Looking over the plans in the timeline section of that page, it looks like there isn't a general community input section, where people unaffiliated with the bidding or judging process can say things as basic as "I would attend the proposed London Wikimania but would not attend the proposed Arusha one". In fact, there doesn't even appear to be a section in the criteria that accounts for whether the community at large is interested in or opposed to specific bids or bid locations. I realize that the bidding process is not a democracy, and that such a selection criteria would convey significant advantages to cities/countries that have a large number of users or are especially effective at mobilizing users to comment, but if many more users want to go to one location over another, shouldn't that be taken into account?

Sven

On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah@wikimedia.org> wrote:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Bids - let's see if I can
beat James!
-Sumana

On 03/16/2013 12:00 PM, Karthik Nadar wrote:
> Hello James,
>
> thanks for the update. Could you please update us with the link too?
>
> On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 9:28 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear all: Please post any further questions you have for the two bids.
>>
>> Dear bidders: please review your bids this coming week to make sure
>> they are complete.
>>
>> SJ
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 12:55 AM, James Forrester <jdforrester@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> All,
>>>
>>> To confirm, the candidate bids to host Wikimania 2014 are:
>>>
>>> * Arusha, Tanzania
>>> * London, UK
>>>
>>> The bids now have two weeks (until 23:59 UTC on 17 March 2013) to
>>> finalise all major information on their pages, responding to questions
>>> from the jury and the community, and prepare for the
>>> question-and-answer phase.
>>>
>>> Good luck to both bids!
>>>
>>> On behalf of the Wikimania 2014 Jury,
>>>
>>> Yours,
>>> --
>>> James D. Forrester
>>> jdforrester@gmail.com
>>> [[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] (speaking purely in a personal
>> capacity)
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimania-l mailing list
>>> Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Samuel Klein          @metasj           w:user:sj          +1 617 529 4266
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimania-l mailing list
>> Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
>>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimania-l mailing list
> Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
>


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