On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 07:55 -0700, phoebe ayers wrote: The requirement for the candidate have been updated as per for being a voter. It was a small oversight due to the initial query being made about the voter requirement. The committee noticed the issue as soon as we actually made the change for the voter, and have decided to synchronise the candidate requirement as well. KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine

On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 23:24 +0300, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: The "important" in the statement was qualifying "current issue", i.e. Voting for someone to sit on the Board for the following year being an important issue. In my opinion, I would prefer the decision to elect whoever to sit on the Board to have come from active community members, rather than someone who might have been inactive / left for years suddenly coming back purely to vote for/against someone they like/hate. The decision for such a criteria by the committee reflected such viewpoints by its members. KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine

-------------------------------------------------- From: "Michael Snow" <wikipedia(a)verizon.net> I believe that Michael's email clearly describes the thought process that the election committee went through. Indeed, we talked those issues over, in almost exactly those terms. I can also speak for the previous year's election committee (and I think safely infer for the year before that) when I say that suffrage requirements are usually one of the very first (and most tumultuous) conversations that an election committee has. BOLD, UNDERLINE, ITALICIZE, and FLASHING TEXT: We take very seriously the question of who may vote. It is not a decision entered into lightly, and I have an immense amount of respect for the work that my colleagues this year (and last year) and previous election committees put into it. No one has entered the discussion without a great deal of pre-formed thought and the rules as they stand now are the product of a great deal of negotiation and concession on the part of all parties involved. This year's rules don't represent 100% of what ANY single member of the committee wanted. I daresay they don't represent what any member of the COMMUNITY wants 100%. Rather, they are - we believe - an appropriate distillation of the "ideals" of all into a situation that is workable for all. We're always open to feedback, but as of now we think that we have a set of rules that appropriately address the feelings of the committee and the community at large although there will always be situations that are contentious. No set of rules is perfect for everyone; we believe these rules are the best compilation to reflect the feelings of the millions of people in the community at this time. Philippe

On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 6:22 PM, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia(a)alisonwheeler.com> wrote: I had a short moment of 'panic' when the original election notice was posted and I saw that I had only about 35 edits on the English Wikipedia since March 1 (I'm hardly active on the German Wikipedia anyway...) It took me less than half an hour of Recent Changes patrolling (without any of the magic tools such as VandalProof that make the usual patrollers' life easier) to get more than enough edits and I can only recommend it...kind of take you back to the basics ;-) Michael -- Michael Bimmler mbimmler(a)gmail.com

Practically speaking its true that qualifying for the edit requirement is pretty easy... But having to do so means that whatever your current activities are they are insufficient to make you a voting 'member of the community.' Requiring developers or folks whose contributions don't translate well into simple edit requirements to jump through hoops to be considered "one of us" is not good even if the hoops are placed nice and low. Nathan On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod(a)mccme.ru> wrote:

I assume that independent contractors do not count as paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation, correct? -Dan On Apr 30, 2008, at 2:38 PM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:

In the past, Delphine as well as a few others (mainly technical people, names escape me at the moment) were listed as independent contractors. I've seen no indication that has actually changed (i.e. nobody saying X, a past contractor, has been hired as an actual employee). -Dan On Apr 30, 2008, at 10:28 PM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:

That seems awfully shady to me, and may cause issues with its definition as related to, say, the non-disparagement agreements. -Dan On May 1, 2008, at 1:46 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

Anthony wrote: Non-resident aliens performing duties outside of the United States are not subject to United States tax. Ec

Philippe Beaudette wrote: I think the guy who wrote the software which is going to be used for the board elections, might be one. Yours; Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 4:28 AM, Philippe Beaudette <philippebeaudette(a)gmail.com> wrote: No, I am one of them :-), actually, the only one. And I am none of those. Not a server administrator and not a "paid staff who started working at the office before 01 March 2008". I am staff, though, kind of, but I don't work "at the office". Oh well. Oh, does contributing a few images to commons (that took about 10 hours of work alone to draw) actually count as more than the one edit it takes to upload them? Delphine -- ~notafish http://blog.notanendive.org NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Delphine Ménard wrote: | On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com> wrote: |> On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 4:28 AM, Philippe Beaudette |> <philippebeaudette(a)gmail.com> wrote: |> > You know, Dan, that's a good question. I wasn't aware that the Foundation |> > had any independent contractors. If that's a situation that is actual, then |> > I'll check in with the election committee. Are you asking hypothetically, |> > or are there actually some that we need to think about? |> |> No, I am one of them :-), actually, the only one. | | Meaning, I am not the only contractor, but I believe I am the only one | with no shell access that has been around since earlier than March | 01. I think. :-) | | Delphine I would like to mention that Delphine has over 50 edits in the time period on at least one "private" internal wiki, so she does meet the technical requirements regardless. - -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://donate.wikimedia.org Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Phone: 415.839.6885 Fax: 415.882.0495 E-Mail: cary(a)wikimedia.org

Although i hate to fight your authority here, the website [1] states there are three contractors currently: Mark Bergsma, Delphine Ménard and Tim Starling. Is the page outdated, or am I misreading something here maybe? Lodewijk [1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Current_staff 2008/5/1, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com>om>:

On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 11:39 AM, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com> wrote: (unofficial comment) In previous years, the election committee/medium has allowed voting from external wikis. I would be surprised if they didn't this year. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 --- Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.

(unofficial comment too) On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 7:53 AM, Casey Brown <cbrown1023.ml(a)gmail.com> wrote: No external wikis of WMF were allowed to vote. Private wikis which WMF ran are. Private wikis are not necessarily "external". -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD

On 30/04/2008, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com> wrote: Delphine - it's seriously not difficult to get 50 edits. I myself have made over 1000 in one hour just on recent changes patrol. 50 edits is tiny, and considering all the tools available, it really shouldn't be very difficult to get 50 edits. -- Alex (Majorly) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Majorly

On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 6:48 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: For example, I have yet to port the following article to Wikipedia, and by the time I do, it will be a finished product which nets me 1 or 2 edits. I'm not the only one who edits in this manner. http://grey.colorado.edu/emergent/index.php/Comparison_of_Neural_Network_Si…

I'd just like to highlight (so no one is confused) that there actually '' is '' an exception for sysadmins. In the past couple of years that I've been on the committee, I haven't been told of an issue with developers having the required edits (yes, I agree, poor thing to judge upon but just about all we have). If that's an issue and there actually are developers who are disenfranchised (as opposed to hypotheticals), please encourage them to email me or any member of the committee and we'll see what we can do to work with them. Philippe -------------------------------------------------- From: "phoebe ayers" <phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com> Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2008 7:48 PM To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Election rules modification regarding suffrageissues raised on this list

On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 17:39 +0200, Delphine Ménard wrote: With the admin group trial and impending global launch of SUL, the committee had hoped to allow counting of edits across multiple wikis that are linked to a single global account. Unfortunately, as SUL isn't fully launched yet and we are getting to candidates acceptance time, the rule have to be as in previous years where only edit on one wiki count. KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine