... it would be good to talk a bit about the state of our community and movement.
Initially, I was quite positively surprised by the fact that this will be the best WMF Board elections ever in the terms of turnout of voters. It will beat 2007 elections and it will be likely 2.5 times better than previous one.
I would really like to know what's so different than in 2013. Also, if this is the sign of the community health, how come that we are now better than we were at the peak of our movement?
Then I made my personal community health check: the size of the gzipped file of the discussions on this list [1]. And I was surprised again to realize that this is the *worst* month since December 2004 (it's not likely that we'll pass192KB of the August 2012 in the next few hours) in the sense of quantity of communication.
At the other side, the list is not quiet, which makes things a bit more odd.
If we just compare quantity of communication vs. quantity of topics, it would be easy to conclude that there are less deep and less heated discussions, which basically means that although we've become more civilized, we care much less about Wikimedia.
However, turnout of voters says something completely different. I am a bit puzzled and I don't have the idea what doesn't fit, except to complain that somebody messed up with Universe constants.
So, any idea? But, please, something sensible, not things like "We've become more mature".
And two more precise requests:
1) May Election committee give unified data for all previous elections? If possible, structured by countries and projects. Output of all democratic elections assume presenting data according to area. It's legitimate to know that voters from country X voted for candidate Y. It gives a clue of what's going on inside of the movement.
2) Besides very intuitive (not to say pseudoscientific, dilettantish) methods of making conclusions that "something is good here" or "something is bad there", we don't have any systematic way for gathering and analyzing data about the state of our community and movement. I think that the responsibility of the Board is to find a way to, for the beginning, quantify whatever could be quantified in relation to the community and movement traits. And to inform the rest of us periodically. (To be more clear: this is not ED's job, this is Board's job; it's not about running the projects, but about running the movement.)
2015-05-31 22:57 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
... it would be good to talk a bit about the state of our community and movement.
Initially, I was quite positively surprised by the fact that this will be the best WMF Board elections ever in the terms of turnout of voters. It will beat 2007 elections and it will be likely 2.5 times better than previous one.
I would really like to know what's so different than in 2013. Also, if this is the sign of the community health, how come that we are now better than we were at the peak of our movement?
There's a fair chance the difference says far more about the amount of effort spent getting the word out about the election, than about how much the movement cares about it compared to previous elections.
//Johan Jönsson --
There were only 9 votes from Ukrainian community in 2013, I believe
So this year we just made sure that our community REALLY knows about the elections, thus we:
- translated the candidates statements into Ukrainian - prepared a short table with the essence of these statements in Ukrainian and posted it in the Village pump [1] - created a list of everybody eligible to vote from Ukrainian Wikipedia and sent them a message with invitation to vote and with the links to read more about the candidates via talk pages - and just talked :)
[1] https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%...
Best regards, antanana ED of Wikimedia Ukraine
2015-06-01 1:00 GMT+03:00 Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com:
2015-05-31 22:57 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
... it would be good to talk a bit about the state of our community and movement.
Initially, I was quite positively surprised by the fact that this will be the best WMF Board elections ever in the terms of turnout of voters. It will beat 2007 elections and it will be likely 2.5 times better than previous one.
I would really like to know what's so different than in 2013. Also, if this is the sign of the community health, how come that we are now better than we were at the peak of our movement?
There's a fair chance the difference says far more about the amount of effort spent getting the word out about the election, than about how much the movement cares about it compared to previous elections.
//Johan Jönsson
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Ukraine has done great this year! Your work clearly paid off, currently 11.74% of the eligible users on ukWiki have voted (making it one of the highest % wikis, and the highest if you only count medium/large wikis some of the smaller ones get an advantage when % is factored in). It also accounts for 2.58% of the total votes compared to less then 1% (.99%) of the whole electorate.
James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 3:14 PM, attolippip attolippip@gmail.com wrote:
There were only 9 votes from Ukrainian community in 2013, I believe
So this year we just made sure that our community REALLY knows about the elections, thus we:
- translated the candidates statements into Ukrainian
- prepared a short table with the essence of these statements in Ukrainian
and posted it in the Village pump [1]
- created a list of everybody eligible to vote from Ukrainian Wikipedia and
sent them a message with invitation to vote and with the links to read more about the candidates via talk pages
- and just talked :)
[1]
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%...
Best regards, antanana ED of Wikimedia Ukraine
2015-06-01 1:00 GMT+03:00 Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com:
2015-05-31 22:57 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
... it would be good to talk a bit about the state of our community and movement.
Initially, I was quite positively surprised by the fact that this will be the best WMF Board elections ever in the terms of turnout of voters. It will beat 2007 elections and it will be likely 2.5 times better than previous one.
I would really like to know what's so different than in 2013. Also, if this is the sign of the community health, how come that we are now better than we were at the peak of our movement?
There's a fair chance the difference says far more about the amount of effort spent getting the word out about the election, than about how much the movement cares about it compared to previous elections.
//Johan Jönsson
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There were a lot of factors that went into the vote turnout. Some of it we should be able to build on going into the next election, others are likely snapshot moment in time factors that we may not be able to capture again.
James has pointed out a number of key technical considerations, and there were additional barriers we are asking the developer staff to look into that will hopefully make the next one even better. Clearly the work that Philippe and James putting into preparing for this year's election paid off, now we need to set the cycle again for improvements to continue based on what we learned this year. Some of those have already been entered into Phabricator.
My colleagues on the elections committee have also done a fantastic job this year, and brought a lot of unique ideas on how to get out the vote. There are a lot of ideas we are still discussing and will be capturing in our committee post mortem report. It also seems likely that we will be discussing the idea of a standing committee as a possible method of continuing work on these efforts, and removing some of the time hurdles this committee faced.
There is also reason to believe that people in general are just more aware of what Wikimedia is vs. Wikipedia (press around new ED, NSA case, SOPA blackout, etc.) - which certainly could have been a catalyst in other get out the vote efforts. Also, the affiliates have increasingly done a good job of engaging their core audiences in the community elections. The board was also very engaged this year in helping get out the vote, and recruit a diverse set of candidates. The diversity of candidates may have inspired more attention from communities that do not typically vote.
I believe the committee is indeed interested in trying to provide as much data as reasonably possible to help with these discussions, and the requests made are helpful to us figuring out what to share. I want to encourage folks to share their ideas, comments, and concerns on the community post mortem page - that is our best chance at having a broad community discussion that is maintained in the easiest way for volunteers working on future elections to see: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Post_mor...
The committee's ideas and discussions will be documented on the committee's post mortem page. That will likely begin in a more noticeable way once the vote counting concludes: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Committe...
-greg (User:Varnent) 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 6:20 PM, James Alexander jalexander@wikimedia.org wrote:
Ukraine has done great this year! Your work clearly paid off, currently 11.74% of the eligible users on ukWiki have voted (making it one of the highest % wikis, and the highest if you only count medium/large wikis some of the smaller ones get an advantage when % is factored in). It also accounts for 2.58% of the total votes compared to less then 1% (.99%) of the whole electorate.
James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 3:14 PM, attolippip attolippip@gmail.com wrote:
There were only 9 votes from Ukrainian community in 2013, I believe
So this year we just made sure that our community REALLY knows about the elections, thus we:
- translated the candidates statements into Ukrainian
- prepared a short table with the essence of these statements in
Ukrainian
and posted it in the Village pump [1]
- created a list of everybody eligible to vote from Ukrainian Wikipedia
and
sent them a message with invitation to vote and with the links to read
more
about the candidates via talk pages
- and just talked :)
[1]
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%...
