Hello everyone,

I am pleased to announce the beginning of Steward Election 2012 [1]. We are now taking nominations from eligible candidates. Interested candidates can check their eligibility and procedure to submit the nomination on the guidelines page [2]. We are open to candidate submissions till January 28, 2012, 23:59 (UTC). Questions to the candidates can be submitted until February 6, 2012, 23:59 (UTC). Guidelines about questioning can also be found on our guidelines page [2].

This time we are also arranging the confirmation of existing stewards [3]. But the confirmation will begin on February 8, and will finish on February 27, 2012.

Please remember, the voting has not yet begun and will be not until February 8, 2012, 00:00 (UTC). We will poke you once again when the voting start.

As you all know steward election is a global event, so we need help from volunteers to translate necessary pages into languages they speak. For those who want to help us out with translation, please see our translation portal [4]. And if you have any queries related to translation or anything related to the election, you can ask us on the talk page [5]. Alternatively you are free to poke us on IRC channel #wikimedia-stewards-elections.

For those who are a little bit surprised to see another election in few months, I want to let you know that previous one (in September-October of 2011) was a special one which we arranged in need. This is the regular one to elect new stewards and to confirm existing ones.

Please feel free to forward this e-mail to any list if you think it will be useful. :-)

Regards, Tanvir Rahman Wikitanvir on Wikimedia (On behalf of the Election Committee.)

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012 [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012/Guidelines [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Confirm/2012/en [4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012/Translation [5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Stewards/Elections_2012