Hello Florence,
Thank you for voicing your concerns. We are doing what we can to design a process that achieves its goals and satisfies everyone, but this is very hard - balancing the absolute freedom of action with not privileging people who have the luxury of extra time is one of many considerations to make. Last year's elections had a very different approach to the campaign, there was no hard limit to events or questions to candidates, and that raised concerns as well. In some non-profit organizations, elections happen without any candidate campaign at all. There are different ways to approach democratic elections, and we still need to find the best approach that is appropriate for our context and our goals.
In my view, there are really great many improvements we can make to the process - including both more detailed parametric evaluation of candidates, better understanding of diversity, better organization of the process of differentiating candidates and their skills (debates, answering questions without the privilege of knowing the answers of other candidates, etc.).
We will ask the foundation to, at a quiet point after the election, organize a conversation about lessons learned and improvements to be applied next time. The time and the format are yet to be decided.
All processes can be improved, but now we hope those who are eligible will take the opportunity to vote in the election and encourage others to vote. Participation looks promising so far: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Stats
Best regards,
DariuszOn Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 4:18 PM Florence Devouard <fdevouard@gmail.com> wrote:_______________________________________________Hello
There were a lot of improvements in that election process and I really think the compass system is an awesome tool and was usefully used during those elections.
However, I am very unpleased by the very severe restrictions on candidates freedom of speech and on attempts of restriction on voters freedom of speech regarding those elections.
By and large, for the arguments of
1) equity of treatement of all candidates and
2) time and energy requirements of all voters
the democratic process is largely impaired.In fact... an election IS by essence a competition. And whilst equity of treatment must be in our minds, we should not let it damage the democratic process. And restricting candidates from campaigning and restricting community from discussing and recommanding is a flawed democratic process.
So what do we have in the end to decide on a candidate ?
1) Candidate statement. Text-based, translated in various languages. Excellent.
2) An election compass based on 12 questions. Very interesting, though on a limited number of topics.
3) Videos on a few restricted questions. It saves time to the voters. But it is not very visible. It is in English. And it is on a limited number of questions.
4) A rating provided by the Analysis Committee, which evaluated the candidates against the skills and diversity, equity and inclusion criteria. Well, there could be suscipions over any process where a committee tell us what to vote. If our individual recommandations are considered unfair and bringing inequity, then those recommandations are unfair and bringing inequity too.
I found interesting to look at this page : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Events
Sections "Schedules events" and "Tentative events" are completely empty.
The restrictions placed over the rights to speak this year really had a chilling effect.
I hope that in the future, the candidates and the community voices are given more liberty.
Florence
Just in case, I am sharing the last WikiAfrica Hour episode, where all 6 candidates finally had the right to speak up (2 months struggle to get there though) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwZ_7Bg1ENk
Le 24/08/2022 à 08:54, Mahuton Possoupe a écrit :
Hello, Emufarmers and Andreas
This was pointed out on Meta as well.
The message announcing the opening of the vote was prepared months in advance, including translations, before the decision was made to create campaign videos. The link to the videos wasn't included in this version because of this, but the suggestion was to link the videos from the Candidates page, [1] which IS linked and translated. That was overlooked. While we haven’t got time to get the update to that page translated, we have added the links under a header that makes them easy to find and should be easy to translate. We will also include a note about the videos when we send our voting reminder.
Best regards,
Mahuton (WMF)
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Candidates#Community_Questions
On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 2:17 AM Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> wrote:
The on-wiki voting instructions in all the other languages still make no mention of the videos.
Andreas
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022, Benjamin Lees <emufarmers@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm surprised to see that this announcement includes no mention of the videos that the candidates created answering community questions[1] and instead highlights the affiliate questions from the earlier phase of the election. The on-wiki instructions also made no mention of the videos until a community member added them,[2] and the posting of the videos was not announced on this list until Andreas did it.[3]
> To be clear, the decision to channel campaign activities into video rather than text settings was both inconvenient and inequitable, both for the candidates and for voters, and probably doomed any chance to have the candidates' answers translated for non-English-speaking voters. There are no usable transcripts available[4], except for the written answers from the one candidate who has opted to provide them.[5] But since this is the path that was chosen, I don't think it's right to bury what little community engagement we had.
> Emufarmers
>
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Campaign_Videos
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Community_Voting&diff=23706531&oldid=23660982
> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Community_Voting/Questions_for_Candidates&diff=prev&oldid=23691840
> [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Campaign_Videos&oldid=23709100
> [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Community_Voting/Questions_for_Candidates/Sorted
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 1:22 AM Mahuton Possoupe <mpossoupe-ctr@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> The Community Voting period for the 2022 Board of Trustees election is now open. Here are some helpful links to get you the information you need to vote:
>>
>> Try the Election Compass, showing how candidates stand on 15 different topics.
>> Read the candidate statements and answers to Affiliate questions
>> Learn more about the skills the Board seeks and how the Analysis Committee found candidates aligned with those skills
>>
>> If you are ready to vote, you may go to SecurePoll voting page to vote now. You may vote from August 23 at 00:00 UTC to September 6 at 23:59 UTC. To see about your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Movement Strategy and Governance
>>
>> *This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee*
>>
>> --
>>
>> <https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/yBcvUBz7x7xW_texDbyEnK7BKs9wPMPAI4NuqDit5ipBVl-TBu9JIdHdySi6iZA1UTcm3AzWcx8bfkDvjMaftQqxtKRkjORZgmQ53i7g9bVQ6rEy7NhGdz4mZ6AcTe2tIAyMD9wH>
>>
>> Mahuton POSSOUPE (He/Him)
>>
>> Movement Strategy & Board Governance facilitator
>>
>> French-speaking communities
>>
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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Mahuton POSSOUPE (He/Him)
Movement Strategy & Board Governance facilitator
French-speaking communities
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