Best regards, antanana ED of Wikimedia Ukraine
2015-06-01 1:00 GMT+03:00 Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com:
2015-05-31 22:57 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
... it would be good to talk a bit about the state of our community and movement.
Initially, I was quite positively surprised by the fact that this
will
be the best WMF Board elections ever in the terms of turnout of voters. It will beat 2007 elections and it will be likely 2.5 times better than previous one.
I would really like to know what's so different than in 2013. Also,
if
this is the sign of the community health, how come that we are now better than we were at the peak of our movement?
There's a fair chance the difference says far more about the amount of effort spent getting the word out about the election, than about how
much
the movement cares about it compared to previous elections.
//Johan Jönsson
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On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 3:20 PM, James Alexander jalexander@wikimedia.org wrote:
Ukraine has done great this year! Your work clearly paid off, currently 11.74% of the eligible users on ukWiki have voted (making it one of the highest % wikis, and the highest if you only count medium/large wikis some of the smaller ones get an advantage when % is factored in). It also accounts for 2.58% of the total votes compared to less then 1% (.99%) of the whole electorate.
Mea Culpa: For the record I was double counting many of the eligible voters here (we had an old voter list that was also being counted). The correct numbers for ukWiki would be just over 25% of eligible voters voting and 2.61% of the total votes (still .99% of the electorate).
We will certainly be releasing more detailed results for projects with results and in the post mortem.
James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
25% turnout is amazing!! Thank you, and congratulations to WM UA, particularly given the political situation at home.
I also collected a few thoughts about the elections here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny/Thoughts_Board_Election_2015
Thanks to the Election Committee and everyone else out there getting the word out, fellow voters, and fellow candidates!
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 5:34 PM James Alexander jalexander@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 3:20 PM, James Alexander <jalexander@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Ukraine has done great this year! Your work clearly paid off, currently 11.74% of the eligible users on ukWiki have voted (making it one of the highest % wikis, and the highest if you only count medium/large wikis
some
of the smaller ones get an advantage when % is factored in). It also accounts for 2.58% of the total votes compared to less then 1% (.99%) of the whole electorate.
Mea Culpa: For the record I was double counting many of the eligible voters here (we had an old voter list that was also being counted). The correct numbers for ukWiki would be just over 25% of eligible voters voting and 2.61% of the total votes (still .99% of the electorate).
We will certainly be releasing more detailed results for projects with results and in the post mortem.
James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Actully is probably much higher in terms of currently acrive editors. For example - in Polish WIkipedia there are currently around 250 - 100+ editors - and there was 171 votes (if I calculated it properly) - and in Ukrainian Wikipedia - if you calculate it in similar way the effective tournover is close to 90% !!! (170 100+ editors and 163 votes).
2015-06-01 4:02 GMT+02:00 Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com:
25% turnout is amazing!! Thank you, and congratulations to WM UA, particularly given the political situation at home.
I also collected a few thoughts about the elections here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny/Thoughts_Board_Election_2015
Thanks to the Election Committee and everyone else out there getting the word out, fellow voters, and fellow candidates!
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 5:34 PM James Alexander jalexander@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 3:20 PM, James Alexander <
jalexander@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Ukraine has done great this year! Your work clearly paid off, currently 11.74% of the eligible users on ukWiki have voted (making it one of the highest % wikis, and the highest if you only count medium/large wikis
some
of the smaller ones get an advantage when % is factored in). It also accounts for 2.58% of the total votes compared to less then 1% (.99%)
of
the whole electorate.
Mea Culpa: For the record I was double counting many of the eligible
voters
here (we had an old voter list that was also being counted). The correct numbers for ukWiki would be just over 25% of eligible voters voting and 2.61% of the total votes (still .99% of the electorate).
We will certainly be releasing more detailed results for projects with results and in the post mortem.
James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org <
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On Jun 4, 2015 15:20, "Tomasz Ganicz" polimerek@gmail.com wrote:
... and in Ukrainian Wikipedia - if you calculate it in similar way the effective tournover is close to 90% !!! (170 100+ editors and 163 votes).
This is very good point! It would be good if we'd have election turnout numbers split into the next groups:
1) Turnout of very active editors (let's say, 1200+ edits during the year before elections, as it would be hard to measure based on monthly numbers).
2) Active editors (60+ edits during the previous year).
3) Everybody eligible.
I think we'll be quite good if the second group has more than 50% of turnout (assuming that the first one would be better, for sure).
In relation to the Polish and Ukrainian numbers, I am sure that it's pretty close to the point (those who voted are likely very active editors), but I'd like to see the exact numbers.
I believe the Ukrain case well illustrates a key characteristic of this election - the high participation rate from the middle and small sized communities. It looks like we have we had voters from 184 wikis participating, an amazing number!
As greg already pointed this is probably related to the Board clear statement for the election, the high number and diversity of candidates and active encouragement from local communites and local affiliates.
And for the original question from Milos. Yes I agree we should try to collect more data on the health of our communities. And participation rate in election can be one of these indicators. And then it tells us, we have vibrant communities among the middle and small sized projects, but people from these extremely rarely participate in lists like this. This list I find mainly engage people from our biggest communities, especially English, and in this election actually the participation rate from enwp was lower then the mean participation rate....
Anders
attolippip skrev den 2015-06-01 00:14:
There were only 9 votes from Ukrainian community in 2013, I believe
So this year we just made sure that our community REALLY knows about the elections, thus we:
- translated the candidates statements into Ukrainian
- prepared a short table with the essence of these statements in Ukrainian
and posted it in the Village pump [1]
- created a list of everybody eligible to vote from Ukrainian Wikipedia and
sent them a message with invitation to vote and with the links to read more about the candidates via talk pages
- and just talked :)
[1] https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%...
Best regards, antanana ED of Wikimedia Ukraine
2015-06-01 1:00 GMT+03:00 Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com:
2015-05-31 22:57 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
... it would be good to talk a bit about the state of our community and movement.
Initially, I was quite positively surprised by the fact that this will be the best WMF Board elections ever in the terms of turnout of voters. It will beat 2007 elections and it will be likely 2.5 times better than previous one.
I would really like to know what's so different than in 2013. Also, if this is the sign of the community health, how come that we are now better than we were at the peak of our movement?
There's a fair chance the difference says far more about the amount of effort spent getting the word out about the election, than about how much the movement cares about it compared to previous elections.
//Johan Jönsson
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So, there are two good news and one bad.
The most important good one is that efforts made by James, Philippe and EC have given [global] results. It's always good to hear that we depend less on weather conditions and more on our own work. So, thank you for your good work! :)
I agree with you in relation to the standing committee. Most importantly, we need it exactly because of the continuity of the work. Besides obvious benefits, standing committee would be able to create the foundations for elections all over the movement, not just for Board and FDC and it could become the guardian of the democracy inside of our movement. With standing Election committee, it would be much easier to organize any kind of referenda, as well.
The second good news, the Ukrainian one, is on the line of the first one and it shows that it's possible to engage particular community. Nat, it would be good if you could prepare the analysis of what you did on Ukrainian Wikipedia and present it not just inside of an online document, but during the conferences in 2015 and 2016. Obviously, you've shown one of pretty valid methods to increase participation in elections. That's good not just because of the magic number of 25%, but because Ukrainian Wikimedians have much better potential to be involved into the global matters in the future.
Very bad news is participation of English Wikipedians; and thus, to be more precise, American Wikimedians. More than 50% (I think, the number is more than 60%) of our editors are Americans (and, I think, 80% of money comes from US). While it's better to have more balanced ratio, those are the facts and whenever we are talking about "us" and "our movement", we have to have in mind that more than half of "us" are Americans. Low participation there means low participation in the numbers which matter the most.
We are still inside of the field of small numbers. Engaging one or few particular communities could give us impression that we are going very well, while we are in troubles. Thus, we should find a way to increase participation of our largest community. At this moment we have a number of chapters and user groups in US and Ukrainian experience could help them, too. Besides on-wiki engagement, it would be good, for example, to have few community meetings organized by chapters or user groups before every election.
Anders, this list is quite relevant. It's the main forum of our movement and it represents the movement well (up to this moment, thought it's not always the case, this thread has involved five non-native English speakers and just two native ones; that's much better than editor ratio). And although my method of checking community health is quite arbitrary, it could give a clue of what's going on here. If we are more engaged it will affect this list.
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 5:43 AM, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote:
I believe the Ukrain case well illustrates a key characteristic of this election - the high participation rate from the middle and small sized communities. It looks like we have we had voters from 184 wikis participating, an amazing number!
As greg already pointed this is probably related to the Board clear statement for the election, the high number and diversity of candidates and active encouragement from local communites and local affiliates.
And for the original question from Milos. Yes I agree we should try to collect more data on the health of our communities. And participation rate in election can be one of these indicators. And then it tells us, we have vibrant communities among the middle and small sized projects, but people from these extremely rarely participate in lists like this. This list I find mainly engage people from our biggest communities, especially English, and in this election actually the participation rate from enwp was lower then the mean participation rate....
Anders
attolippip skrev den 2015-06-01 00:14:
There were only 9 votes from Ukrainian community in 2013, I believe
So this year we just made sure that our community REALLY knows about the elections, thus we:
- translated the candidates statements into Ukrainian
- prepared a short table with the essence of these statements in Ukrainian
and posted it in the Village pump [1]
- created a list of everybody eligible to vote from Ukrainian Wikipedia
and sent them a message with invitation to vote and with the links to read more about the candidates via talk pages
- and just talked :)
[1]
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%...
Best regards, antanana ED of Wikimedia Ukraine
2015-06-01 1:00 GMT+03:00 Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com:
2015-05-31 22:57 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
... it would be good to talk a bit about the state of our community and movement.
Initially, I was quite positively surprised by the fact that this will be the best WMF Board elections ever in the terms of turnout of voters. It will beat 2007 elections and it will be likely 2.5 times better than previous one.
I would really like to know what's so different than in 2013. Also, if this is the sign of the community health, how come that we are now better than we were at the peak of our movement?
There's a fair chance the difference says far more about the amount of effort spent getting the word out about the election, than about how much the movement cares about it compared to previous elections.
//Johan Jönsson
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Just a clarification on numbers In James (internal) table enwps share of total number of eligible votes is 35,4% Participation rate state from enwp was 8,26% against mean for all 9,5%. If enwp is excluded the participation rate for all of the rest stands at 10,2%
Enwp users also include users from non-en countries, and user from en countries will also be found on other wikis like Commons (3,5% of total eligible voters, with a turnout similar to enwp) but this does not change the bottom line, participation rate from enwp has been lower then from the rest of the communities (de, fr, it, ru, es, pl rates being a little above mean of rest, zh and pt a little below and ja much below)
Anders
Milos Rancic skrev den 2015-06-01 09:48:
So, there are two good news and one bad.
The most important good one is that efforts made by James, Philippe and EC have given [global] results. It's always good to hear that we depend less on weather conditions and more on our own work. So, thank you for your good work! :)
I agree with you in relation to the standing committee. Most importantly, we need it exactly because of the continuity of the work. Besides obvious benefits, standing committee would be able to create the foundations for elections all over the movement, not just for Board and FDC and it could become the guardian of the democracy inside of our movement. With standing Election committee, it would be much easier to organize any kind of referenda, as well.
The second good news, the Ukrainian one, is on the line of the first one and it shows that it's possible to engage particular community. Nat, it would be good if you could prepare the analysis of what you did on Ukrainian Wikipedia and present it not just inside of an online document, but during the conferences in 2015 and 2016. Obviously, you've shown one of pretty valid methods to increase participation in elections. That's good not just because of the magic number of 25%, but because Ukrainian Wikimedians have much better potential to be involved into the global matters in the future.
Very bad news is participation of English Wikipedians; and thus, to be more precise, American Wikimedians. More than 50% (I think, the number is more than 60%) of our editors are Americans (and, I think, 80% of money comes from US). While it's better to have more balanced ratio, those are the facts and whenever we are talking about "us" and "our movement", we have to have in mind that more than half of "us" are Americans. Low participation there means low participation in the numbers which matter the most.
We are still inside of the field of small numbers. Engaging one or few particular communities could give us impression that we are going very well, while we are in troubles. Thus, we should find a way to increase participation of our largest community. At this moment we have a number of chapters and user groups in US and Ukrainian experience could help them, too. Besides on-wiki engagement, it would be good, for example, to have few community meetings organized by chapters or user groups before every election.
Anders, this list is quite relevant. It's the main forum of our movement and it represents the movement well (up to this moment, thought it's not always the case, this thread has involved five non-native English speakers and just two native ones; that's much better than editor ratio). And although my method of checking community health is quite arbitrary, it could give a clue of what's going on here. If we are more engaged it will affect this list.
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 5:43 AM, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote:
I believe the Ukrain case well illustrates a key characteristic of this election - the high participation rate from the middle and small sized communities. It looks like we have we had voters from 184 wikis participating, an amazing number!
As greg already pointed this is probably related to the Board clear statement for the election, the high number and diversity of candidates and active encouragement from local communites and local affiliates.
And for the original question from Milos. Yes I agree we should try to collect more data on the health of our communities. And participation rate in election can be one of these indicators. And then it tells us, we have vibrant communities among the middle and small sized projects, but people from these extremely rarely participate in lists like this. This list I find mainly engage people from our biggest communities, especially English, and in this election actually the participation rate from enwp was lower then the mean participation rate....
Anders
attolippip skrev den 2015-06-01 00:14:
There were only 9 votes from Ukrainian community in 2013, I believe
So this year we just made sure that our community REALLY knows about the elections, thus we:
- translated the candidates statements into Ukrainian
- prepared a short table with the essence of these statements in Ukrainian
and posted it in the Village pump [1]
- created a list of everybody eligible to vote from Ukrainian Wikipedia
and sent them a message with invitation to vote and with the links to read more about the candidates via talk pages
- and just talked :)
[1]
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%...
Best regards, antanana ED of Wikimedia Ukraine
2015-06-01 1:00 GMT+03:00 Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com:
2015-05-31 22:57 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
... it would be good to talk a bit about the state of our community and movement.
Initially, I was quite positively surprised by the fact that this will be the best WMF Board elections ever in the terms of turnout of voters. It will beat 2007 elections and it will be likely 2.5 times better than previous one.
I would really like to know what's so different than in 2013. Also, if this is the sign of the community health, how come that we are now better than we were at the peak of our movement?
There's a fair chance the difference says far more about the amount of effort spent getting the word out about the election, than about how much the movement cares about it compared to previous elections.
//Johan Jönsson
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On 2015-06-01 11:17, Anders Wennersten wrote:
Just a clarification on numbers In James (internal) table enwps share of total number of eligible votes is 35,4% Participation rate state from enwp was 8,26% against mean for all 9,5%. If enwp is excluded the participation rate for all of the rest stands at 10,2%
Enwp users also include users from non-en countries, and user from en countries will also be found on other wikis like Commons (3,5% of total eligible voters, with a turnout similar to enwp) but this does not change the bottom line, participation rate from enwp has been lower then from the rest of the communities (de, fr, it, ru, es, pl rates being a little above mean of rest, zh and pt a little below and ja much below)
Anders
Hi Anders,
are there significant intersections between the project which can distort statistics? I believe I am eligible on at least 10 projects, and on a couple of them I might be the only eligible voter (making for them 100% participation), but my feeling is that this is rather an exception. Is let us say a high participation rate from it.wp significally affected by users who are also active on en.wp and are eligible there as well?
Cheers Yaroslav
While the total number of eligible voters is reliable (and also made general available), the breakdown of numbers by project is much less reliable, of the reason you bring up. And for the small, and even more the very small projects, the numbers could even be said to be unreliable.
For us in the Election Committee, this breakdown per project, even with non-perfect figures, has been of enormous help. One use is when we verify the result - in order to understand inconsistencies in figures (and here we talk of a factor 2-3 in differences not in decimal points). Also to understand the general picture - The election to Board attracted voters evenly from all project all over the world, while the election of members to FDC got a much lower participation rate from most medium and small project compared with participation rate from some of the biggest (note also the difference in total votes 5200+ vs 1100).
As a number-crunching nerd myself I would love all my fellows with this interest to also be able to study the detailed numbers. But in order to keep secrecy of who voted, the figures for small project can not be made general available. And to work with the figures from the bigger and medium projects, probably a more qualified analysis of the quality of the numbers used would be needed, just along the reasoning you bring up.
I do hope, though, that some of these numbers will be made available in the election post-mortem work
Anders
Yaroslav M. Blanter skrev den 2015-06-03 11:49:
On 2015-06-01 11:17, Anders Wennersten wrote:
Just a clarification on numbers In James (internal) table enwps share of total number of eligible votes is 35,4% Participation rate state from enwp was 8,26% against mean for all 9,5%. If enwp is excluded the participation rate for all of the rest stands at 10,2%
Enwp users also include users from non-en countries, and user from en countries will also be found on other wikis like Commons (3,5% of total eligible voters, with a turnout similar to enwp) but this does not change the bottom line, participation rate from enwp has been lower then from the rest of the communities (de, fr, it, ru, es, pl rates being a little above mean of rest, zh and pt a little below and ja much below)
Anders
Hi Anders,
are there significant intersections between the project which can distort statistics? I believe I am eligible on at least 10 projects, and on a couple of them I might be the only eligible voter (making for them 100% participation), but my feeling is that this is rather an exception. Is let us say a high participation rate from it.wp significally affected by users who are also active on en.wp and are eligible there as well?
Cheers Yaroslav
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On 3 June 2015 at 12:32, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote:
As a number-crunching nerd myself I would love all my fellows with this interest to also be able to study the detailed numbers. But in order to keep secrecy of who voted, the figures for small project can not be made general available. And to work with the figures from the bigger and medium projects, probably a more qualified analysis of the quality of the numbers used would be needed, just along the reasoning you bring up.
I might be misremembering, but I thought that whether or not user X had voted was public information? It certainly was in 2013; digging through old emails turns up a link to https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/290 which seems to be the voter list from that election.
Andrew.
That's correct. The list of voters remains public, just not how individuals voted. In this way we can work out who is openly male/female, if they have a declared country of residence, if they are associated with chapters or other groups etc.
Fae
On 3 June 2015 at 12:42, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
On 3 June 2015 at 12:32, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote:
As a number-crunching nerd myself I would love all my fellows with this interest to also be able to study the detailed numbers. But in order to keep secrecy of who voted, the figures for small project can not be made general available. And to work with the figures from the bigger and medium projects, probably a more qualified analysis of the quality of the numbers used would be needed, just along the reasoning you bring up.
I might be misremembering, but I thought that whether or not user X had voted was public information? It certainly was in 2013; digging through old emails turns up a link to https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/290 which seems to be the voter list from that election.
Andrew.
Andrew Gray skrev den 2015-06-03 13:42:
I might be misremembering, but I thought that whether or not user X had voted was public information? It certainly was in 2013; digging through old emails turns up a link to https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/290 which seems to be the voter list from that election. Andrew.
This is new information for me. We have had a similar but extended list like this to have as base for vote checking. But I am not aware it will be generally available.
At the start this year we discussed what type of voting method to use, like all open as done for stewardelection or with secure Poll with S/N/O. We had an overwhelming majority for non-total open one. But we never discussed general availability of this list.
Anders
On 3 June 2015 at 13:26, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote: ...
This is new information for me. We have had a similar but extended list like this to have as base for vote checking. But I am not aware it will be generally available.
At the start this year we discussed what type of voting method to use, like all open as done for stewardelection or with secure Poll with S/N/O. We had an overwhelming majority for non-total open one. But we never discussed general availability of this list.
Anders
Unless the wider community of Wikimedians has established a consensus to a process change, the list should be published as it has in past years. This has been my full expectation, I even ran some male/female analysis of past lists for research.
Fae
Folks,
At the link, you can find List votes: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections 2015 https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/512
Yours, Peaceray -- peaceray@cascadia.wiki
On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 5:37 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 3 June 2015 at 13:26, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote: ...
This is new information for me. We have had a similar but extended list
like
this to have as base for vote checking. But I am not aware it will be generally available.
At the start this year we discussed what type of voting method to use,
like
all open as done for stewardelection or with secure Poll with S/N/O. We
had
an overwhelming majority for non-total open one. But we never discussed general availability of this list.
Anders
Unless the wider community of Wikimedians has established a consensus to a process change, the list should be published as it has in past years. This has been my full expectation, I even ran some male/female analysis of past lists for research.
Fae
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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On 2015-06-03 17:42, Raymond Leonard wrote:
Folks,
At the link, you can find List votes: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections 2015 https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/512
Yours, Peaceray --
Thank you. I am indeed listed as voting from Meta, where I barely qualify, and not from for example en.wp or ru.wv where I have tons of edits.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 12:04 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On 2015-06-03 17:42, Raymond Leonard wrote:
Folks,
At the link, you can find List votes: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections 2015 https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/512
Yours, Peaceray --
Thank you. I am indeed listed as voting from Meta, where I barely qualify, and not from for example en.wp or ru.wv where I have tons of edits.
Cheers Yaroslav
What does it indicate if a vote record is displayed in gray instead of black?
Quick clarification. The discussion on open votes the committee had earlier was primarily about if the actual votes - as in who people voted for - should be public (as it is with Steward elections). The list of who voted has been and will remain public. Information on who someone voted for is - by design - not even available to the Elections Committee - and so obliviously not publicly available. The committee concluded that making that information public would deter a lot of people from voting.
-greg
_______________ Sent from my iPhone - a more detailed response may be sent later.
On Jun 3, 2015, at 12:20 PM, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote:
Nathan skrev den 2015-06-03 18:16:
What does it indicate if a vote record is displayed in gray instead of black?
A vote that was recast later Anders
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On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 9:04 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On 2015-06-03 17:42, Raymond Leonard wrote:
Folks,
At the link, you can find List votes: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections 2015 https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/512
Yours, Peaceray --
Thank you. I am indeed listed as voting from Meta, where I barely qualify, and not from for example en.wp or ru.wv where I have tons of edits.
Cheers Yaroslav
Small point -- because this is the first election we've done using SUL (hooray!!) the wiki listed is whatever someone's "home" wiki is according to SUL (I think) and not, as in past years, the wiki where you actually clicked the vote link from.
The point that many editors are active on many wikis, and thus potentially eligible on many wikis, is certainly true. I would guess that (again because of SUL) each wiki's voter list represents those eligible voters who have that wiki as their home wiki, so there's not duplication. But the election committee can verify that.
best, Phoebe
p.s. before I forget: a big thank-you to the elections committee for making this election smooth and inclusive, and to everyone who did get-out-the-vote efforts. It's really heartening to see a rise in participation, and like others I was really impressed by the candidate slate, too!
On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 11:27 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Small point -- because this is the first election we've done using SUL (hooray!!) the wiki listed is whatever someone's "home" wiki is according to SUL (I think) and not, as in past years, the wiki where you actually clicked the vote link from.
Aye, this is right, the wiki listed on SecurePoll is what CentralAuth says is your 'home' wiki. Actually, in most cases, this has been the case for a while. If you look at a voter list for the English Wikipedia Arbcom Elections https://vote.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?limit=500&title=Special%3ASecurePoll%2Flist%2F392 for example you'll see that there are random examples of people with "Domain" of another wiki because that's their home wiki even though the only place you could vote from was enWiki. Of course in the past not everyone was global and in those cases it was the Domain the account was coming from.
The point that many editors are active on many wikis, and thus potentially eligible on many wikis, is certainly true. I would guess that (again because of SUL) each wiki's voter list represents those eligible voters who have that wiki as their home wiki, so there's not duplication. But the election committee can verify that.
best, Phoebe
Thanks Phoebe, it's actually important to note that in this election (and likely future global elections, perhaps even most future elections in general, the voter list was actually global (on the centralAuth database rather then local wiki databases). Therefore there was no such thing as being 'eligible on multiple wikis' or duplication (other then someone having multiple accounts) like there has been in the past. In the results we'll have X people eligible on wiki Y is X people who have Y wiki labeled as their home wiki and those X people will not be counted in any other wiki. In the past this was a big problem, trying to find out exactly how many unique users were eligible to vote in the 2013 or 2011 elections for example has been incredibly difficult since some of them (<cough> stewards </cough> ) could be eligible on not only a couple wikis but sometimes 100s of wikis and would be listed independently on each one.
James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
On 2015-06-04 20:48, James Alexander wrote:
On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 11:27 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Small point -- because this is the first election we've done using SUL (hooray!!) the wiki listed is whatever someone's "home" wiki is according to SUL (I think) and not, as in past years, the wiki where you actually clicked the vote link from.
Aye, this is right, the wiki listed on SecurePoll is what CentralAuth says is your 'home' wiki. Actually, in most cases, this has been the case for a while. If you look at a voter list for the English Wikipedia Arbcom Elections https://vote.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?limit=500&title=Special%3ASecurePoll%2Flist%2F392 for example you'll see that there are random examples of people with "Domain" of another wiki because that's their home wiki even though the only place you could vote from was enWiki. Of course in the past not everyone was global and in those cases it was the Domain the account was coming from.
The point that many editors are active on many wikis, and thus potentially eligible on many wikis, is certainly true. I would guess that (again because of SUL) each wiki's voter list represents those eligible voters who have that wiki as their home wiki, so there's not duplication. But the election committee can verify that.
best, Phoebe
Thanks, now I got it. My current account was indeed registered on Meta, though currently I am barely active there.
Cheers Yaroslav
At the link, you can find List votes: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections 2015 https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/512
I personally don't mind it being made public that I voted in this election, but this really is something that voters should be clearly informed about when they place their votes!
Thanks, Mike
<small> in my humble opinion, what's the big deal?
we usually vote openly in the projects and everything bad/great about this or that user is revealed really openly (sometimes too openly, but well... nothing to be done here) it is our own decision whether to vote and how to vote, isn't it? </small>
best, antanana ED of Wikimedia Ukraine
2015-06-04 1:14 GMT+03:00 Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net:
At the link, you can find List votes: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections 2015 https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/512
I personally don't mind it being made public that I voted in this election, but this really is something that voters should be clearly informed about when they place their votes!
Thanks, Mike _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
There's been a publicly viewable list of voters for every SecurePoll based election or vote since the time of its creation. Until 2013, BoT voter lists were usually available for several months after the election, until the external host cleared them off (usually just before the next election). The voter lists for English Wikipedia's arbitration committee elections going back to 2009 are still available. The 2013 WMF elections (BoT, FDC, FDC ombud on a single ballot) continue to be publicly viewable on votewiki. There may have been other project-specific uses of which I'm not aware.
Risker/Anne
On 3 June 2015 at 18:14, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
At the link, you can find List votes: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections 2015 https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/512
I personally don't mind it being made public that I voted in this election, but this really is something that voters should be clearly informed about when they place their votes!
Thanks, Mike _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
That's great! I'm not complaining about the list of voters being made public (I actually support this!). I'm just pointing out that this wasn't made clear when votes were being cast. Something to improve next time around?
Thanks, Mike
On 3 Jun 2015, at 23:31, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
There's been a publicly viewable list of voters for every SecurePoll based election or vote since the time of its creation. Until 2013, BoT voter lists were usually available for several months after the election, until the external host cleared them off (usually just before the next election). The voter lists for English Wikipedia's arbitration committee elections going back to 2009 are still available. The 2013 WMF elections (BoT, FDC, FDC ombud on a single ballot) continue to be publicly viewable on votewiki. There may have been other project-specific uses of which I'm not aware.
Risker/Anne
On 3 June 2015 at 18:14, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
At the link, you can find List votes: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections 2015 https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/512
I personally don't mind it being made public that I voted in this election, but this really is something that voters should be clearly informed about when they place their votes!
Thanks, Mike _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Yes, I think that a disclosure up front would be appropriate, perhaps when someone first access the SecurePoll interface.
By the way, my understanding is that the practice of generating a public list of voters who cast ballots, while keeping the nature of their votes private, is relatively common in election processes in general. In the United States, political parties use this information for their "get out the vote" campaigns so that they know which of their likely supporters have yet to vote.
Pine
On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 3:36 PM, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
That's great! I'm not complaining about the list of voters being made public (I actually support this!). I'm just pointing out that this wasn't made clear when votes were being cast. Something to improve next time around?
Thanks, Mike
On 3 Jun 2015, at 23:31, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
There's been a publicly viewable list of voters for every SecurePoll
based
election or vote since the time of its creation. Until 2013, BoT voter lists were usually available for several months after the election, until the external host cleared them off (usually just before the next election). The voter lists for English Wikipedia's arbitration committee elections going back to 2009 are still available. The 2013 WMF elections (BoT, FDC, FDC ombud on a single ballot) continue to be publicly viewable on votewiki. There may have been other project-specific uses of which
I'm
not aware.
