On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 5:09 AM, Craig Franklin cfranklin@halonetwork.net wrote:
I think the issue is that the employee vote is now a significant proportion of the electorate. When this was originally set up, nobody complained too loudly about giving WMF staff the vote simply because their numbers were small and they were too small a constituency to sway the result on their own. The number of voters choosing to exercise their suffrage is decreasing, while the number of staff are increasing. While this illustrates a problem all on its own, it also means that WMF staff who may not be participants on the projects may now have enough pull to decide a closely fought election.
I know it's too late to change the rules for this year, but I'd really recommend getting rid of the complex criteria for the next election, and dialing it back to a simple "X number of edits, or Y number of patches" rule. Not only would this be simpler to administer and easier to understand, but I would imagine most of the WMF staff who care enough to actually vote would probably qualify through those criteria anyway. A few "worthy" folk might miss out on the chance to lodge a ballot, but then that's going to be the case in any situation other than complete and universal suffrage.
Cheers, Craig Franklin
First off, setting aside the question about what I (personally) think should be the requirements I would say that it is in no way too late to change the rules. The election is not until mid year next year (I think we usually do it in June?) The election committee hasn't even been sat yet and they will be the ones to decide that in the end (that is not to say that we shouldn't have the discussion now too if people want, just that the decision makers aren't even decided yet).
I don't have exact numbers, but I do remember that there are already very few people who wanted to vote, were only eligible as staff, and couldn't. Most of them were developers and so would be eligible via patches anyway (and most of THEM were eligible by edit count as well), among the non developers people like myself and Philippe refrained from voting because we were working with the election committee and felt that most appropriate. I don't believe there was an overwhelming vote of staff members in proportion to the total.
Voter turn out is something I really want to see better though, it's something that I know we've discussed in the office and I'm sure that the election committee will have as a top priority. The biggest things I see right now is finishing SUL unification which will allow us to have '1 click' voting (and not sending people to meta first to learn about the election/candidates then to their undefined 'home wiki' to see if they can vote) completely anecdotally that seems to have consistently scared a lot of voters off and confused even some of our more experienced users (it also seems to be a bigger complaint each year) SUL will allow us to just have everyone click a start voting button on Meta and not have to go back to their home wiki. I also seriously wonder about the joint FDC/Board ballot giving people too much to look at, we know for example that over 500 people 'saw' the ballot but never submitted their vote.
I also really think notifications could be incredibly helpful to get the word out, but so far that does not seem very likely to be available by then.
James Alexander Legal and Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur