The failure wasnt in the election system, the failure was in the lack of
candidates having the global presence that gives people the confidence to
vote for them. The question is how do we raise the global identities of
more candidates and how do we counter the benefits of 20 years of EU/NA
dominance of the movement in a way that brings new voices to the table.
Quotas and regional specific seats is only a temporary solution to achieve
an immediate adjustment, longer term we need to support better solutions
including significant focus of activities in those areas, building of
bigger formal Chapters, more significant events like Wikicom, Wikimania,
Hackathon as these are where the global profiles grow and people develop
the community insights to be able to speak about what matters to the whole
community.
On Thu, 9 Sept 2021 at 03:11, Chris Keating <chriskeatingwiki(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 8:40 PM Chris Keating <chriskeatingwiki(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I too am disappointed (but not surprised) that
STV had almost no effect
at all on the outcome of this election
This may be true, but if it's true, it was only true very narrowly. The
margin between the 4th and 5th placed candidates was 12.27 votes in a
situation where 1,188 were needed to win.
Now that the full ballot data is available, it appears very likely that
using STV did indeed change the result of the election. Though not at
people had hoped.
Ad Huikeshoven has tabulated the numbers of preferences received by each
candidate here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Rank_co…
Trying to work out what would have happened under a different voting
system is obviously a bit tricky. But there are several ways to look at who
would have received most Support votes. We could interpret any vote in
positions 1-4 as a 'support' as in 'this person is in my top 4 picks to
fill the 4 spots on the board', though probably many people would Support
more than 4 candidates. Or we could interpret any positive vote as a
'support', though in some cases low preference votes are an indication of
opposition.
The order of candidates in each of these cases is as follows:
Looking at top 4: Rosie, Victoria, Eliane, Dariusz (Lorenzo 5th)
Looking at total preferences: Rosie, Victoria, Eliane, Lorenzo (Dariusz
5th)
(vs the actual result: Rosie, Victoria, Dariusz, Lorenzo with Eliane 5th)
We'd also obviously need to look at Oppose votes (which of course under
the old system counted 4x as much as support votes). But usually in
elections under the support/oppose system we observed candidates getting
the most Support also having the least Oppose (except for 2015 when the
re-standing board members got many extra Oppose votes and therefore didn't
get re-elected). We could also look at patterns of very low preferences,
but it is really difficult to find any pattern that changes the order of
the top 3 candidates there.
So I think it is a reasonable hypothesis that had the election been
conducted under the old system, Eliane would have been elected and one of
Dariusz and Lorenzo not elected.
It does pain me to say this, as I have often been heard arguing that STV
would help make the board diverse, but it's the only conclusion I can draw
based on the votes cast.
In terms of what should happen next - in my view the Board should say "ok,
we're fine for people from North America, Western Europe and Eastern Europe
as they're all fairly well represented" and say that 2 (or more) seats in
the next election should be reserved for people who don't match that
description. (Though still the next election should be under STV).
Thanks,
Chris
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*Wikimania 2021*
*Celebrating 20 years of Wikipedia*
*Acknowledging everyone who made it a great event*
Wikimania: