On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 11:55 AM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 2:43 PM, James Alexander
<jalexander(a)wikimedia.org
wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel <
> itzik(a)wikimedia.org.il> wrote:
> > Any response or input from the
Election Committee?
>
>
> I think Greg
said it relatively well earlier as the coordinator for the
> committee (I am it's staff advisor). At this point the committee has
> decided on the voting requirements and it is highly unlikely to change
for
the current election cycle. They did have serious
discussions about
everything mentioned in this thread both on their list and during the
first
committee meeting but in the end decided that
they did not believe there
was a strong need for change right now. When this conversation came back
up
> it was broached whether we wanted to revisit and no one said expressed a
> desire to.
> Also as Greg said I think this is a
good topic for a permanent election
> committee which I very much think should exist.
> James Alexander
> Community Advocacy
> Wikimedia Foundation
> (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
This is a weakness in the process. Itzik raised an issue and was told it
was too early to discuss. He raised it again when the elections approached,
and is being told its too late. Obviously the "committee" conducted its
deliberations on this question in secret, which is a strange approach
considering there have been requests and a desire for open discussion from
the community.
I agree, I also wish that the committee had more time to make the decision.
I had hoped to seat them in January and they would have had a lot of time
to discuss this both here and elsewhere. Sadly we were waiting for the
board on a couple things and were unable to seat them until recently and at
that point there was a time crunch and things needed to be decided quickly.
As both Greg and I said however, these arguments were in no way ignored,
when I introduced the topic (in one of the very first emails to the
committee) I listed all of the questions here about staff voting, chapter
staff/board, edit requirements etc and then backed off. The committee
discussed all of those and decided, in the end, that this was the right
decision.
It's also worth pointing out that many of the
people in this discussion
agreed that the community requirements are so low that there should be no
reason any interested employee (of the WMF or elsewhere) can't qualify
under other criteria, eliminating the need for a special franchise for WMF
employees.
On a completely personal level I actually think the requirements could be
lowered. We already had at least 1 individual who I think was a perfect fit
for the FDC for example but was unable to run and had to move himself to
ineligible because of the edit requirements (he may have had over 150 edits
this year and be very active in the movement as a whole but he did not have
the 20 edits in the past 6 months required). However the committee decided
not to do so and that is their prerogative.
Unfortunately it appears that anyone interested in adjusting the criteria
will need perfecting timing while broaching this
subject next year.
This is why Greg (and myself. and the election committee from last
year who made
a proposal <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Standing_Election_Committee>,
and from what I've seen the election committee from this year) want to
have the board create a standing committee. That standing committee would
be empowered to have this discussion at any point and to discuss the
positives and negatives both themselves and with the community and make a
decision. They are much less likely to run into the problem that a one off
committee has where decisions need to be discussed and made and quickly so
that they can get other logistics in place.
James Alexander
Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation
(415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur