I agree that these are valid concerns, as is the point that we should consider how the 'homewiki' (or whatever demographic you choose to follow) distribution across those votes impacts the outcome. I think there will be general agreement that more participation would be great (although I feel that I have to admit, that this time around I didn't vote myself: just didn't get to reading the proposals carefully enough this time.)
There are a few things I do wonder about, which are not clear from the conversation/statistics:
- is the approval rating significantly different among voters from smaller projects than in larger projects? I don't know if the voting infrastructure even allows for such a breakdown.
- are within projects, certain types of users over represented? For example, I would love some breakdown along tenure (how long have editors been around), rights holders (admin, arbcom, etc) and how those compare to the populations in their respective communities.
A turnout this size is maybe not a high percentage of eligible voters, but note that we intentionally set our eligibility criteria low. A low percentage is then only a natural outcome. I do wonder: what kind of percentage would make colleagues more confident? And how could we realistically achieve those percentages?
Best,
Lodewijk