Thank you, Greg. Kudos to the committee on a well-run election process, particularly in encouraging participation. And warm congratulations to Dariusz, Denny, and James! I know you will be excellent in this role.

SJ

On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 7:17 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

That's quite a surprise! I am really happy to see the substantial changes! Congratulations! On Jun 6, 2015 01:14, "Gregory Varnum" gregory.varnum@gmail.com wrote:

...

Greetings,

The certified results of the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election are now available on Meta-Wiki:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Results

...

Congratulations to Dariusz Jemielniak (User:pundit), James Heilman (User:Doc James), and Denny Vrandečić (User:Denny), for receiving the

most

...

community support. They will join the Wikimedia Foundation as Trustees, after they are appointed by the Board at their July meeting at Wikimania.

These results have been certified by the committee, the Wikimedia Foundation's legal department, and the Board of Trustees.

There were 5512 votes cast, with 5167 of those being valid. The 345-vote difference comes from recast ballots, where eligible voters recast

ballots

...

to change their votes, and struck votes, of which there were 4.

Additional information is available on the Wikimedia Blog: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/06/05/board-election-results

More statistics on the elections, a post mortem from the committee, and a blog post on the process behind the elections will be published in the coming days. In the meantime, we would appreciate your input—what went

well

...

for you in this election? What could we do better next time? These reports are crucial to helping future elections be even more successful, and we hope that you will offer your feedback and ideas:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Post_mor...

...

The committee thanks everyone that participated in this year’s election

for

...

helping make it one of the most diverse and representative in the movement’s history.

Sincerely, – 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee Adrian, Anders Wennersten, Daniel, Gregory Varnum, Katie Chan,

Mardetanha,

...

Ruslan, Savh, and Trijnstel _______________________________________________ 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

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David Cuenca Tudela skrev den 2015-06-06 09:01:

However I must say that the results of this election are hilarious. The person with the most support votes doesn't win because of oppose votes :D

Why hilarious? We had a full consensus in the election Committee to go for S/N/O voting, it is a kind of standard procedure in the Wikimedia world.

For the algorithm (S/(S+O)) it has been used several times, but for me it was new and I initiated a deeper look into it.

I looked into the alternative (S-O) which in this case would have made a difference between Raystorm and Denny. But I also found that the algorithm (S-O)/(S+O) actually gives the same result as the one we used. So in the end I believe the algortihm used makes very good sense.

As with everything it could of course be debated, and any comment on this would be welcome in

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Post_mor...

Anders

I have a lot of personal opinions on the method, questions process, etc. Many of them will be shared in the committee's post mortem (others I will be discarding as I now process the last several weeks).

Also, we are beginning to post some statistics that folks may find helpful: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Stats

We will be posting more on the blog next week about what all goes into running the elections, and I am open to feedback on what additional information we can share that would be helpful to the community. Our group made an early commitment to transparency, and I hope that has come across in our posting of major meeting minutes, posting of these stats, open dialogue on Meta and email, a post mortem from the committee, and the upcoming blog post.

Finally, I want to give a big thank you to my colleagues on the Elections Committee. I was, by the nature of my tasks, a bit more visible - but please know that everyone worked very hard, did a great job, and deserves equal gratitude. Thank you Adrian, Anders, Daniel, Katie, Mardetanha, Ruslan, Savh, and Trijnstel - as well as Risker, James, Alice, Philippe, Geoff, Stephen, Sylvia, Heather, Tim, and a few others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

-greg (User:Varnent)

On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 6:19 AM, Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:

Congratulations to the new Board members - I am sure you will do a great job. And commiserations to those who will be leaving the Board - thank you for all your hard work over many years.

Also it is good to see a much higher turnout in this year's elections than in 2013 - well done to those involved :)

On the subject of voting systems, though...

On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 9:08 AM, Anders Wennersten < mail@anderswennersten.se> wrote:

...

David Cuenca Tudela skrev den 2015-06-06 09:01:

...

However I must say that the results of this election are hilarious. The person with the most support votes doesn't win because of oppose votes

:D

...

...

Why hilarious? We had a full consensus in the election Committee to go

for S/N/O voting, it is a kind of standard procedure in the Wikimedia

world.

...

Many people looked at voting systems before the Wikimedia movement existed and virtually none of them settled on the system we ended up with. Perhaps this should tell us something!

To my mind the key problems with the present system are:

1. Oppose votes have greater weight than support votes. In this case, Maria

would have needed 136 additional support votes to win, or 46 fewer oppose votes. In effect an Oppose vote was worth 2.96 times as much as a support vote for her. As a result, being non-opposed is much more important than being supported. The penalty for doing anything controversial is significant.

2. There is nothing in the process to produce any diversity in the result.

Say that there was a 2/3 to 1/3 split in the electorate on some important issue. The right answer would surely be that you elect 2 people with one view and 1 with the other. However, in this voting system you would likely end up electing 3 people from the majority point of view. Because the Wikimedia movement is much more complex than this it is difficult to conclude that there was any particular issue like this that would have affected the result, but still, the point applies. The voting system builds in homogeneity not diversity.

Regards,

Chris _______________________________________________ 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

Congratulations Dariusz, Denny and James..

-Hasive Wikimedia Bangladesh

On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 6:56 PM, Ilario Valdelli valdelli@gmail.com wrote:

On 06.06.2015 12:19, Chris Keating wrote:

...

2. There is nothing in the process to produce any diversity in the result.

Say that there was a 2/3 to 1/3 split in the electorate on some important issue. The right answer would surely be that you elect 2 people with one view and 1 with the other. However, in this voting system you would likely end up electing 3 people from the majority point of view. Because the Wikimedia movement is much more complex than this it is difficult to conclude that there was any particular issue like this that would have affected the result, but still, the point applies. The voting system builds in homogeneity not diversity.

Regards,

Chris

My congratulations too.

I know some of the elected board members and they can do a good job.

My approach is always the same: everyone has a good potential, the best is to give him (I would say also her) the opportunity and the time to realize it.

Anyway I agree a lot in the point 2 of Chris but not as a criticism but mainly as measure of the efficacy of the current governance. This morning I had the idea to write the same opinion, Chris gave me the opportunity to agree.

Even if we would push a lot the diversity, the effective realization is at the moment only a project and may be "a long time strategy", but can be effective only if it is associated with a "short time strategy" more realistic because the biggest "stakeholder" of Wikimedia remains at the moment represented by an homogeneity of type of users. This is a real point to evaluate.

When someone starts to write a strategy, the very first point is to identify the stakeholders. In this case this election identifies clearly who are the main ones.

I agree with Chris that this model of voting is an expression of the community but in a democracy also the minorities should have the possibility to be represented and, most important, should have the possibility to bring the precious contribution called "different point of view".

I hope that the same FDC will considerate it while evaluation annual programs, strategies and projects of the applicants. There is a short time strategy and a long time strategy and the objectives may not be the same in order to don't be "out of the context" (there is an elected board member who has been also president of the FDC, I think that he will surely agree).

Regards

-- Ilario Valdelli Wikimedia CH Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera Switzerland - 8008 Zürich Tel: +41764821371 http://www.wikimedia.ch

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