That's quite a surprise! I am really happy to see the substantial changes! Congratulations! On Jun 6, 2015 01:14, "Gregory Varnum" &lt;gregory.varnum(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Results most ballots well https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Post_mo… for Mardetanha, _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

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

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(a)anderswennersten.se&gt; wrote: :D 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(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

On 06.06.2015 12:19, Chris Keating wrote: 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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>