[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

[habj]

2006/9/21, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>:
>
>
> > but then allow (and encourage) candidates to post as
> > much additional material as they wish, in whatever language(s) they are
> > comfortable in, with no guarantee it will get translated.
>
> and that I object (except "no guarantee" part). As I stated before, it
> means "if you can read language A, you are provided more materials
> than language non-A speakers". On local projects, I found some signs
> some people thought such additional materials would be just a sign of
> those candidates are anglo-centric.


That was my own personal reaction too on lengthy candidate statements - and
also to those who wrote as difficult English as they could, in order to
sound like they know what they were talking about or something similar.
However, I do not think it is possible to forbid the candidates to provide
extra information. The English Wikipedia Signpost made an interview to which
all candidates replied; I am not sure if they all replied in English, if
they got someone to translate their answers for them or if the Signpost
people did but the result was of course displayed in English. Debates in IRC
have been suggested, and even if those can be held in different languages
there will be information that is not available to all voters. It is
basically a good initiative. Should we oppose to this kind of genually good
things for the sake of equality between people of different langauges? IMHO
that would be a shame.

A system with electors has been suggested. I somehow doubt this is the magic
bullet that solves the problem with language barriers, though. If I
understand correctly, the people who should read all the election material
and choose a candidate, if not all users should, need to be good at
digesting texts in English. These people are then probably users at English
speaking projects, and in not too few cases know more about these project
than of those in his or her native tongue. Alas we end up with he English
language bias anyhow.


/habj