Risker/Anne
On 3 June 2015 at 18:14, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
At the link, you can find List votes: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections 2015 https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/512
I personally don't mind it being made public that I voted in this election, but this really is something that voters should be clearly informed about when they place their votes!
Thanks, Mike _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org <
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By the way, my understanding is that the practice of generating a public list of voters who cast ballots, while keeping the nature of their votes private, is relatively common in election processes in general. In the United States, political parties use this information for their "get out the vote" campaigns so that they know which of their likely supporters have yet to vote.
In UK political elections I think that would be illegal...{{citation needed}}
Thanks, Mike
On 3 June 2015 at 18:42, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
By the way, my understanding is that the practice of generating a public list of voters who cast ballots, while keeping the nature of their votes private, is relatively common in election processes in general. In the United States, political parties use this information for their "get out the vote" campaigns so that they know which of their likely supporters
have
yet to vote.
In UK political elections I think that would be illegal...{{citation needed}}
They certainly exist in Canada, and I'm quite certain they exist in the UK
as well, because that's how the official poll watchers (or scrutineers, as we call them in Canada) know who to "get out" when getting out the vote. They don't get published online, but there is a right to examine the list of individuals who can vote at the office of the local senior election official for a few weeks afterward, and then at the national election office once any challenges have been completed. Of course in places where voting is mandatory, the failure to vote is going to be public.
Risker/Anne
On 3 Jun 2015, at 23:48, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 3 June 2015 at 18:42, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
By the way, my understanding is that the practice of generating a public list of voters who cast ballots, while keeping the nature of their votes private, is relatively common in election processes in general. In the United States, political parties use this information for their "get out the vote" campaigns so that they know which of their likely supporters
have
yet to vote.
In UK political elections I think that would be illegal...{{citation needed}}
They certainly exist in Canada, and I'm quite certain they exist in the UK
as well, because that's how the official poll watchers (or scrutineers, as we call them in Canada) know who to "get out" when getting out the vote. They don't get published online, but there is a right to examine the list of individuals who can vote at the office of the local senior election official for a few weeks afterward, and then at the national election office once any challenges have been completed. Of course in places where voting is mandatory, the failure to vote is going to be public.
Wow. I'm very far from being an expert on the UK voting system, but my understanding is that although the list of who can vote may be made public (where voters have agreed to this), who has not yet voted (or, after the fact, who has not voted) would never be made public. In the UK, election scrutineers would only be involved in reviewing votes that had been cast, not who had not voted.
Thanks, Mike
On 3 June 2015 at 19:11, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
On 3 Jun 2015, at 23:48, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 3 June 2015 at 18:42, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
By the way, my understanding is that the practice of generating a
public
list of voters who cast ballots, while keeping the nature of their
votes
private, is relatively common in election processes in general. In the United States, political parties use this information for their "get
out
the vote" campaigns so that they know which of their likely supporters
have
yet to vote.
In UK political elections I think that would be illegal...{{citation needed}}
They certainly exist in Canada, and I'm quite certain they exist in the
UK
as well, because that's how the official poll watchers (or scrutineers,
as
we call them in Canada) know who to "get out" when getting out the vote. They don't get published online, but there is a right to examine the list of individuals who can vote at the office of the local senior election official for a few weeks afterward, and then at the national election office once any challenges have been completed. Of course in places where voting is mandatory, the failure to vote is going to be
public.
Wow. I'm very far from being an expert on the UK voting system, but my understanding is that although the list of who can vote may be made public (where voters have agreed to this), who has not yet voted (or, after the fact, who has not voted) would never be made public. In the UK, election scrutineers would only be involved in reviewing votes that had been cast, not who had not voted.
It occurred to me that there's this really great online reference source called Wikipedia that's generally pretty accurate when it comes to things like this, so I looked up "Electoral roll". In the UK, "[a]fter an election a 'Marked Register' can be inspected, which is a copy of the register used for the election with a mark by each elector that has voted."[1]
As I said...while it's generally accurate, sometimes it's incomplete. I note the absence of any information about Canada there, although it is fairly close to the UK system as discussed in the article.
Risker/Anne
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_roll#United_Kingdom
On 4 Jun 2015, at 00:41, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 3 June 2015 at 19:11, Michael Peel <email@mikepeel.net mailto:email@mikepeel.net> wrote:
On 3 Jun 2015, at 23:48, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 3 June 2015 at 18:42, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
By the way, my understanding is that the practice of generating a
public
list of voters who cast ballots, while keeping the nature of their
votes
private, is relatively common in election processes in general. In the United States, political parties use this information for their "get
out
the vote" campaigns so that they know which of their likely supporters
have
yet to vote.
In UK political elections I think that would be illegal...{{citation needed}}
They certainly exist in Canada, and I'm quite certain they exist in the
UK
as well, because that's how the official poll watchers (or scrutineers,
as
we call them in Canada) know who to "get out" when getting out the vote. They don't get published online, but there is a right to examine the list of individuals who can vote at the office of the local senior election official for a few weeks afterward, and then at the national election office once any challenges have been completed. Of course in places where voting is mandatory, the failure to vote is going to be
public.
Wow. I'm very far from being an expert on the UK voting system, but my understanding is that although the list of who can vote may be made public (where voters have agreed to this), who has not yet voted (or, after the fact, who has not voted) would never be made public. In the UK, election scrutineers would only be involved in reviewing votes that had been cast, not who had not voted.
It occurred to me that there's this really great online reference source called Wikipedia that's generally pretty accurate when it comes to things like this, so I looked up "Electoral roll". In the UK, "[a]fter an election a 'Marked Register' can be inspected, which is a copy of the register used for the election with a mark by each elector that has voted."[1]
As I said...while it's generally accurate, sometimes it's incomplete. I note the absence of any information about Canada there, although it is fairly close to the UK system as discussed in the article.
Risker/Anne
Interesting! It doesn't seem to be referenced in the enwp article (I've just tagged it as needing a citation), but I'll look into in on the morrow!
(All I wanted to do when I sent my first email was to point out that it wasn't clearly indicated that the record of who voted in this election would be made public, even though I have no issue with it being public, but let's argue about this anyway!)
Thanks, Mike (Apologies for the sarcasm. It's been a long day.)
Milos, thanks for initiating the conversation. Some random thoughts:
1. The efforts to get people to vote are admirable, and it's heartening to see the participation trend reversed.
2. There is the elephant in the room which is the recent DE Mediaviewer/super protect issue. It is possible it has energized voters to get to the ballot box in 2015. It's hard to tell, but the number of comments and candidate questions on Meta around super protect was interesting to see.
3. Participation in the mailing list may be a misleading indicator of activity or interest, as other regional or specialized forums (eg. Facebook, GLAM-oriented lists, etc) have emerged in recent years.
-Andrew
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 3:48 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
So, there are two good news and one bad.
The most important good one is that efforts made by James, Philippe and EC have given [global] results. It's always good to hear that we depend less on weather conditions and more on our own work. So, thank you for your good work! :)
I agree with you in relation to the standing committee. Most importantly, we need it exactly because of the continuity of the work. Besides obvious benefits, standing committee would be able to create the foundations for elections all over the movement, not just for Board and FDC and it could become the guardian of the democracy inside of our movement. With standing Election committee, it would be much easier to organize any kind of referenda, as well.
