In fact, it's a safety valve to prevent a rogue administrator from influencing the election process. --Philippe 21:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Are you for real?

The following discussion is marked as answered (yes). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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Do you goddamn morons seriously think your shitty website is important enough for elections, like it's the fucking United Nations? Don't get me wrong, Wikipedia can be (can be) a good resource sometimes, but the people who run it are operating on another plane of reality if they believe half of the bullshit they say about how it's going to change the world. Get your heads out of your own asses and just admit that it's always going to be a dumping ground for Sonic the Hedgehog trivia and digital photos of people's skin diseases. Christ almighty. -70.181.198.188 04:39, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your opinion. :) --Philippe 05:52, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

It's the only good one on this page. -70.181.198.188 07:16, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

It's important enough for you to moan about it having an election, instead of just ignoring it like most people would. :) -- KTC 09:24, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Bot receiving notification

The following discussion is marked as answered (notifications of bots was accidental). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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How come my bot en:User:Kotbot gets an e-mail notification, when as a bot it's not entitled to vote? Is it perhaps through its pl:User:Kotbot account, whose bot flag was removed due to inactivity? Something perhaps a little wrong here.--Kotniski 09:52, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Both. It was a mistake that meant bot were being sent the notification. Also, if the bot flag isn't set, then the email would had been sent regardless, as one can't assume an account is for a bot just because the username contain "bot" in it. KTC 10:50, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Marbot for example. :-) Cbrown1023 talk 05:18, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Europe and its colonies are vastly overrepresented

More than half the candidates seem to be native speakers of English. The vast majority appear to be of European ancestry. In fact the large part of Europe that falls beyond the Latin-Cyrillic divide isn't represented since Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania hew to the West.

I hope the next board will put a priority on becoming more inclusive. How can the board reach out and cultivate people who fall outside this? Is fluency in English an actual or a de facto prerequisite to become a candidate? Are contributors in other languages invited to vote? If so in what language are they invited? --LADave 17:28, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

There's different issues here. As long as one had met the candidate requirement, they could have stood as a candidate. No one is saying only editors from X, Y, Z country are allowed to stand. It is worth taking into consideration however that the majority of Wikimedia contributors are Europe +/ English speaking, so naturally there are higher percentages of them standing. How do we actually encourage people with more diverse background in standing however, is something I'm sure that the board would welcome any ideas in. Anyway, just because there are more candidates from this background doesn't mean they will necessarily win. Last year election with one seat was won by someone with Chinese ancestry living in Germany most active I believe on the Chinese Wikipedia.

Is fluency in English an actual requirement? Since at the end of the day WMF is an America non-profit and operates in English, some ability in it I would think would be required. All contributors who met the voter requirement are invited to vote. Site notices went (and still is) up on all wikis asking for votes. They are in the local language as long as a volunteer have translated that message, otherwise they are in English. Similarly for the election information, candidates page, voting interface etc. You can see what languages, and to what extent they have been translated for this election on the translation page. KTC 18:17, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Please see (en-wiki):[3].

I do not vote for candidates that are mono-lingual, regardless of language, and I consider English a linguafranca, that is, a candidate who doesnt speak it will not be effective in the board of trustees of an organization that is registered in the USA under USA law. I wish it were Esperanto, but that's a pipedream.

I think it bears to understand that these elections are for the Wikimedia Foundation, and this has relatively little effect on the contents of the Wikis, except for commons, meta, and en-wiki. The rest of the language projects are run by people of those languages with WMF at most providing server and software, but not in all cases. I am much more concerned about gender balance than language balance at this point.--Cerejota 23:18, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia board manual

What's about translation Wikimedia board manual? --Pessimist2006 20:14, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

That question should be addressed to the Board, probably - the election committee is not responsible for the Board manual. It's out of our purview. You might ask on the talk page of the manual itself. --Philippe 20:19, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

In my mind, I don't see the need, it would just be wasted work. All board members really need to speak English to do their job properly, it's not an official requirement, but it would be extremely difficult to do their job properly without it (America-based organisation, all staff speak English, a great number of editors speak English, pretty much all WMF-wide discussion takes place in English). A large page just intended for the Board (a little over 10 people), really isn't worth translating into a large number of languages. Cbrown1023 talk 05:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

