Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2015

The election ended 31 May 2015. No more votes will be accepted. The results were announced on 5 June 2015. Please consider submitting any feedback regarding the 2015 election on the election's post mortem page.

Who can I vote for?

I mistrust the board a lot since some time. It would be so important - but it is a chatterbox. Not more, not less. No power is there, no imagination what Wikimedia could be. And it should be democratic but the board mistrust us and let us only vote for 3 of members. So we don't really have any power. We, who are the backbone of these projects, we, those of their work the WMF collects every year their millions. But if there's a guy who uploads a painting of Mr Wlaes painted with a penis the board can be fast with descisions. So I will vote for those people, who will be the greatest pain in the ass of the other board members.

And for now definetly no:

• Houcemeddine Turki (Csisc) - no, too young
• Sailesh Patnaik (Saileshpat) - no, too young
• Dariusz Jemielniak (pundit) - never ever! 3 years Funds Dissemination Committee
• Francis Kaswahili Kaguna (Francis Kaswahili) - sorry, but no. Only "Active Wikis: meta.wikimedia" is a NoGo, I will not vote for a candidate who don't know, how to work in the projects
• Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro) - Funds Dissemination Committee, no, never
• María Sefidari (Raystorm) - no, not again one of the actual or an former board. You've shown that you can not manage.
• Phoebe Ayers (phoebe) - no, not again one of the actual or an former board. You've shown that you can not manage.
• Denny Vrandečić (Denny) - sorry Denny, I really like you. But not more Google power to WMF.
• Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (Ali Haidar Khan) - 3 years Funds Dissemination Committee - strong mistrust!
• James Heilman (Doc James) - "copyrighted material being added to Wikipedia and not being removed" - No! It hasn't!

To the others: convinced me! Show me, YOU are the right person to speak for the Comunities even, when it hurts as a part of the board. Are you the person who acts for us, instead of being only a little light under the big board discipline? Marcus Cyron (talk) 15:37, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi, @Marcus Cyron:. I could suggest that you should run yourself, but I know that you don't consider yourself sufficiently 'networked'. I would disagree. I think you would make an awesome candidate yourself. But I am afraid that you would still think that it might be merely frustrating to be on the board. Which is a fear I actually understand.

Even if you don't run yourself, you could still formulate questions to the candidates on the things you care most. There is already one question about 'superprotect', for example. You can ask specifically how the candidates want to support the community members (sure, everyone can easily claim in their short statement that they will support the communities, but there are only few words lost on how they plan to do so). You could ask how to handle potential conflict of interests between their daytime job and their duties to the board. You could ask what they imagine Wikimedia could be.

I think the answers to the questions and the statements should be the right place to convince you, and other potential voters, whom to give their vote for - and to vote at all. --denny (talk) 16:47, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Ach, Denny... - you are so right with most you say. I thing, I have to overthink my position about you. If theres somebody who can handle the balancing act between Google and WMF, I bet you would be this person. Marcus Cyron (talk) 17:52, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

+1; @Marcus Cyron:, you should definitely run!! EdSaperia (talk) 21:27, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

No. I'm not qualified (yet) and I know this. There are plenty of others who overestimate themselves. I'm not needed as one more ;). Marcus Cyron (talk) 17:52, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Hey, Marcus Cyron i really appreciate your feelings but i felt offended regarding your comment on my age. I just want to add some clarifications that Wikipedia never restricts anyone in accordance to age, i joined Wiki at the age of 15 no one restricted me at that time and my community encouraged me a lot that is why i gained 3 year experience in Wikipedia. If a 18 year old can contribute to major Wiki project then, why there should be any question regarding to his age when it comes to decision making board of Wikimedia?

Am from a small language Wikipedia, where we know how much it is difficult to work individually as our community is limited. To be am fighting this election for my community because we want to grow up but we have less resources , leadership and local or any kind of support. My first priority of this election is the growth of Indic language wikipedias (20+ Wikipedias ), i have observed that the bonding of Indic wikimedians has increased in past 5-6 months, if anyone from India could lead in WMF board we could ahead another step in Wikimedia Revolution in India. I would love to work with every language community and will try to solve their problems by gaining some experiences and bringing out the leadership quality within me.

You are one of the experienced and senior most Wikimedian , i would like to be in touch with you off wiki and i hope you will encourage the youngsters to bring the leadership quality in them, as a young mind is always curious and have easier and faster solution for large problems. I am sure and I can assure you that i will bring a change and will work at my top most priority. --Saileshpat (talk) 08:15, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, but I think, that for an position as the board - in a way I expect it, you need some live experience. You can't have them in your age. It's nearly impossible. Maybe later. There are so much things, you can't work with in a younger age. But it has other advantages. Tackle them one by one. And this is my personal opinion. Nobody says, that more persons than me share my thoughts. Marcus Cyron (talk) 17:52, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

User:Marcus Cyron With respect to "copyrighted material being added to Wikipedia and not being removed", copyrighted material has been added and not been promptly removed. This user] for example was able to add copyright material to Wikipedia between 2007 and 2013 before being indefinitely banned. They made nearly 20,000 edits during this time. Clean up of these issues required substantial effort. One reason they were caught was that they used a single account and many of their edits had issues. It took so long to catch them as they edited mostly obscure articles which were poorly followed.

Thankfully this is one of the issues that Wikipedia and other projects face that has a simple solution. In collaboration with User:Eran from Isreal and Turnitin we have developed this bot [1] which detects concerning edits for community follow up. It just went live on all En Wikipedia about a month ago. Now we need to recruit volunteer willing to follow up. Further efforts to improve the bot could also help. If De Wikipedia is interested happy to provide the underlying bot software. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:18, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Marcus Cyron, you say: "I will vote for those people, who will be the greatest pain in the ass of the other board members." I share your general frustration with the actions of the Board and the WMF, but if this is your main point, you should not vote for me (as I will work hard to find common cause and make progress with fellow trustees); and I'd actually prefer that you not vote at all. You don't present a serious path to reform and realignment with our mission. In the hopes that you were joking, and for the benefit of others, I'll address your question, though.

As I see it, the problems of the board and the WMF generally result from two longstanding mistakes: (1) too much focus on technical solutions, at the expense of doing the work that might produce social solutions; and (2) too little attention to the way the board and the organization conducts itself.

I'd begin with discussions around the way software development is approached. Superprotect should not continue to exist without some definitions around how it may be used; and the conflict around software development and release in recent years has been very costly in terms of goodwill and collegiality (as well as money). Ideally, such discussions would lead to improvements without the need for new resolutions; I would hope to build consensus within the board, and with the executive director, that could improve those dynamics.

That's a simple starting point that would lead to improvement. I have also written several blog posts in the last few weeks about what is needed from the board. I plan to continue blogging on related topics throughout the voting cycle. One topic I will address is the board's poor record of documenting its meetings and resolutions in a timely and effective manner; it sets a poor example for how a transparent and accountable organization should act, and should commit to substantial improvements.

One final point: the outcomes I've discussed are far more important than my own presence on the board; and I am impressed with what many of my fellow candidates have had to say. With that in mind:

• I agree that the incumbent Trustees -- though I have great respect for each of them -- should not be reelected.
• I do not know what about the FDC has offended you, but I would suggest that it has inherited very challenging responsibilities. I would be interested to hear more about this from all sides, and personally do not know of any good reason to rule out candidates from the FDC.
• While I do not know Denny well, his contributions to Wikimedia's mission have been substantial and unique. Wikidata in particular is a massive step forward, and was released with generally positive reviews and activity -- unlike WMF software. I don't know much of his role at Google, but I suggest that someone of his caliber deserves to be asked whether he sees a conflict of interest, and if so, how he would manage it responsibly.
• Your critique of James Heilman, as he has stated above, is simply inaccurate. He has done good work around surfacing and dealing with copyright violations. Among his candidate statements, I think there is a blend of issues that are appropriate to the Board, and others that are more within volunteer communities' purview; I'd be interested to hear more about that balance from him.

-Pete F (talk) 07:55, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Pete. Quite honestly, my feeling is that the FDC has done quite a lot of ungrateful, hard work - we did our best efforts (and the committee has always been rather skilled up in terms of qualifications) to help allocate the movement's resources reasonably. When we still had a possibility to comment on parts of the WMF's budget, we were just as critical (and, hopefully, constructive) and recommended cuts and changes. Unfortunately, a lot of critique of the FDC process comes from just judging the results by the face value (i.e. bearing a grudge that the FDC recommended some cuts), without doing a thorough analysis of the projects, financial data, etc. (all publicly available, but from the tepid community discussion, clearly not really widely read). I would be definitely interested in learning what Marcus would do differently in which particular case. Pundit (talk) 08:12, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

IMO nearly all the issues we face can be better addressed through collaboration between the WMF and editor community. That there was insufficient involvement of the community during the development the mediaviewer is why issues occurred with superprotect only worsened matters.

We need the restoring of transparency, trust, and respect between the community and WMF. Some of the ways to achieve this include building tech for the existing community not just the new editing community. But also involving the community in directing tech decisions generally. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:17, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I totally agree. I wrote about this some three years ago, described a number of blunders WMF made, etc. Also, throughout my tenure on the FDC I have repeatedly made efforts to bring the gap between the WMF, the chapters/organizations, and the communities themselves. I don't think there is bad will, but just good will is not enough. There is an obvious power struggle between the WMF and (some of) the chapters, as well as to some extent the communities, on who "owns" the projects (symbolically and in terms of actual governance, rather than legally). One of the biggest and repeated mistakes of the WMF is coming up with some new solution or idea and developing it without proper (lengthy and frustrating, but needed) consultations. Pundit (talk) 10:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Pundit, if you had not asked someone not to vote at all your chances would have been good to receive my vote. Thanks for your decision guidance, → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 14:20, 6 May 2015 (UTC) Sorry, I oversaw a signature in between, → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 14:23, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Man77, the idea of using something a Board election to simply disrupt the Board is offensive to me. Above all, I hope that my understanding of the question was inaccurate -- but as written, that is the only way I can understand it. If I'm mistaken in my understanding, or if there is a case to be made for that view, perhaps Marcus Cyron will speak to it. -Pete F (talk) 18:33, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Marcus Cyron: I do not think that this is a question of age. I can have efficient ideas and proposals even if I am still young as you have said. If I have nominated myself for the WMF Board Elections, I would have ideas to promote Wikimedia Foundation if elected. So, I advise you to compare between thoughts by asking questions to all candidates in Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2015/Questions or ask me directly questions in my special talk page. --Csisc (talk) 11:28, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

@Csisc: Your ideas listed here are interesting, however, I am sorry to say but they have little to do with being on WMF Board. Putting aside your obvious lobbying for Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Tunisian (there are other venues to do that), you can perfectly implement the remaining ideas as a volunteer. For example, new projects can be proposed at Proposals for new projects (you don't have to be a board member to do that), importing content from compatible wikis should be done by discussions within respective communities, and evaluation of either WikiProjects or wikis can be perfectly done by a group of volunteers, like the ongoing Grants:IEG/WikiProject X created by volunteers. To be honest, I believe it would be more reasonable for you to work on these ideas without being a board member, and you can definitely do most of that even if you are not elected — NickK (talk) 11:44, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Marcus Cyron - I have a long experience of working on non-executive boards in the British Health Service and British higher education colleges. The job of the non-executive director is exactly to ask awkward questions and to make sure these are fully discussed by other board members, whatever the consequences. (In one case my questioning led to the resignation of the Finance Officer). And in my view asking such questions is a part of supporting the board - enabling it to carry out its duties. If you are just a 'a pain in the ass' to the other board members, you risk your views being dismissed. So the key thing is to be critical but constructive at the same time, and if you can achieve this you can carry your point of view with your colleagues - as I would hope to do on the Foundation Board. --Smerus (talk) 09:28, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Hey @NickK: , You're fighting for the Ombudsperson election, Do you keep the same view there?,that the youngest and inexperienced shouldn't fight for any elections? Then what are your views on 2004 elections when it was the early stage of Wikipedia less Chapters as well as contributors having less experience? I know Wikimedia is a large organisation and all credits goes to its Volunteer community, here WMF doesn't disciminate between young and old wikimedians. Regarding to my experience , you said me to work with CIS , I have been coordinating CIS for Odia Wikipedia from 2.5 years and working with Indic community since 1 year. This is not the first time when a young Wikimedian is fighting for the election but this is the first time they've been said that we're not going to vote because you're too young and inexperienced. I have already nominated myself and am not going to pull out, I will fight this election at my level best-- Sailesh Patnaik ^{(Talk2Me|Contribs)} 08:55, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

@NickK:: That is a bit true that such actions could be done by volunteers. However, my programme does not involve just ideas created by volunteers. Contacting the admins of other independent wikis requires that the project committee and language committee should have more means and functions. This is just what I would like to do when elected. Moreover, I am interested in creating Wikipedia Council, Wiktionary Council... which are the councils of admins of the wikis. This cannot be done without being in the WMF Board. These councils discuss and decide to adopt regulations and adjustments in the WMF wiki. This will solve the problem of SuperProtect and will enhance the role of the WMF Community in taking important decisions about what they are doing. --Csisc (talk) 09:39, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Dear Saileshpat and Csisc, my main point is not the age but that your programmes are not quite relevant to what WMF Board is doing. A few more points to clarify:

• I did happen to see people in NGOs who were under 21 and had really impressive experience and mature ideas to NGO developpment.
• I do participate in FDC Ombudsperson election, but my comments here reflect my own opinion and are not related to any position I hold or previously held.
• We elect board members who represent the broad Wikimedia community. If someone is interested in just one language or in just one country (no matter whether I speak this language or not or whether I live(d) in this country), I think such person would better achieve the result by taking responsibilities in the respective chapter or user group.
• I also expect candidates to have relevant experience, either in Wikimedia or elsewhere (that's particularly Question # 4). No matter what is your age, it's up to you to show you know what to do on the board. Community has only 3 trustees, and I hope that while on board they will learn best practices related to WMF and not how a board of an NGO works.

