[Foundation-l] 2011 Board Elections: Input needed

[Harel Cain]

Before we start extending the right to vote to ever wider groups of people,
we should ask ourselves how much this right is exercised by those already
entitled to it, and how many of those proposed to be granted the right to
vote are expected to really make use of it.

The last elections saw a participation of a few thousand of voters, just a
small proportion of all the people eligible to vote, and I guess these could
be split roughly into those who really are into foundation-level and
meta-level issues and those who were (legitimately) recruited from among the
home projects of the candidates without  too much real interest in the
elections. Whoever didn't fall into these two categories rarely voted, and I
anticipate the same will hold true for the new groups you proposed in your
mail.

The real question we should ask ourselves is how to make these elections
more relevant and important for those groups of people already entitled to
take part in them.


Harel Cain
Hebrew Wikipedia / Wikimedia Israel




2011/3/20 Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby at gmail.com>

> Hello, fellow Wikimedians.
>
> On behalf of the 2011 Board Election Committee I would like to ask your
> input on the criteria for voters in the election. In the last election
> (2009), contributors needed to have at least 600 edits before the election
> began and 50 recent edits (within 6 months). However, we feel that the edit
> counts should be lowered, to allow newer contributors and mostly-inactive
> members to vote, as we feel that they are also valued members of the
> community. So our current proposal is a total of 300 edits, and 20 edits
> within 6 months.
>
> This only goes for the editing community; however, the community is more
> than just editors. Previously, suffrage has been extended to (a) server
> administrators, (b) paid staff and (c) current or former board members.
> This
> still does not account for all community members though, and we would like
> your input on what other community members should be eligible to vote (and
> how to quantify other types of contributions).
>
> In discussion amongst the community, the committee, board members and
> others, the following categories of potential voters were brought up:
>
> * Advisory Board members
> * Developers who are not server administrators, but who have made a certain
> number of commits (what number is "sufficient"?)
>
> * Donors
> ** Donors above a certain $ amount (in that case, what amount should be the
> limit?)
> * University students in the Ambassadors program
> * Researchers with access to the research user right
>
> So, to round up, we would very much like your input on these matters; are
> the edit count requirements fair, do the additional categories seem all
> right, and finally, are there any other user categories that should be
> eligible to vote?
>
> Input can be posted here, on [[m:Talk:Board
> elections/2011]]<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2011
> >or
> to the board elections list,
> board-elections at lists.wikimedia.org. We're looking forward to hearing your
> thoughts on the matter!
>
> On behalf of the Election Committee,
> Jon Harald Søby
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by
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