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
On 5 October 2014 18:04, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Itzik,
If I understand you correctly, you are asking about whether WMF and
thematic organization bylaws should allow employees to vote in trustee
elections for their own orgs.
I can see how this could create interesting conflict-of-interest problems.
However, in all non-autocratic republics that I know about, government
employees can vote as any other citizens can. I'm also of the view that WMF
operates like a university, and a modest amount of staff involvement in
selecting their supervisors in that environment is ok.
Pine
On Oct 5, 2014 12:41 AM, "Itzik - Wikimedia Israel" <
itzik(a)wikimedia.org.il>
wrote:
Hey,
Don't worry, we indeed have a lot of time till the next elections, but as
this issue had been raised during the last elections - and we decided
that
we can't change the rules few weeks before
the elections, now I want to
raise the discussion enough time before.
According to the current rules [1], in order to influence and vote in
the
elections, you need to be active editor,
developer or WMF
staff/contractor.
Last year this issue concern some of us. The foundation is not small
organizations as it been before, and by comparison, the number of people
participating in the elections every year is not high.
For example, last elections there were 1809 valid votes. By comparison,
the
number of WMF staff this days is 218, what makes
there voting power 12%
of
the total voters last year. This consider to be a
great amount of power
when we are talking about elections (In the last election you would have
around 650 votes in order to be elected...)
Wikimedia thematic organizations staff and contractors for example don't
have the same privilege to vote only because they are employees of the
movement, only if they are editors as well. The question - what make the
WMF staff different, and if this is not a little bit problematic that the
staff have such power to decide on their direct board, but in general -
the
board of the whole movement.
Do we need to give the same privilege also to all the staff in our
movement?
Should we limited the elections to staff (both WMF and chapters) that are
active editors or developers as additional to their work in the movement?
I'll be happy to hear yours input.
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Vote_Qu…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Results
*Regards,Itzik Edri*
Chairperson, Wikimedia Israel
+972-(0)-54-5878078 |
http://www.wikimedia.org.il
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment!
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