My main message to both of you is not "you are too young to run for this position" but "you have some good ideas and you don't need to be a board member to implement them". Cheers, — NickK (talk) 01:05, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

@Saileshpat: NickK didn't say anything about your age here. Also, Marcus Cyron offered us an honest view into his motivations for why he would not vote for certain candidates. You can like his motivations or not, but as a voter he has the right to vote based on the criteria that are important to him. You should not be offended by that, you should accept it. Also, a voter has the right to discriminate as he wants. If a voter does not want a European candidate, or a male candidate, or an atheist candidate, or a black-haired candidate, it is fully their right to vote accordingly. This is how popular elections work. Once they are eligible to vote, they can apply any criteria they want, no matter how much you disagree or agree with these criteria. So, let's calm down.--denny (talk) 16:37, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Denny, I agree with what you say here. On reflection, it was inconsiderate of me to voice an offhand personal opinion in this context. I certainly wasn't (and wouldn't) say that anybody qualified should be prevented from voting. I'm sorry for unnecessarily raising the heat in this discussion. -Pete F (talk) 16:41, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

@Denny: Thank you , I had appreciated Marcus Cyron thought on candidates and contacted him personally. I have no issue regarding the voting criteria. I just felt bad when the matter raised on young and inexperienced terms. Now am calmed and Good luck, to all candidates.-- Sailesh Patnaik ^{(Talk2Me|Contribs)}

I don't care for the opinions critiquing candidates at the top of this section. -- Sidelight12 05:34, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm happy that my thoughts started some discussions here. And it's really OK for me, that by far not all share my oppinions :). But I think, it's better to talk about it, even argue about it, than only let everything flow. Sometimes - and here is for me once more a proof, an pointed formulation can certainly stimulate a discussion. My statements were short and certainly not always objective (I know this). Should candidates feel attacked or injured by me, I'm sorry. But I still take the view, one dealing with open visor is the fairest. After the last years I only can say, that I want a change. A true change. Not longer "business as usual". Volunteers and WMF are more and more diveded. But without us volunteers the WMF is nothing. And I don't see "us" represented enough in the board. And by far not representes by the Board. Board and WMF should be there for US, for those, who are creating these great projects. Why not only I feel, that instead of this the WMF only see us as Milking Cows? Once a year is payday (or better paymonth) - but WMF and FDC more and more don't support the volunteers, the chapters and so on. And if, only with massive bureaucracy. Here should be the board to prevent this. But where is the board? Has someone once the issues and resulution the board recently viewed? I do. It is all about himself, or about how you can make even better and more money. How does this help me? Why I don't get protected when the office does things like "Superprotect"? Why the Board don't do anything against the trend, the office does a lot of (strange) things for the readers (or better: the people who hopefully donate money at the end of the year to let everything run and run and run without changes in Frisco), but not for the volunteers who are writing Wikipedia and the other projects? Don't get me wrong: I'm totally OK with an office that costs money. I'm OK, when people earn money - and me not. But I expect, that we get something back. Actually I feel like getting back a kick in the ass instead of help. My luck: I'm living in Germany and we have Wikimedia Deutschland. But - even here the WMF (and the FDC) try to destroy. The attempts to do something for the "Global South" or couraging women are indeed failed grandiose. Such issues only can handles regional entities. Not by the WMF office in Frisco. But Frisco prevents the development of the Chapters and regions. Where are the candidates, who fight against this and for us volunteers? The center of every act, all actions, the entire thinking of the office of the WMF has to be the Comunity. Everything what is good for us, also benefits the readers and at the end the WMF itself. Currently the WMF fought much of the authorship (I only say "fuck the Comunity") and at the end through this themselves. A volunteers driven project as Wikimedia can not survive if it treats the volunteers in the form as it did the WMF in the recent years. Marcus Cyron (talk) 17:52, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

User:Marcus Cyron with respect to "The center of every act, all actions, the entire thinking of the office of the WMF has to be the Comunity. Everything what is good for us, also benefits the readers and at the end the WMF itself." I agree. This is one of the reasons I am running. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:06, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm joining this conversation late, but I strongly agree that actions affecting the community should merit community input. And at the same time, we need to ensure that communities remain at the heart of our decision-making processes. But we have to admit: we need to renegotiate our social contract. We've done well for the last fifteen years, but we need to start changing things if ever we'll move forward. Take the case of superprotect: no matter how much we gripe and complain about how bad it is, we have to deal with it. Let's face it: it's there, and it probably won't go away. So we need to mitigate its use by ensuring that it is only used with strong community oversight, limiting its use to situations where there is broad consensus warranting its use if not removing it entirely.

Now I don't know if I'll be able to convince you, Marcus Cyron, but I certainly hope that we bring people on board who are capable of understanding the needs of our community and our readers both in the developing and developed worlds. We need people who understand our movement dynamics. More importantly, we need people who are capable of criticizing decisions where they warrant criticism, but at the same time are able to work with people even if we disagree with them. There are many candidates here who have some of these qualities, but I certainly bring all of these to the table.

While I agree with Saileshpat that age shouldn't be a factor in this election (I'm 24, and heck Aaron Swartz was 18 when he ran for the Board), I agree that we need people with experience. I don't know if you think my experience is worthy of your vote, but I certainly hope it is. I may have initially run because we needed a strong Global South candidate, but this election is certainly more than that. We are one community, and if we're ever going to move forward, we need to come together. I hope to lead that charge. :) --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 12:51, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Voting guides

Is there any collection of voting guides anywhere? In English Wikipedia for the Arbitration committee elections, there were voting guides. See them at en:Category:Wikipedia Arbitration Committee Elections 2014 voter guides - they are quite detailed. Has anyone made a voting guide for this board election? Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:52, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost has got one. ResMar 05:04, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

I too am surprised to see a lack of voting guides. I'm surprised to find that an incumbent board member is not an administrator! The community seemingly sets higher standards for being on the Arbitration Committee than on the WMF board, and gives far more scrutiny to potential administrators than they do to board candidates! With an editing history on the thin side, I have doubts that this sitting board member could pass an RFA! Wbm1058 (talk) 20:37, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Incumbent board member has made all of a couple dozen edits on her home wiki so far in 2015 and wants to continue representing the editing community on the WMF board. I don't think so. At least she's a sysop on her home wiki. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:36, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Wbm1058: Since you mention that I'm not an administrator: I've been asked to run in the past and did not, intentionally. Not because I don't think administrators & administrative work is important, but because it is possible to do lots of important work in Wikimedia without being one, and the work I wanted to do on the project did not require it (remember that in past years there has been lots of debate around whether administrators were 'special' in some way; I'm firmly of the view that it's just another job that a person can do around here). -- phoebe | talk 06:41, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Many of the most productive members of WMF sites are not administrators. My suprise is to see adminship dragged out as a criterion at all. There's slightly more justification for looking at the number of edits, but a raw count doesn't necessarily indicate experience and quality (even quantity) of contributions and leadership. A great advantage for future elections would be a voter guide specialising in analysing candidates' edits to WMF sites, by quality, type, and size (as well as raw count, as in the table on the talkpage of Kurier, useful enough per se). I hope someone volunteers to prepare one (in several languages, please!). Tony (talk) 10:31, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Things

Banner needs updating concerning the FDC announcement.

Where do voters learn that voting starts not at 00:01 UTC on Sunday today, but 23:59 UTC? I'm guessing; but why do we need to guess? Tony (talk) 05:01, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Funny, I was so certain that the voting starts on Sunday morning, that I told several people so. In my mind, if voting starts 23:59 it actually starts on Monday (I realize different cultures may see it differently). Pundit (talk) 05:12, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm confused @Tony1:, voting has very much started at 00:01 Sunday (well, 00:00). Voting ends at 23:59 next Sunday. The centralNotice banners are already up and have been for years allowing people to vote as well (there are currently over 100 votes already). You're right, the status banners weren't switched, I just did that and while I'm on vacation I just pinged @Philippe (WMF): who is covering for me and @Varnent: to help make sure we get some more buttons/notices up on the voting pages here. Jalexander--WMF 07:00, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Apologies for the delay in getting those up and the status switched. Basically, it was late here in Berlin when the voting started, and I fell asleep before I finished getting the pages setup as I was focusing on the banners and such. However, opening the vote is done automatically by SecurePoll, so voting did start on time, and we already have over 200 votes. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 10:14, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Outdated candidate lists

Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2015/Candidates needs to be dummy edited and remarked for translation, due to the well known bug. I can't edit the page because it's protected. Translation pages are currently outdated, for instance they still list Pete who has withdrawn. --Nemo 12:48, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Done --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 17:12, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Voting page feature request

I know this was a bit dim of me, but I initially ticked my votes backwards, because I assumed that "pupport" was on the right and "oppose" was on the left. I caught it before submitting, but could we change the user interface? There is space to put a plus/minus glyph in each box, or even the words "support" and "oppose". This would to make it harder to mistake, even when the voter is scrolling slowly and going off to read other pages. HLHJ (talk) 16:24, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that would not be possible without changing the code for SecurePoll, which cannot be done once the voting has started. However, we can pass that request along to the developers. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 17:12, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

error on securepoll vote page

On the secure poll vote page, the link to Mohamed Ouda's user page, goes to the wrong page. Bawolff (talk) 07:30, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Fixed - thank you for letting us know. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 10:27, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

broken questions

hi, it seems that from the voting page in SecurePoll the link leading to the list of questions leads to an outdated page. For instance, the directory of questions for pl users has only 22 questions listed. For en the same page lists 28 questions, but in reality there is a total of 31 questions. Obviously, the voting has already started and it is a bit of a mess. I think it would be respectful to all involved to amend this ASAP, but I am reluctant to do these edits as I am a candidate. Pundit (talk) 08:47, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

The newest version of question subpage should be marked for translation. @Varnent: Ruslik (talk) 09:56, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

I am working on those updates now, but I encourage others on the committee or community to help as well. :) --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 10:03, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks for correcting the English version of the questions directory. Please, note that all language versions except the English one erroneously list 22 questions (and not 31). It is important, as users may want to read through Q&As using a translator, but they will not if they are mislead into believing that 1/3 of questions have not been asked or answered. Pundit (talk) 11:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

As mentioned elsewhere, this is a well known bug with the Translate extension. It simply takes awhile for all the languages to sync up. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 12:25, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. My only concern is that voters from different languages are acting upon entirely different sets of Q&As - simply, everyone outside of the English language zone sees only 2/3 of actual questions. But I understand there's not much we can do now and let's hope they catch up :) Pundit (talk) 14:00, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of it the best you can. Hard to get translation to sync. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:42, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Translation candidate statement

Hi, concerning the translations of my candidate statement. My name and signature are wrongly displayed in every single language on the voting pages. My text was "Sincerely Taketa (talk)". This was changed into "Taketa] (talk:Taketa talk)". Please restore the "sincerely" and/or translate it. Please change "Taketa]" to "Taketa". Please change "talk:Taketa talk" into a local translation of "talk", or if this is not possible, at least into "talk". It is a bit disturbing that what I said, is not what is being displayed. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 05:22, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

How come infrequent editors to Wikipedia want to be trustees?

I used https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/pcount/ on a variety of candidates and found that several seem to have very little active involvement in editing!? GregKaye (talk) 05:08, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Please ask them. Gryllida 10:29, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi GregKaye, there are many ways to help Wikimedia projects. One is editing online. But there are also other ways, like developing software, organising meetings, talking to organisations to release their archives for publication on Wikimedia projects, gathering sponsors, doing research in how best to improve our content. Hundreds of thousands of images are on Commons because of these people, and thousands of editors have joined. Millions of schoolchildren in Africa, who have mobile devices but no internet, can access Wikipedia for free. Some of the candidates created Wikidata and organised Wikimania. All of these people invest their free time in helping Wikimedia spread free knowledge and are part of our volunteer community. In my opinion any active volunteer should be able to apply for the board. It is up to the community to decide how they value such contributions by voting in the election. Let us not focus on who we need to exclude, but instead focus on who we support. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 10:35, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

On the flip side, if you are interested in having us explain what work we have done for the movement I am sure all of us would be happy to provide answers. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:41, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

It's possible you were looking at just the English-wiki edit count? Given the way xtools is set up it would be extremely easy to make that mistake.

I checked the global edit total for all candidates, this is what I got:

• 137,701 James Heilman (Doc James)[2]
• 98,342 Mike Nicolaije (Taketa)[3]
• 57,958 Tim Davenport (Carrite)[4]
• 47,754 Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustanilanguage)[5]
• 43,158 Samuel Klein (Sj)[6]
• 30,063 David Conway (Smerus)[7]
• 27,072 Phoebe Ayers (phoebe)[8]
• 27,052 Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)[9]
• 24,232 Denny Vrandečić (Denny)[10]
• 22,976 María Sefidari (Raystorm)[11]
• 21,545 Nisar Ahmed Syed (అహ్మద్ నిసార్)[12]
• 20,111 Mohamed Ouda (Mohamed Ouda)[13]
• 14,566 Peter Gallert (Pgallert)[14]
• 13,941 Dariusz Jemielniak (pundit)[15]
• 7,268 Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro)[16]
• 4,882 Francis Kaswahili Kaguna (Francis Kaswahili)[17])
• 4,139 Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (Ali Haidar Khan)[18]
• 2,959 Sailesh Patnaik (Saileshpat)[19]
• 2,407 Houcemeddine Turki (Csisc)[20]
• 1,836 Edward Saperia (EdSaperia)[21]

I voted before checking these stats, but it's interesting to look at how they stack up here. By edit count, I supported four of the top five:Doc James 138k, Taketa 98k, Carrite 57k, and Sj 43k. I supported two mid level candidates: Pgallert 15k, pundit 14k. I also supported the 18 year old candidate Saileshpat who only has 3k edits so far. He impressed me. Our community is very egalitarian, it's the ideas that matter.

My primary concern is the dysfunctional relationship between the WMF and Community. I've been closely following this issue. I've been following WMF project development, following the WMF's process for "Community Engagement", and I've been involved in discussions with the WMF Executive Director herself. We have a problem. The WMF director has good intentions, but the WMF simply doesn't view the Community as a partner. In nearly all cases the WMF initiates projects with zero Community input and an insufficient understanding of Community views and needs. The WMF is great at listening for bugfixes and upgrade-requests, but the WMF won't even consider engaging in WMF-Community discussions about fundamental problems, discussing whether a project should change direction or might be harmful. The WMF doesn't care whether a Community Consensus exists. Alsee (talk) 13:50, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