The texts about voting refer to it. It is said to describe board members works and duties. So it is of importance to all that may consider to stand for a board seat, and as well to those that want to vote for them. This can be seen as a broader relevance than just for board internal use. --Purodha Blissenbach 00:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Criticism

in my Observation, this election was a great mess, both languagewise, and from a usability standpoint. When clicking the "vote" button in kshwiki, I got to an (imho unnecessary) local wiki page in mixed German and Kölsch (likely because wmf did not update localizations in their wikis for 2 months, so most of your work on translatewiki.net was likely wasted, or at least not delivered) That next page https://wikimedia.spi-inc.org/index.php/Special:SecurePoll/vote/17 was having some romance language (Spanish?) content, with major links going to English and Interlingua pages, the buttons and some less important links anchors were in Kölsch but lead to English pages not having any useful content (at least the ones I checked did not have any) I did not take much time to look around though, because delivery times of individual pages was in the magnitude of several minutes each. Had I not know the texts because I had translated them previously, I had likely been at a loss and not voted, also not known how to vote. (I tend to abandon websites quickly, which don't work for me, and I rarely take the time to wait several minutes before a page shows)

Its a pitty that I was too busy elsewhere so that I only voted today, else I could have reported this mess earlier. --Purodha Blissenbach 00:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea how this happened, it must've been some error when it was uploaded. Purodha even checked the translation himself and I just did now, it's in Ripoarisch. Though it seems like the jump text on that page was missed (probably caused the "imho unnecessary local wiki page in mixed German and Kölsh"), but that shouldn't have caused the issue.

Purodha, even though you think the page is unnecessary, it's useful for explaining things to people... otherwise some people may be like "omg, what's this server and how did I get here? is it fake? was Wikimedia hacked?! do they want my bank account? :o" It's best to err on the side of informing them. Cbrown1023 talk 04:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Don't send email notifications to bots

The following discussion is marked as answered (notification of bots was accidental). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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I received a mail, saying:

Dear Liangent-bot,

You are eligible to vote in the 2009 elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates projects such as Wikipedia. The Board of Trustees is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long term sustainability of the Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection.

For more information, please see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/en . To remove yourself from future notification, please add your user name at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_nomail_list .

Clearly, according to Board elections/2009/en#Requirements, bots cannot vote. --Liangent 00:57, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

See Bot receiving notification. Cbrown1023 talk 05:22, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

votes struck

I have been a bit of a clown over on mail:foundation-l because my bot (JVbot) and old account (Jayvdb) were invited to vote, however it now appears that even my vote has been struck. I am certain that I have only voted once. John Vandenberg 01:01, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi John - I see two votes for you, at 08:28, 29 July 2009 John Vandenberg@en.wikipedia.org and 10:18, 29 July 2009 John Vandenberg@en.wikipedia.org. It looks like the 10:18 vote should stand, so I'm unstriking it. It was my mistake, and I apologize and am so pleased that you caught it. --Philippe 19:29, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I think that the second one is SPID 374, which is the one I have a receipt for. The earlier one doesn't appear in the system. Could you tell me the SPID of the first vote? John Vandenberg 22:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

The one that stands right now is 374. --Philippe 23:32, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

The same seems to have happened to me. I'd only submitted one vote (SPID 128). Given that there's only ~24 hours left, I've just voted again, but if this is happening to multiple people, something may need to be looked at. My latest vote (SPID 3047) should be considered my final vote. Mr.Z-man 23:22, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to email you privately about your vote. --Philippe 23:32, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Why was my vote struck, and when will it be restored? -- Thekohser 03:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

UPDATE: Earlier today a number of adjustments were made to votes which had been previously struck in the election for Wikimedia Board of Trustees. We believe the votes that are still struck are validly struck; if there is a dispute, any user is encouraged to contact the Election Committee (board-elections@lists.wikimedia.org) or any member personally for clarification.

The current list of votes can be found at https://wikimedia.spi-inc.org/index.php/Special:SecurePoll/list/17

For the committee,

--Philippe 07:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

A candidate with a block log?

The following discussion is marked as answered (see "Concerns about an extremist candidate" above). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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One has to wonder if there has ever been a WMF candidate such as Kevin O'Keefe, who had to be blocked for edit warring. 76.178.200.245 13:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Not that I know of; see the discussion topic "Concerns about an extremist candidate" above for more detailed discussion. —Pathoschild 13:46:46, 09 August 2009 (UTC)

Poetlister voted?

Poetlister's latest sockpuppet on Wikipedia Review, "Sbrown", claims to have voted in this election.[4]webcited Anyone have an idea what account he's using over here?Proabivouac 04:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Die Wahl zum Kuratorium der Wikimedia Foundation hat begonnen. Bitte stimm ab.

The following discussion is marked as answered (see Board elections/2009/Translation). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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An "e" is missing: Bitte stimme ab.
--85.177.247.65 08:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello 85. Please help improve the translations at Board elections/2009/Translation. —Pathoschild 12:09:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

According to encarta Language Homework Help (to use an external source), both "stimm ab" and "stimme ab" are valid. --Rosenkohl 14:23, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Is voting still open? I was emailed that I would be able to vote, but it isn't working

The following discussion is marked as answered (must vote from eligible wiki). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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Sorry, you are not in the predetermined list of users authorised to vote in this election. The email I received a few days ago said I was. Is anyone else having this problem? Dream Focus 17:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's still open. Try voting from the wiki that you edit most often. If you still have problems, email me using the "email user" feature on meta. --Philippe 17:56, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Can't vote

The following discussion is marked as answered (no need to login). If you have a new comment, add it just below the box.

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When I go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/17 and click the [Go to the voting server] button, I am sent to https://wikimedia.spi-inc.org/index.php/Special:SecurePoll/vote/17 where I am welcomed by Welcome Lambiam! However, I appear not to be logged in there, and when I attempt to log in I get the message: 'Login error There is no user by the name "Lambiam". Check your spelling.' What's up?  --Lambiam 20:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

You don't need to log in on that wiki :-) It carries a cookie over from your home wiki. --Philippe 20:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There is a reason that LiCom used CSS to remove the login tabs on that screen... Dragons flight 21:16, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Post mortem

moved to Board elections/2009/Post mortem for consistency with other years

OK, it's time to start thinking about what went well, and what went poorly. Let's kick off the post mortem below! --Philippe 22:08, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Suffrage

• It's my opinion that voters who have an indefinite block in more than one project should not be entitled to suffrage. Also, we need to amend the language about who is entitled to include that they must have an ACTIVE project that meets the voting requirements. --Philippe 22:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Just make sure that we don't exclude people who have only been banned on one wiki and have made a large number of contributions to the Wikimedia Foundation sites as a whole (ie. Meta or other language/sister projects). Cbrown1023 talk 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
  • It would give too much power into the hands of the administrators of the individual projects, when we exclude people as soon as they are blocked on a few projects. I rather recommend that the edits on those projects, where are a given user is blocked, are not counted when we determine whether this user has the required number of edits. HannibalForever 00:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • That, my friends, is why I precisely put the words "more than" before "one project". --Philippe 04:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • In my opinion, excluding someone who is blocked on a local level makes sense only if a block on a local level could be challenged on the global level. HannibalForever 03:03, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Indef blocks are sometimes used to block someone until he explains himself/changes behavior (such as blocks of out of control bots) so you should recheck eligibility every time the users visits the voting page, otherwise a trivial block given at a wrong time can bar him from voting. --Tgr 13:58, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• The suffrage guidelines should be reconsidered. Something like "30 contributions in the past 6 months, 300 contributions in all, first contribution over 12 months ago" where a project edit, mailing list post, code submission, or bugzilla post/comment are all considered contributions should be considered in contrast to the current policy, and reasons given for choosing more or less stringent requirements. -- sj | translate | + 03:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
• There should be out-of-band ways to register to vote for good contributors who somehow don't meet the automatic criteria. Foundation staff should be eligible to apply this way, but should not get automatic byes -- having foundation staff specially privileged to vote for community seats on the foundation board seems wrong. -- sj | translate | + 03:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• Aside from any other considerations, I would change the "active contribs" requirement to be lower, maybe 20 edits in the last six months. This year, and last year, many long-time, very invested community members who have a definite interest in the future of the foundation were rendered ineligible because they haven't been editing much lately. -- phoebe 05:27, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• Indefinite blocks that began more than three (five?) years prior should not count. There ought to be some provision for disregarding blocks from problem-ridden projects or problematic admins. (No idea how to define those notions.) Blocks that were appealed and remain undecided should be disregarded at least under some reasonable (weasel word) circumstances. Users can usually circumvent all of this easily so stringent rules simply encourage bad actors to have a stable of sock puppets. Confirmed-identity users could have least stringent rules. DCDuring 16:20, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Translation

• It would be great to link directly a specific language on the translation table (ie. Board elections/2009/Translation#el for Greek) and to make the table sortable. Cbrown1023 talk 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
• Re-use translations from previous years! Let's make sure we remember to do this, we did a pretty good job this year. :-) Cbrown1023 talk 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
• Please, please, please make sure we are not given last-minute texts the day before the vote to translate. Cbrown1023 talk 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
• Maybe we should split the SecurePoll extension into two parts (the admin interface and the user interface) so that the translators don't have to translate the admin interface unless they want to? (translators-l post) Cbrown1023 talk 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
• Set-up and follow some sort update schedule for the spiwiki vote interface and jump text, we can't assume that the page won't change (new translations added, old translation tweaked) and shouldn't have to keep bothering everyone for a new dump. It would probably be best if the script just made a dump every day or two of all the applicable pages. Though, it was definitely a Good Thing® that we had Tim's script to pull all the translations and easily upload them. Cbrown1023 talk 02:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
• I notice that candidate Relly Komaruzaman seems to have had a much longer statement on the Indonesian page than on the English page. Should we have reached out to someone to translate the Indonesian version? Probably not having a good English version contributed to his low showing in the election.--Pharos 19:23, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
• Why were there way less translation links for the questions than there are languages in Google Translate (not to mention there are other, often better web translators)?
• It would be a good idea to have the candidate introductions translated first, they are way more important than committee etc. --Tgr 14:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Emails

• have the person who will be sending it out work on the text, so that it works well for how they intend to send it out. Cbrown1023 talk 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
• make sure everything works how it is before it's translated :-) Cbrown1023 talk 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
• keep instructions for how to send out the e-mails on wikitech for future people Cbrown1023 talk 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
• The email notifications should be sent at the beginning of the voting period and not at its end. HannibalForever 00:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Some can even be sent slightly before voting starts, if it takes many days to send the messages.
• SecurePoll should probably send an e-mail to the user if their vote is stricken, something short and sweet that is translated with the rest of the extension. In case this is accidental, it should give the voter a notification and a chance to contact the election admins so it can be fixed. Cbrown1023 talk 04:09, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• that's a great idea. -- phoebe 05:23, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Debates and Questions

• It was very disappointing that a substantial number of candidates participated in an audio Q&A for Wikivoices #45, on Skype, but then the volunteer(s) who organized it failed to edit or even post the raw audio file of the session. What a complete waste of time for the candidates. -- Thekohser 03:18, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• It was disappointing that there were no official debates or conversations on Meta, and only two unofficial sets of questions, both posed and answered in English, on the English Wikipedia! -- sj | translate | + 03:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
• The questions on Meta were not prominently linked from anywhere -- it was quite difficult to run across them for a casual voter who was moved to read candidate bios. The answers to one question did not link to those to other questions, making it difficult to see a single candidates answers to more than one question at a time. And the summary page listing the full set of questions posed had to be updated by hand, sometimes with mistakes. All of this could be automated somewhat, so that the act of posting a question updated the TOC as well. -- sj | translate | +
  • Just a comment about advertising the questions page: the questions page was linked in the navigation, so it showed up on every single elections page. Cbrown1023 talk 03:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I was going to make the same comment Cbrown made... I agree that the inability to see a single candidate's responses together was an annoying limitation. It would also be nice if you could select two or three candidates and see their answers side by side: Forcing the electorate to wade through responses from people they had already excluded from consideration is disrespectful. Q1 is around 44kwords of text by itself: The size of a novel. Given around 3.1k voters... if they all read at 300wpm and read the whole thing the reading of Q1 would have expended something like 3.8 man years of effort in aggregate. We should be mindful of this non-trivial resource cost and try to make it as easy as possible for voters to find the information most relevant to their decision, I'd hope that such efforts would also result in more informed voters that can make better decisions as well as greater turnout. --Gmaxwell 03:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Candidate statements and voting pages

• Accepting candidates until the day before the vote started wasn't good at all, though it probably couldn't have been avoided it sucked. (no stable pages, quite a few of the translations were out-of date, had no time to finish the translations before voting started). Cbrown1023 talk 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
  • There would have been seven days gap if it wasn't for the Centralnotice thing not working due to technical issues which the Committee had no control over whatsoever. Daniel (talk) 00:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Even so, mandating at least a minimum period (2 days?) for final translation, checking, and cleaning of relevant pages is appropriate. If there is some crisis that pushes new candidacies up to the previous deadline for starting the vote, the vote start date should be pushed back rather than putting non-English-speaking voters at a confused disadvantage. Also, see below: the declaration period for candidacies should be separated from the statement period. -- sj | translate | + 03:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• The committee should go through and make sure that all the candidates meet the requirements, we had a candidate or two who were translated into quite a few languages and then removed... wasted work. Cbrown1023 talk 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

• I rather like the idea of a "proposed candidate" page and a "confirmed candidate" page. No translations until they're confirmed... --Philippe 16:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• I agree - we should require that candidates list themselves as potentials, without filling out anything but their bare statistical details (no statements) a week before statements can be posted. Then they can be vetted, moved into 'confirmed', and can have their statistical bio (and formatting such as the shuffler) added to all translations while the statements come out. -- sj | translate | + 03:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• If the shuffler is going to be added to the candidates page, they need to be added before the candidates are added and the page is being translated. It was added late and not all the translations had them and some of them who did were missing a few div tags, which caused only a few candidates to be shown at once ( = really sucky). Cbrown1023 talk 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

• The voting pages were quite light on actual information about the candidates. There was no way to get from the voting page itself to candidate details. Then again the statements themselves contained no links to the answers by that candidate to questions posed. -- sj | translate | + 03:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
  • By "voting page" do you mean the vote interface where people actually vote? If yes, then there was actually a link to the Candidate presentations at the bottom. (See Board elections/2009/Vote interface/en). Though, I agree that we could probably do something better here... if people just showed up on wiki that day and missed the other few weeks of notices, they would be sent directly to the vote interface with no idea who the candidates were. Cbrown1023 talk 03:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
    • To be clear, I meant you couldn't go to a single candidate's information, say with a link next to each name. You had to scroll to the single link that took you away from the page. Mouseover text would have been reasonable and handy, given how short the texts were. -- sj | translate | + 07:57, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

• The voting page was confusing. This method is actually fairly simple : the principle is to define a a spectrum of preferences, where the actual values assigned to individual candidates don't matter. This could be well visualized with a list that can be drag-sorted, with a color gradient added to help indicate direction of preference (e.g., lighter colors towards the top of a list to indicate the highest preference). -- sj | translate | +
  • Yes, Kalan actually suggested something else and I think I told someone about this, but it probably wouldn't have mattered since the interface was already designed. However, for next year something like what Kalan came up with for the ruwp ArbCom elections might be better. ([5]) Cbrown1023 talk 03:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
    • That's a lovely example, yes. I would add the ability to rank individuals below the default "no preference" group, so that if you only feel strongly about 5 candidates, you can rank them above or below the larger group about which you have no pref. I would also add a feature that supports selecting a # of names and dragging them all at once, either together in an "equal rank" group or in a series as "123" group. -- sj | translate | +
  • Drag sort doesn't easily accommodate equal ranking, at least not in any implementation I've seen. Equal ranking is something the overwhelming majority (2647 of 3019) of the 2008 participants made use of... --Gmaxwell 03:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• The one recommended by Cbrown does. It's pretty cool.--CastAStone/^{/₵₳$↑₳₴₮ʘ№€} 06:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• Oh. Thats spiffy. I'd missed the link... Enough room there that you could move the panel to the left and display the candidate statement for the hovered candidate on the right. Shouldn't be hard to integrate that into securevote. --Gmaxwell 16:18, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

That drag n' drop implementation is *awesome*. I wish we'd been able to use it this year. -- phoebe 05:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• It is very confusing when you arrive logged out to the voting wiki. At the very least the links to IP etc. should be hidden. --Tgr 14:05, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• The statements are too short to be useful; to get a clear picture, one needs to read questions and candidate talk pages (and being a foundation-l resident doesn't hurt either). This further disenfranchises non-English voters. Maybe some sort of recommendation system should be considered, where voters could see the opinion of more informed members of their main community? This has its obvious dangers, but it might be still better than people voting essentially at random. --Tgr 14:11, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

ElecComm

• Not our finest hour this year, I think we as a committee can agree. We didn't do a great job learning from last year. We need to remember to re-use things like mail out scripts, rather than reinventing the wheel. A full committee meeting or two might help as well. --Philippe 16:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• I know the ElecCom is probably sick of it by now, but if you all can sit down & quickly jot down your technical notes on what to do, what was problematic, etc. in a short report form, I image the next committee would thank you :) It's something to do when it's all still fresh in your mind, though. -- phoebe 05:22, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• There wasn't a public call this year, is it at all possible that that had anything to do with it? Something to consider. Cbrown1023 talk 02:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• The election didn't go as badly as it could have, luckily a lot of non-Committee volunteers helped out too! *high-fives all of them* Cbrown1023 talk 23:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

• If you make hacks to the local wiki, remember to save everything. Most likely your work will be lost somehow, so it's best to keep backups so they can be reused. (For example, the licensing update committee made some tweaks to the wiki and these were lost when a vanilla MediaWiki was installed.) Cbrown1023 talk 02:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• No matter what, don't give up all your scheduled "dead" days. Something will come up, and you'll need the time. --Philippe 15:44, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Yeah, but more than that - we had originally built days into the schedule between each section. We had to give them up in order to extend the voting period. --Philippe 16:10, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• I think what Philippe is referring to here is the time between the end of the vote and when results are published. Cbrown1023 talk 16:03, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• Some kind of "test-run" might be worth-while before the actual election happens. It won't catch all the errors, but it should help catch some. Also, please help review people's work. Even people who are amazingly magical can make mistakes when they're doing a lot of work with a close deadline (this includes creating pages, translating pages, importing/tweaking pages and translations, the election code, etc.). Anyone can check really, it's just good if you make sure that someone does it. Cbrown1023 talk 15:54, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• an open call to help check to the appropriate communities, i.e. wikitech for the code, etc., might be helpful. -- phoebe 18:22, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

• How advertising this time? I remember a few posts from people saying "I had no idea this was going on". A CentralNotice is really great and is the best option, but then there are people who hide all notices and get annoyed when they don't know... e-mails are also good, but do we need to try to reach out to people in different ways? Village Pump posts? Posts to major mailing lists? Cbrown1023 talk 19:05, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Candidacy requirements

• Instead of making candidacy requirements a simple equivalent to suffrage requirements, I would suggest that each candidate must get the support of a nominating petition of of some fixed number of editors with suffrage (perhaps 10 or a few more) before they can be confirmed as candidates. This would winnow down the candidate pool to only the realistic options, and if we choose this structure it could also allow the participation of non-editor candidates, so long as they have sufficient support among the Wikimedian editor community.--Pharos 17:54, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

We tried something like that previously and it created a huge confirmation orgy. Everyone would get "10 or a few more", look at the 2008 results: The person who performed worst relative to the winner was still preferred over the winner by 13% of the voters. I've racked my brain trying to come up with some way to cut down the options to make the material more readable— but I've got nothing. :( Even if we could manage some reasonable criteria it would probably only manage to eliminate one candidate or so, which probably wouldn't be enough of an improvement to justify the trouble. --Gmaxwell 18:37, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• It also turns it into a popularity contest, heavily favoring those known on en:wp with its large pool of editors. On the other hand, I agree with Pharos that some sort of enhanced confirmation process could be valuable. I wonder if better explanations of what the board is for (i.e. don't run to make a point about Wikipedia content) would help. -- phoebe 18:20, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Results

• Setup some kind of script (or use templates, like Template:Be2009-winner-1) to update all the translations at once, it's stupid to have to do it all by hand. :-) Cbrown1023 talk 21:50, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Explaining the voting system

• As someone who got very confused by the voting system last year, and was even more confused this year (because it was for three seats, not one), is it possible to have a really well-written explanation of the voting system? For example, this year, I voted for 5 candidates, and didn't express preferences for the other 13 candidates. However, I wanted to express preferences for 5 candidates, abstain on another 5 or so, and cast a 'negative' vote for around three candidates (the phrase "vote off the island" came to mind). However, I couldn't work out how to do this within this voting system. I also fear that those who only voted for one person, or two people, and left the others blank, ended up giving the other 17 candidates their "second choice" vote, or the other 16 candidates their "third choice" vote. In an election for three seats, I think this does actually skew results, unless I'm misunderstanding how it works (quite likely). So there are two questions there: (1) Are abstentions and rejections possible in this system? (2) Is this system suitable for n seats if people cast less than n votes? Carcharoth 00:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC) Please move this comment somewhere else if it fits better in a different section.

