On 30 Apr 2013, at 14:30, Thehelpfulone <thehelpfulonewiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 29 April 2013 21:01, Ziko van Dijk
<vandijk(a)wmnederland.nl> wrote:
With 2 seats selected by the chapters and in future maybe the thorgs, and 3
by the editing community, and 1 by the staff, more than half of the board
members would be not directly coopted.
Many other varieties are possible, of course. The staff could together vote
one elector who would take part in the selection by the chapters, the same
for the Wikimedia User Groups. But then, this voting group should select
ultimately not 2 but 3 seats.
People who don't edit but belong to the movement can have their influence
via the chapters and in future the thorgs.
On 30 April 2013 11:54, Michael Peel <michael.peel(a)wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
I'd like to +1 on this, as that only seems fair to me - either we have an inclusive
solution for all Wikimedia organisation staff, or we don't involve staff in the
elections at all (unless they are also active community members). Moving this discussion
on-wiki would definitely be good, to reduce the chances of this discussion being forgotten
about next time around...
BTW, It might also be worth thinking about spreading the community elected seats over
multiple years - at the moment, all three are appointed at once, which means that
there's not necessarily any sort of continuity in the community's perspective on
the board. Having two elected one year, and one the next year, might be a better solution
to maintain continuity here.
An alternative proposal, as suggested by Risker and James above is that even if you
don't necessarily edit substantially, you can still be part of the movement, so
lowering edit requirements to allow all staff and board members of the WMF, Chapters and
other thematic organisations (and everyone else that's part of the movement) to elect
all 5 of the "community" seats (3 community + 2 chapters) would bring everyone
in the movement closer together.
This would arguably be the most fair option, can someone summarise the justification for
chapters to be able to exclusively select 2 of out 5 community seats through a much
less-transparent process?
I'm not sure how low the edit requirements would have to be in order to allow all
staff + board members to vote - has anyone looked at the statistics of edit counts of
staff + board members to quantify this? It would also need to be balanced against the
increased risk of election fraud (it's easier to create more new accounts with a
smaller number of edits without being spotted).
My understanding of the chapter-selected seats is that those were intended to bring in
people from the chapters' sphere of contacts who were unlikely to want to stand
through very public elections, hence the reduced transparency involved in their
appointments. So I'd personally view them as a sort of cross-over between expert and
community seats, rather than simply as community seats (e.g. they wouldn't necessarily
be filled by a Wikimedian).
Thanks,
Mike
(personal viewpoint)