• Thank you for the support! Although I do have a fair edit count, just as you mentioned, my work as a steward or ombudsman does not really account there that much (less actions, more control and insight). And in the last three years my work as the chair of the FDC has been a huge time commitment, by far exceeding my editing ever. This commitment will not show up on the edit count, but since each round of the FDC is about 100 hours of work outside of meetings, you can easily calculate that it would translate into many thousands of edits (I am not a huge fan of editcountitis though). Also, the FDC experience is much more valuable in terms of governance than that edits alone. In fact, I believe that being on the FDC for 6 rounds gives a truly unique and priceless insight into our movement (quite possibly better even than that of the current Board members to some extent, and definitely more useful in terms of strategy, or WMF-chapters-community relations amending than just editing, and this is much note important from the Board's perspective and scope). Pundit (talk) 15:04, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

  Dear Alsee, thank you for your support. I agree that editcount says very little. You cannot see where the time went. For example 6500 articles I wrote took more effort then all the 92.000 edits combined. Moreover over half of my edits are not counted, like 5000 administrative actions, tens of thousands of log actions, thousands of edits I made to deleted articles (by nominating or defending them) and many non-visible Wikimedia edits for the arbitration commitee, OTRS team, stewards etc. And all that combined is not even half of all the edits on Wikimedia I have helped with. For example the 8000 articles and several hundreds of thousands of edits made by Wikimedia projects I founded, the hundreds of people I coached and helped become long term editors, the dozen admins I have helped convince they should run. And don't get me started on the offline work which comes close to all the online work combined. So in short, don't put too much faith on those counts. All the best, Taketa (talk) 16:26, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Alsee for undertaking the work on listing the editcounts as a response to GregKaye's query. But I have to say (as one the candidates in the top 50% by editcount) that I don't see that this has any intrinsic correlation with suitability as a Board member. Best, --Smerus (talk) 17:59, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

It seems to be unanimous that edit count is an extremely poor measure of anything :) The list was mainly about GregKaye's comment, and that I was pretty sure he was looking at the wrong figures by mistake. After checking the figures myself, I just couldn't resist a bit more work to polish it into a proper table. Chuckle. I guess it was inevitable that discussion would turn towards why it was such a poor measure, but I was really hoping people would discuss the WMF-Community relationship issue that I also mentioned. It got lost behind the glaring editcount topic. I'm seriously concerned that if things don't change we are unavoidably going to run into a crisis a lot worse than the Superprotect incident. Alsee (talk) 22:53, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Point taken, Alsee. I agree it is clear that the WMF/community interface needs a thorough review and makeover.--Smerus (talk) 14:07, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Good point. I made amending these relations one of the major points in my statement :) Pundit (talk) 05:37, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

While the edit count is not a perfect measure of activity it is not a horrible measure either. If one has a low edit count it means that they are not very active on Wikimedia projects. They may of course be active elsewhere in the movement. It is up to the voter how much weight they wish to place on editing activity. If a person has a high edit count it does not necessarily mean that they are exceedingly productive. One then needs to look at the edits in question.

Another measure of productivity is bytes added / bytes removed. Both these correlate fairly well with edit counts as can be seen in the data here for medical articles [22]

We have keep an eye on editor numbers based on 5+ and 100+ edits per month for years. We have also kept an eye on total edits.[23] That it began to decrease in 2007 was a big deal. I consider the health of both the communities of 100+ editors and that of all editors needs to be one of our top priorities. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:31, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't think this is the perfect place to discuss what a good measure would be, but the number of bytes added is quite imperfect, too. A better measure would be e.g. added strings' resilience to removal or rephrasing (if someone adds really good piece of text, the fact that it is rarely modified signifies its usefulness). Edit count is good in one thing: in recognizing people with low input (as it is really difficult to imagine someone who ONLY creates large articles from the scratch in one edit each). But above, let's say, 5,000 edits, in my view, what is the most important thing for a WMF Board candidate is mainly organizational experience, from within and from outside of the movement. The Board is, basically, a strategy- and governance-oriented body, experience from high level committees within our movement, as well as experience in strategic planning and in performing trustee duties elsewhere is essential to be effective there; definitely much more than edit count. Pundit (talk) 13:06, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

A high "added strings' resilience to removal or rephrasing" may just indicate that someone edits poorly watched / infrequently edited articles. We do agree; however, that attempting to calculate an editors worth to any degree of accuracy by machine is difficult. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:18, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Comment I appreciate that in mentioning edit count I may have picked out a selective and quantity related criteria but I would hope that some kind of assessment can, in future voting situations, be enabled so as to allow voters to assess candidate experience and know how. It would be nice if we had some reassurance that candidates had a clear idea how Wikistuff works before they get on to try to fix it. GregKaye (talk) 20:36, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

A number of members of the editing community have put together voting guides for the En Arbcom elections such as this one by User:Rschen7754 [24]