• Votes are relative, so you have to rank everyone in order to give someone a "negative" vote -- all you can say is you prefer all these other people to the people you ranked last. Unranked votes are always counted last, so in practice, no, there is no good way to abstain on voting for a candidate. Agreed we need a clearer system; the drag & drop widget linked above might help illustrate it. -- phoebe 18:16, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

The correct ballot for "Prefer ABCDE, Abstain FGHIJ, Oppose KLMNO" is ABCDE=1, FGHIJ=2, KLMNO=3. The whole notion of "giving the rest their second choice...skewing results" is the wrong way to think about how the process works.

Here is how you should think about it: If you had six candidates (ABCDEF) running for some seats you could conduct 30 (6*5) two person elections, one for each pair, i.e. AvsB AvsC AvsD AvsE AvsF BvsC BvsD... etc. In the AvsB election voters could say they prefer A, B, or have no preference. Using this process you could then select the first winner to be the person who won all 5 elections they were a participant in (this is called the condorcet winner), then for the next seat the person who won all elections except the one against the first winner, and so on.

However, conducting 30 two-way votes is a lot of work for the voters and with 18 candidates there would be 306 instead of 30! If we assume that the voter's preference has no loops, i.e. A is better than B who is better than C who is better than A, there is a much easier way than running 30 elections: We can instead run ONE election, and ask the users to simply place the candidates in order based on their preference. A>(C,F)>B>(D,E) for example. That ordering can then be converted to the 30 pair-wise elections, and judged in the same way the pair-wise elections were judged.

So there is no harm in voting (AB) > (CDEF...). What you're saying with that ballot is that you prefer A and B to all the rest and have no preference between A and B, and no preference between any of the rest. Likewise, you can easily create a "Prefer, Don't care, and oppose" ballot.

The "pairwise matrix" given in the results are the scores in these 306 virtual pairwise elections. For example, 992 people preferred Ting to Kat, and 948 people preferred Kat to Ting which leaves 1000 voters who expressed no preference between these two candidates. In this election Ting won these pair-wise votes against all 17 other candidates, so he was the unique condorcet winner. If you remove Ting, Kat would be the condorcet winner.

There are many different condorcet voting methods. These methods differ in how they behave when there *isn't* a single unique condorcet winner. The particular method that we use, the Schulze method, meets a number of desirable voting-theoretic criteria but I don't believe I can provide a simple and intuitive explanation of how it works like I hope I provided for the concept of ranked preferential voting and condorcet selection. Fortunately, an understanding the basics of ranked preferential voting is all you really need to have in order to create a ballot which reflects your honest intent.

There are a couple of improvements I'd recommend for the JS ranking tool. For example, I'd recommend that the candidates start in the middle with the possibility of ranking people below the starting point— so that creating "Prefer, Abstain, Oppose" ballots doesn't take a lot of work. Cheers, --Gmaxwell 20:52, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

• Re your last point, I agree, it would make sense to have a drag below/drag above option in a visual ballot like that, thus obviously illustrating the answer to the question that Carcharoth asked. I think it's a pretty common outcome for people to say "well, I like this person, and I don't like this person, and I kinda don't care about the rest", and having an easy way to vote that ticket would be good & would probably encourage participation. -- phoebe 23:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Ah! I was just discussing this with Mako (and above); I agree. -- sj | translate | +

Why was my vote struck?

Can someone explain to me why my vote was struck?[6], after I was invited to vote by your email system?Proabivouac 23:17, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I understand that this voter cast a ballot that would have been quite favorable to my campaign. Is it merely coincidence that I have been critical of the Foundation's mishandling of this election, and someone who voted for me had their vote struck? -- Thekohser 03:07, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Timetable?

Is there already a timetable for the Board elections in 2011? As fas as I have understood everything correctly, there are three seats (Ting Chen, Kat Walsh, Samuel Klein) that get vacant in July 2011. I would prefer a voting period in March 2011. Markus Schulze 11:06, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I think it's a board duty to nominate the new elections committee. Anyway, this archive page is probably not the best place to ask. --Nemo 14:45, 5 December 2010 (UTC)