The second good news, the Ukrainian one, is on the line of the first one and it shows that it's possible to engage particular community. Nat, it would be good if you could prepare the analysis of what you did on Ukrainian Wikipedia and present it not just inside of an online document, but during the conferences in 2015 and 2016. Obviously, you've shown one of pretty valid methods to increase participation in elections. That's good not just because of the magic number of 25%, but because Ukrainian Wikimedians have much better potential to be involved into the global matters in the future.
Very bad news is participation of English Wikipedians; and thus, to be more precise, American Wikimedians. More than 50% (I think, the number is more than 60%) of our editors are Americans (and, I think, 80% of money comes from US). While it's better to have more balanced ratio, those are the facts and whenever we are talking about "us" and "our movement", we have to have in mind that more than half of "us" are Americans. Low participation there means low participation in the numbers which matter the most.
We are still inside of the field of small numbers. Engaging one or few particular communities could give us impression that we are going very well, while we are in troubles. Thus, we should find a way to increase participation of our largest community. At this moment we have a number of chapters and user groups in US and Ukrainian experience could help them, too. Besides on-wiki engagement, it would be good, for example, to have few community meetings organized by chapters or user groups before every election.
Anders, this list is quite relevant. It's the main forum of our movement and it represents the movement well (up to this moment, thought it's not always the case, this thread has involved five non-native English speakers and just two native ones; that's much better than editor ratio). And although my method of checking community health is quite arbitrary, it could give a clue of what's going on here. If we are more engaged it will affect this list.
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 5:43 AM, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote:
I believe the Ukrain case well illustrates a key characteristic of this election - the high participation rate from the middle and small sized communities. It looks like we have we had voters from 184 wikis participating, an amazing number!
As greg already pointed this is probably related to the Board clear statement for the election, the high number and diversity of candidates
and
active encouragement from local communites and local affiliates.
And for the original question from Milos. Yes I agree we should try to collect more data on the health of our communities. And participation
rate
in election can be one of these indicators. And then it tells us, we have vibrant communities among the middle and small sized projects, but people from these extremely rarely participate in lists like this. This list I
find
mainly engage people from our biggest communities, especially English,
and
in this election actually the participation rate from enwp was lower
then
the mean participation rate....
Anders
attolippip skrev den 2015-06-01 00:14:
There were only 9 votes from Ukrainian community in 2013, I believe
So this year we just made sure that our community REALLY knows about the elections, thus we:
- translated the candidates statements into Ukrainian
- prepared a short table with the essence of these statements in
Ukrainian
and posted it in the Village pump [1]
- created a list of everybody eligible to vote from Ukrainian Wikipedia
and sent them a message with invitation to vote and with the links to read more about the candidates via talk pages
- and just talked :)
[1]
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%...
Best regards, antanana ED of Wikimedia Ukraine
2015-06-01 1:00 GMT+03:00 Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com:
2015-05-31 22:57 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
... it would be good to talk a bit about the state of our community and movement.
Initially, I was quite positively surprised by the fact that this will be the best WMF Board elections ever in the terms of turnout of voters. It will beat 2007 elections and it will be likely 2.5 times better than previous one.
I would really like to know what's so different than in 2013. Also, if this is the sign of the community health, how come that we are now better than we were at the peak of our movement?
There's a fair chance the difference says far more about the amount of effort spent getting the word out about the election, than about how
much
the movement cares about it compared to previous elections.
//Johan Jönsson
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On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
- Participation in the mailing list may be a misleading indicator of
activity or interest, as other regional or specialized forums (eg. Facebook, GLAM-oriented lists, etc) have emerged in recent years.
Let me second this. My department is thinking about community health metrics (constructive suggestions welcome!), but I would not personally propose mailing list participation (especially this list) as a good metric - decreased participation here may reflect many, many things, only some of which are actually negative.
Luis
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 7:51 PM, Luis Villa lvilla@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
- Participation in the mailing list may be a misleading indicator of
activity or interest, as other regional or specialized forums (eg. Facebook, GLAM-oriented lists, etc) have emerged in recent years.
Let me second this. My department is thinking about community health metrics (constructive suggestions welcome!), but I would not personally propose mailing list participation (especially this list) as a good metric
- decreased participation here may reflect many, many things, only some of
which are actually negative.
This is not the only one indicator, but it's pretty consistent since 2011 (take a look into [1]). In other words, something happened in May. Maybe it's actually about the elections because people used other means of communication for that.
Hi Milos,
I think you're overestimating the importance of this list, which is read by only a small portion of the community. Many people in the wider community have no idea this exists.
Best, --Ed
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 1:57 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 7:51 PM, Luis Villa lvilla@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
- Participation in the mailing list may be a misleading indicator of
activity or interest, as other regional or specialized forums (eg. Facebook, GLAM-oriented lists, etc) have emerged in recent years.
Let me second this. My department is thinking about community health metrics (constructive suggestions welcome!), but I would not personally propose mailing list participation (especially this list) as a good
metric
- decreased participation here may reflect many, many things, only some
of
which are actually negative.
This is not the only one indicator, but it's pretty consistent since 2011 (take a look into [1]). In other words, something happened in May. Maybe it's actually about the elections because people used other means of communication for that.
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/
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Ed Erhart wrote:
I think you're overestimating the importance of this list, which is read by only a small portion of the community. Many people in the wider community have no idea this exists.
Sort of. :-) In absolute numbers, of course the total number of list subscribers/readers is a very small part of the total number of people in the Wikimedia community (whatever that encompasses). But we know from years of experience both in the Wikimedia community and elsewhere that even seemingly large communities often have a weirdly small number of unusually highly active people who make up the "core" (sorry, there's no good term for this). If you do an intersection of _that_ group to wikimedia-l's readers, the gap would be markedly narrower, I think.
Or put another way: in terms of general communication paths to Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees members past and present, Wikimedia Foundation staff past and present, and other longtime Wikimedians, this list (né[e] foundation-l) has been the de facto medium for a decade.
This is not to say, for example, that lots of highly active wiki editors are all subscribed here. People who spend a lot of time reverting vandalism may not care to have this feed in their inbox. But the opt-in, open, and public nature of this list is such that people who are (overly!) involved with Wikimedia are quite often subscribed.
MZMcBride
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 10:57 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 7:51 PM, Luis Villa lvilla@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
- Participation in the mailing list may be a misleading indicator of
activity or interest, as other regional or specialized forums (eg. Facebook, GLAM-oriented lists, etc) have emerged in recent years.
Let me second this. My department is thinking about community health metrics (constructive suggestions welcome!), but I would not personally propose mailing list participation (especially this list) as a good
metric
- decreased participation here may reflect many, many things, only some
of
which are actually negative.
This is not the only one indicator, but it's pretty consistent since 2011 (take a look into [1]). In other words, something happened in May. Maybe it's actually about the elections because people used other means of communication for that.
Looking briefly at some of the highest-traffic months, it could simply be that people got tired of discussing high-controversy topics here. (Flamewars are good for traffic volume; not so great for community health.) I'm sure Facebook's increased acceptance also has a role. I suspect also that some announcements that used to come here now go to other, more specialized mailing lists.
That last one points to a key thing: as MZ says, many people are subscribed to this list, but many don't read and don't participate, because this mailing list has an *awful* reputation, and people who want to get things done are going elsewhere. So "the decline of wikimedia-l" may be a sign of bad health of the overall community, or it may simply mean that the healthy and constructive parts of the community has moved elsewhere.
To re-iterate what I said in the last email, I'm all ears for suggestions on creative community metrics. I'll add here that I'm also very open to suggestions on what a new wikimedia-l might look like. (I know some FOSS communities are having good experiences with discourse.org, for example.) No commitment that WMF can act on either immediately, of course, but I think it is worth starting both of those discussions.
Luis
Luis, I have to say that you are the first person on WMF side who has substantially engaged into this issue and I am very glad to see that :)
The products of your work are of the highest importance, as the community is the most important part of our movement, not to say that it's the movement itself.
I am finally relieved to know that we are on the path to rationally understand what's going on inside of the community after short 14.5 years.
It would be good if you'd share your results with the rest of us.
As for this list: As MZ said, this list is important. However, there is no doubt that it's far from being the only or even the most important indicator of community health. It is just about one of the rare publicly accessible data which could give a clue of what's going on inside of the community, but could mislead, as well. On Jun 2, 2015 04:39, "Luis Villa" lvilla@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 10:57 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 7:51 PM, Luis Villa lvilla@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com
wrote:
- Participation in the mailing list may be a misleading indicator of
activity or interest, as other regional or specialized forums (eg. Facebook, GLAM-oriented lists, etc) have emerged in recent years.
Let me second this. My department is thinking about community health metrics (constructive suggestions welcome!), but I would not personally propose mailing list participation (especially this list) as a good
metric
- decreased participation here may reflect many, many things, only some
of
which are actually negative.
This is not the only one indicator, but it's pretty consistent since 2011 (take a look into [1]). In other words, something happened in May. Maybe it's actually about the elections because people used other means of communication for that.
Looking briefly at some of the highest-traffic months, it could simply be that people got tired of discussing high-controversy topics here. (Flamewars are good for traffic volume; not so great for community health.) I'm sure Facebook's increased acceptance also has a role. I suspect also that some announcements that used to come here now go to other, more specialized mailing lists.
That last one points to a key thing: as MZ says, many people are subscribed to this list, but many don't read and don't participate, because this mailing list has an *awful* reputation, and people who want to get things done are going elsewhere. So "the decline of wikimedia-l" may be a sign of bad health of the overall community, or it may simply mean that the healthy and constructive parts of the community has moved elsewhere.
To re-iterate what I said in the last email, I'm all ears for suggestions on creative community metrics. I'll add here that I'm also very open to suggestions on what a new wikimedia-l might look like. (I know some FOSS communities are having good experiences with discourse.org, for example.) No commitment that WMF can act on either immediately, of course, but I think it is worth starting both of those discussions.
Luis
-- Luis Villa Sr. Director of Community Engagement Wikimedia Foundation *Working towards a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 4:38 AM, Luis Villa lvilla@wikimedia.org wrote:
(I know some FOSS communities are having good experiences with discourse.org, for example.)
Please, please, can we do that too? :-) FWIW, I studied Discourse a bit and I think it has enormous potential. It is developed with the explicit goal of fostering rational discussion and discouraging trolling and harassment and all the awful things that make the Internet the awful place it often is. As we are the awesome, shiny part of the Internet, we should know better. It's worth a try.
Aubrey
A couple comments inline from a technical election process (not commenting on much of the rest not because I'm not interested but just for simplicity right now given other work :) ).
James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 1:57 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
... it would be good to talk a bit about the state of our community and movement.
Initially, I was quite positively surprised by the fact that this will be the best WMF Board elections ever in the terms of turnout of voters. It will beat 2007 elections and it will be likely 2.5 times better than previous one.
I would really like to know what's so different than in 2013. Also, if this is the sign of the community health, how come that we are now better than we were at the peak of our movement?
While I think there are probably lots of things that contributed to the increase (and completely separating them can be difficult) I do think there are a couple specific things that helped a lot. This was a goal Philippe and I had for the election process very very early on (it was even one of our annual goals) and so we've been focusing on trying to set up pieces of it for much of the year many of which seem to have worked well. There is still an enormous amount of things we could do better both from things that were out of our control (timing for the start of the process and technical issues) and things that we've learnt more about (some of the translation work for example) but I think much of it has had some dramatic improvement.
1. There has been an amazing group of volunteers, led by Greg Varnum as coordinator, on the election committee this year. It was both bigger then it has been in the past (many more people willing to server) and more active. This has allowed us to move much faster and have better conversations given the short time schedule at times. 2. One of the big issues that was seen both in the last election and, to be honest, in previous ones was the difficulty (even for experienced voters) in just 'getting' to the voting process. - In the past you had to vote from your local wiki, so you had to follow a link to the meta pages, learn about the candidates, and then go BACK to your home wiki and go directly (by typing in the page) to the specific SecurePoll voting page to start the process. Of course sometimes that meant you were typing in a vote page that wasn't even in the language or script you were used too and confused a lot of people. It also caused problems because basically every step you make someone go through causes drop off (sometimes significant). - This year we pushed very hard for some improvements to SecurePoll. Some were less visible such as an interface for creating the election (so it wasn't as error prone being created by a manual xml file in the past) and logs when messages were changed so that we knew if someone, for example, changed what 'name' was shown for a vote option (not that it's happened in the past, but in theory it could have and we had no log). However 1 in particular was, I think, huge: With the coming of SUL unification Tim Starling helped us to set it up so that we had a global list of voters and everyone could vote directly from Meta. This means we could give every single person a link, the same link, that went directly to the voting system (where the committee also put brief summaries and pictures of each candidates along with links to their statements and questions). That means that, unlikely 2 years ago or previous elections, the banners and emails and voting boxes all linked DIRECTLY to the vote system rather then meta and requiring them to bounce around after that. 3. We also spent a lot of effort this year trying to ensure that all of the summaries and voter information was translated into at least 17-18 languages. There is still a lot that could be done better on this front (especially if we can give the committee more time then was given this year) but I still think it was much better overall in most cases then it has been in the past.
...
And two more precise requests:
- May Election committee give unified data for all previous
elections? If possible, structured by countries and projects. Output of all democratic elections assume presenting data according to area. It's legitimate to know that voters from country X voted for candidate Y. It gives a clue of what's going on inside of the movement
I know both the committee and I definitely want to put out as much data as possible about the results. Some of it I'm already putting together (such as votes by project, eligible users by project, percentage voting etc) as well as graphs and data comparing this year to 2013. Votes by country could be tougher... in theory it could be done later on (not right away) for THIS year but we would have to geolocate every IP that voted and I'm not 100% sure I'm comfortable with that :-/ I would have to talk to the committee and legal before we did that.
For better or worse we have less options available for past elections. I have vote data (votes by project and by date) for 2013 as well as eligibility data for most elections going back. I will definitely try to get those together to compare against. Unfortunately country data would be completely impossible for 2013 or before (we don't have IP data, it gets deleted after 90 days like checkuser data) and we don't have any regular vote data before 2013 (the elections were done on 1 time use wikis run by a private entity, so we don't have the databases around at all). We do have final vote numbers though and so could make some comparisons.
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