I would like to suggest a few direction of thoughts...
Last year, a couple of concerns erupted before/during/after the elections.
First, some wondered what the role of the board was. I would be pleased that some feedback is given regarding that topic during the election. So that the next board may try to do its best for taking community opinion into consideration.
I have also wondered if it would not be interesting that some of you prepare a sort of short list of questions, which each candidate would have to answer or comment.
Second, the participation rate of languages have been very diversed. English participants represented a huge number of voters. German were second and french third. Other languages had basically not participated but for a very few people. Link : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image%3AElection_participation2.png
Our project is international. It is not very suitable that such a discrepancy exists. I would like that all non english editors on foundation-l take special attention in involving their projects.
Third, last year, some rather heated discussions occured when results were not fully displayed. I would be pleased that this is set before the election, so that editors are not surprised when results are not published. Hence the questions : which results should be published ? Interest and disadvantages of not publishing certain results ? Publication of results per projects ? Only limited to bigger projects ?
Fourth, do you have overall some feedback to give on last year organisation, so that this year organisers can take them into account ?
Thanks.
Anthere
On 4/30/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Second, the participation rate of languages have been very diversed. English participants represented a huge number of voters. German were second and french third. Other languages had basically not participated but for a very few people. Link : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image%3AElection_participation2.png
I don't agree with the conclusion you draw from this graph. The English and German Wikipedias are much larger than those in other languages, so it's only to be expected there will be more votes coming from those. Taking the number of active editors in April 2004 as my measure, I find that French participation is remarkably large, but English and German is not much more than would be expected from a fair division over the languages. In numbers (top 16 Wikipedia languages; numbers are number of editors, number of voters, and the second as a percentage of the first):
French 321 89 28% Finnish 33 5 15% Norse 27 3 11% Italian 69 7 10% German 1613 145 9% English 2746 238 9% Dutch 191 16 8% Chinese 143 11 7% Esperanto 44 3 7% Polish 124 8 6% Swedish 98 6 6% Danish 67 4 6% Japanese 360 18 5% Spanish 123 6 5% Hebrew 69 3 4% Portuguese 67 0 0%
Andre Engels
On 4/30/05, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/30/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Second, the participation rate of languages have been very diversed. English participants represented a huge number of voters. German were second and french third. Other languages had basically not participated but for a very few people. Link : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image%3AElection_participation2.png
I don't agree with the conclusion you draw from this graph. The English and German Wikipedias are much larger than those in other languages, so it's only to be expected there will be more votes coming from those. Taking the number of active editors in April 2004 as my measure, I find that French participation is remarkably large, but English and German is not much more than would be expected from a fair division over the languages. In numbers (top 16 Wikipedia languages; numbers are number of editors, number of voters, and the second as a percentage of the first):
French 321 89 28% Finnish 33 5 15% Norse 27 3 11% Italian 69 7 10% German 1613 145 9% English 2746 238 9% Dutch 191 16 8% Chinese 143 11 7% Esperanto 44 3 7% Polish 124 8 6% Swedish 98 6 6% Danish 67 4 6% Japanese 360 18 5% Spanish 123 6 5% Hebrew 69 3 4% Portuguese 67 0 0%
Very interesting. Thanks for that analysis! Fr: users are also unusually well integrated with IRC. Clearly the conclusion is that eating well makes you productive.
SJ
Sj a écrit:
On 4/30/05, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/30/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Second, the participation rate of languages have been very diversed. English participants represented a huge number of voters. German were second and french third. Other languages had basically not participated but for a very few people. Link : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image%3AElection_participation2.png
I don't agree with the conclusion you draw from this graph. The English and German Wikipedias are much larger than those in other languages, so it's only to be expected there will be more votes coming from those. Taking the number of active editors in April 2004 as my measure, I find that French participation is remarkably large, but English and German is not much more than would be expected from a fair division over the languages. In numbers (top 16 Wikipedia languages; numbers are number of editors, number of voters, and the second as a percentage of the first):
French 321 89 28% Finnish 33 5 15% Norse 27 3 11% Italian 69 7 10% German 1613 145 9% English 2746 238 9% Dutch 191 16 8% Chinese 143 11 7% Esperanto 44 3 7% Polish 124 8 6% Swedish 98 6 6% Danish 67 4 6% Japanese 360 18 5% Spanish 123 6 5% Hebrew 69 3 4% Portuguese 67 0 0%
Very interesting. Thanks for that analysis! Fr: users are also unusually well integrated with IRC. Clearly the conclusion is that eating well makes you productive.
SJ
I suggest that Erik and André's numbers (voters/very active users and voters/user numbers) be added on meta for numbers analysis.
Though this can not be proved by numbers, I think these participation rates recover two realities. First involvement in meta topics. And if we consider number of editors involved on meta, numbers of people in #wikimedia, numbers of people on board related list, I think the high and lower percentage of participation are clearly reflected. Typically spanish editors are not very widespread on meta related issues while french are.
The second relaty is the existence of a candidate or not. When there was no candidate in one language, this language did not participated much. It is my understanding there is a candidate on nl wiki this year, so we can probably expect higher participation rate. I however think participation rates of es or ja will not be high :-(
ant
Thank you for your interesting analysis, Andre
On 5/1/05, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
(top 16 Wikipedia languages; numbers are number of editors, number of voters, and the second as a percentage of the first):
I would like to add another (more recent) index, caliculated by BjarteSorensen from Erik Zachte's stats: square (active editors [5+ edits in a month] * article counts). I call it "WMF activity index",
French 321 89 28% 9425.6 Finnish 33 5 15% 1754.4 Norse 27 3 11% 1590.6 Italian 69 7 10% 3174.9 German 1613 145 9% 25048.5 English 2746 238 9% 61466.5 Dutch 191 16 8% 5118.8 Chinese 143 11 7% 2579.9 Esperanto 44 3 7% 994.5 Polish 124 8 6% 4989.5 Swedish 98 6 6% 3824.4 Danish 67 4 6% 1359.4 Japanese 360 18 5% 8693.8 Spanish 123 6 5% 4133.8 Hebrew 69 3 4% 1691.7 Portuguese 67 0 0% 2791.1
The order of high score projects are a bit differe from rank by article numbers. Remarkable differences are on this index -Fr is over Ja (9425.6pt vs 8693.8) -Es is over Sv (4133.8 vs 3824.4) -Ru with 17K articles and He with 18K over four projects with over 20K articles; more over Ru doesn't appear in the Andre's original list.
Generally we can say active projects are more involved into grobal matters. There are some exception, of course. I expect some of them will volunteers to organize translation to involve more users than in the last year.
Besides those, there are some projects or language communities which seem to be possible to be more involved. Specially I think so for less than 5% vote rate projects; that is, Japanese, Spanish, Hebrew and Portuguese. I would like to add Russian because they are relatively rare in our grobal community. Is any Japanese, Spanish, Hebrew or Prtuguese editors who would like to oversee the translaion?
Now we call for translators and their coordinators on meta. Translation cooridnators will care for -Notice translation -Candidate profile translation (I agree Erik; profile up to 1000 words seems fine) -FAQ from/to their favorite language
If you are interested in supporting vote organisation and promotion, please list yourself on meta, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_notice_translations_2005 and please don't be suprise if the organiser team will contact you personally. when nobody apply this task. ;-)
Cheers,
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org