I haven't seen too much discussion about this, but i just wanted to remind everyone that people who participate in mediawiki development (including many third party extensions) are eligible to vote in the current Wikimedia foundation board of trustees election, even if you don't edit any wikimedia wiki. You just have to have made one commit. Commits to third party mediawiki extensions not used by Wikimedia wikis count (including some hosted at github). The Wikimedia Foundation is the largest contributor to MediaWiki core, and the trustees control the direction of the Wikimedia Foundation. Hence your vote (indirectly) determines the direction of MediaWiki software!

There is an unofficial list of eligible developers at https://i-want-to-vote.toolforge.org . I encourage anyone who participates in development of software in the mediawiki ecosystem to check if they are on the list. Even if you are not on that list you may still be eligible.

You can learn more about the candidates at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Candidat... . In particular, many of you might already know legoktm who is one of the candidates and is very active in the mediawiki developer community. You can vote now up until september 6 (however some eligible people must register to vote before sept 2). The link to vote is https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/393 . People who are eligible to vote due to software development must pre-register via email before that link works for them and they must do so 4 days before the end of the election. See https://i-want-to-vote.toolforge.org for details.

The full official list of eligibility criteria is at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Voter_el... . The key point for software developers, is you only have had to make 1 commit between Jan 5 and july 5, to any gerrit repo, any toolforge tool repo (including those outside gerrit), or any mediawiki extension/skin on MWStake's list of mediawiki extensions/skins developed outside of gerrit. If the above doesn't describe you, there are also other criteria that can make you eligible, like if you have made lots of edits to https://mediawiki.org or https://translatewiki.net, maintain or contribute to "tools, bots, user scripts, gadgets, and Lua modules on Wikimedia wikis", or "substantially engaged in the design and/or review processes of technical development related to Wikimedia." or are employed by the Wikimedia foundation or an affiliate of Wikimedia. Check the official rules for the full list.

Anyways i encourage everyone to vote who is eligible. People who are voting by virtue of being a software developer MUST register 4 days before the end of the election (i.e. sept 2), so if that's you, be sure to do it in time. See the official rules or https://i-want-to-vote.toolforge.org for details.

-- Bawolff

p.s. Just to clarify, this isn't an official email, i just wanted to ensure that the wider mediawiki developer community was aware of this as i suspect many eligible developers may be unaware they are allowed to vote.