People doing this for the board of trustees elections would also be a useful form of discussion but of course is up to the community to carry it out. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:51, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Alsee: I have not an excellent number of edits because most of my work about wikis is offline... Standardizing Tunisian as well as research about some facts about Tunisia (List of Tunisian Scientists within the French Wikipedia) is not done within WMF Wikis... However, the X! tools have some problems... Before 2012, there were some problems about editing in Wikipedia related to logging in... I had made many edits with IP Addresses and I can cite many works which I have created... However, they are not cited by X!... Moreover, the X! tools showed in 31 April 2015 that I had 1045 edits in French Wikipedia and in 2 May 2015, it showed that I had 1041 edits... Furthermore, being an admin within Wikipedia can help inflating the number... But, I can tell you that I participated to 6 Wikiconcours in the French Wikipedia and you can verify this if you want. I am now participating to WikiCup... Since 2011, I am working about making some wikis in Tunisian... So, I am not infrequent in working on WMF wikis. --Csisc (talk) 16:40, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Group questions by candidate

Please group questions by candidate too and put each candidate's 'interview' on a single page. Otherwise it's hard to be arsed to read the whole thing. --Gryllida 10:26, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

It is matter of opinion what is better. Ruslik (talk) 20:15, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

And it is not feasable to change the method in the middle of the election. Your point will hopfully be taken into consideration in how it is done in next election.Anders Wennersten (talk) 03:57, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

I guess that a volunteer may decide to do this as an alternative form of presentation, but it is a lot of work now. In the future, if each answer is in a template, we could reshuffle them easily. Pundit (talk) 08:27, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree that from the perspective of a voter, who would typically make decisions about one candidate at a time, it would be easier to review the answers on a candidate-by-candidate basis. It need not be a question of which is better -- this is a wiki, we can have both. I assembled my own answers when I withdrew: User:Peteforsyth/2015 board election Peteforsyth answers This format is indeed a bit time consuming to produce manually; however, I suspect a little clever coding might make it very easy to generate and update automatically. -Pete F (talk) 16:40, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

As Anders and Pundit said, it is possible to do, and should be considered for the future. However, changing how the questions were done with only a week left in voting was not the best use of committee time. There are several issues with the questions process that should be reviewed and addressed before the next election. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 16:47, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Sorry Varnent, I was not trying to suggest it is the responsibility of the committee to do so, or to do so in preparation for any specific election. I just wanted to put this out as an example, and offer some context of why it would be useful, in the abstract. My apologies if it came out sounding like a directive or a criticism, that was not my intent. -Pete F (talk) 20:35, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Responsiveness of board-elections@

I sent the above question to board-elections@wm.org 2 days ago and got no response. Please prioritise this email monitoring adequately, as the responses are required for performing the elections properly. Thank you. --Gryllida 10:27, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

We received and are discussing your email. It is monitored regularly, but please keep in mind we have a number of matters to deal with. We will get back to you as soon as we are able. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 11:25, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Number of votes

Thanks for the update regarding the number of votes! I made a small graph.

Votes in the Board of Trustees elections. 2015 not confirmed yet.

Cheers, --denny (talk) 05:18, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Name

I suggest for the future it might be nice to have the candidates Wikipedia Name listed. Jokem (talk) 18:16, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Every candidate's wiki name is already listed along his or her name, both on the "candidate presentation" page and for each question/answer item. Where are you not seeing it? Perhaps on the ballot? Even there, you can easily see the name by hovering over the link "meta user page" -- but I agree, including it in the actual listing would be a nice addition. -Pete F (talk) 21:21, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback. I agree this would be a good addition for next time. I encourage you to post this idea on the Post Mortem report for this year's elections. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 05:10, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Security token mismatch, cannot log in

On visiting https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/339, I get the message 'The vote will be conducted on a central wiki. Please click the button below to be transferred.' with a button labeled 'Go to the voting server'. The page header indicates I am logged in as 'Crosbiesmith'. When I click on the button, I am taken to https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/login/512?site=wikipedia&lang=meta. This page displays the message 'Security token mismatch, cannot log in'. I do not appear to be able to vote. - Crosbiesmith (talk) 08:45, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

@Crosbiesmith: We apologize for these problems and the inconvenience. We do have developers working on it, but have not yet found a solution. However, we are attempting a work-around that we believe may allow you to vote in time. While a solution to the error will hopefully be found soon, we cannot guarantee it will be before the voting concludes. If you are experiencing this error, please read the updated section for this error on the Voter FAQ page for information on this work-around. Thank you. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 08:47, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 31 July 2016

Please change the line:
<span id="voters" />
to:
<span id="voters"></span>

And propagate to the translations. This is to clear these pages from Category:Pages using invalid self-closed HTML tags. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 17:44, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Done Ruslik (talk) 18:59, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, I triggered the translate update. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:27, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Translation markup

Please revert code

==== Submitting proof of identity to the Wikimedia Foundation ==== <!--T:55-->  

to

==== Submitting proof of identity to the Wikimedia Foundation ==== <!--T:50-->  

This edit by Ruslik0 was incorect. Numbers of translated units should not be changed/removed manually, if remains the same content. --Kaganer (talk) 10:34, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Done though I do not remember that did that edit. It appears that there is a bug in WikEd: it removes

<!--T:50-->  

without any warning. Ruslik (talk) 18:04, 1 August 2016 (UTC)