[Foundation-l] Official Election Notice -- concerns about suffrage requirements

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Philippe Beaudette
<philippebeaudette at gmail.com> wrote:
> The 2008 Board election committee announces the 2008 election process. Wikimedians will have the opportunity to elect one candidate from the Wikimedia community to serve as a representative on the Board of Trustees. The successful candidate will serve a one-year term, ending in July 2009.

Thanks Phillipe for the announcement and thanks to the election
committee for their work!

I have one concern about the new requirement that voters must have 50
edits between April 1->June 1 on their voting project, as well as the
old total edit requirement, in order to gain suffrage in this year's
election.

To quote the election information page:

"You may vote from any one registered account you own on a Wikimedia
wiki (you may only vote once, regardless of how many accounts you
own). To qualify, this one account must:
    * not be blocked, and
    * not be a bot, and
    * have made at least 600 edits before 01 March 2008 on that wiki
(edits on several wikis cannot be combined), and
    * have made at least 50 edits between 01 April and 01 June 2008 on
that wiki."

I know several previously very active editors, people I would consider
core Wikimedians who know the projects as well as anyone, that happen
to be taking a wikibreak this spring -- and this new requirement would
disenfranchise them. I can't imagine this was your intent.
This problem is compounded by the fact that a) April is already almost
over, leaving people just a month to get their edits in; b) the
editors most affected by this may not be paying attention to these
early election notices (but will want to vote when the time comes); c)
since we have not had this requirement in previous elections, it is
unlikely that people will be expecting it.

I have two suggestions:
Either
a) drop this part of the requirement
or
b) start a site notice now for logged-in users on all projects,
reminding them of the candidacy cut-off date and suffrage requirements
for the election.

A site notice, if not already planned for, is probably useful anyway
as potential candidates may not read the mailing list or catch the
election posts to it.

thanks!
-- phoebe