On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
John, please explain what your point is here. I mean really, picking on individual people who voted in the election? That's crossing the line, especially as they met the voting eligibility criteria for the election involved, which happened 16 months ago. I expect better from you.
My data is exhaustive, picking on _all_ voters (that I could find) who were eligible via the WMF staff criteria or used their WMF staff account to vote, so we can see the utility that criteria had last time.
It was in response to Marc asking a question, which I roughly answered. Itzik's initial email said that WMF now has a voting power of 12%, if the 2015 WMF election has the same turnout as last time. IIRC, the WMF voting power for the 2013 election was around 9%. That is enough voting power to control who is on the board. Even only counting the WMF staff who actually voted in 2013, IIRC they had a realised voting power which was able to determine which of three candidates was in slot #2 and #3. I am not suggesting that they voted as a bloc, and do I believe they are the largest potential bloc of voters.
As Marc suggests many of those people are also community members who would be eligible due to the community edit count based criteria. I have quantified it to ~5 votes in the 2013 election which used the WMF staff eligibility criteria, which is 0.27% of the 1809 total votes.
If you would like to propose different voting eligibility criteria for future elections, including the one that will take place some time around June 2015, please do so
I already did that: 50 edits for each year of employment, and be inclusive of all public wikis.
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-October/074835.html
- perhaps consider offering to chair the election
committee for next year.
IMO the election must be run by a third party, as happened prior to 2013, by SPI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_in_the_Public_Interest Adequate staff support from WMF is also needed.
But insinuating that some people didn't deserve to vote, or shouldn't have been allowed to vote using a staff account, when that was in the eligibility criteria for many previous elections (not just the 2013 one) is just rude. As best I can tell, there were no concerns expressed in the lead-up the 2013 election about WMF staff having franchise.
If I am insinuating anything by providing data with a bit of commentary, it is the opposite. Any concerns about a WMF 'staff eligible' criteria voting bloc in 2013 are not well founded, but the list of who voted from a staff account last time strongly suggests very few people would be affected by removing that criteria. Removing the WMF staff criteria does adjust the *potential* voting bloc (213 votes) down to a more palatable number, being only those that are active within the community, which I think is a good thing to do.
However as I have said in earlier emails, I would prefer that we refine the criteria such that more of the WMF and affiliate staff & boards who are active within the community can vote in 2015.