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
Anthere:
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
Yes, that's a very good point. The graph you link to does not actually show the participation *rate*, but the number of participants per language. It might be interesting to compare this against, say, the number of very active contributors per language in June 2004:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt100.htm
Doing this, we get the following rates (roughly, as I'm reading the number of votes per language from the graph):
41% EN 41% DE 91% FR 20% JA 32% NL 75% ZH 17% PL 31% IT etc.
Taking just these languages, English and German had average rates, but the French participation rate was extraordinary by any measure. Japanese and Polish in particular were depressingly low. Hopefully, Datrio and Britty will be able to help with that.
In general, I can only really think of one solution -- getting the relevant text translated into as many languages as possible. For the sake of fairness, we should announce the election in the same location in all languages (e.g. Recent Changes). We won't be able to stop local "get out the vote" efforts, so we should encourage them instead and hope that as many projects as possible make an effort to go beyond the minimum.
Our project is international. It is not very suitable that such a discrepancy exists.
Agreed, though it's always important to look at the rates rather than the absolute numbers.
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 ?
I'd say at least - number of votes per candidate - number of voters per wiki project / language.
Fourth, do you have overall some feedback to give on last year organisation, so that this year organisers can take them into account ?
I'd like the allowed length of the candidate statements to be clearly defined, and the length limit to be enforced. (I suggest 1000 characters of rendered text total.) Every candidate will of course be allowed to link to a detailed statement without a length limit. I'd also like the 1000 character statements to be fairly free-form, i.e. every candidate should be able to decide for themselves how to use that space.
All best,
Erik
Erik Moeller (erik_moeller@gmx.de) [050501 04:12]:
I'd like the allowed length of the candidate statements to be clearly defined, and the length limit to be enforced. (I suggest 1000 characters of rendered text total.) Every candidate will of course be allowed to link to a detailed statement without a length limit. I'd also like the 1000 character statements to be fairly free-form, i.e. every candidate should be able to decide for themselves how to use that space.
So I can write a statement in 1000 Chinese characters, and get that translated back to English... you sure about this one?
- d.
David Gerard a écrit:
Erik Moeller (erik_moeller@gmx.de) [050501 04:12]:
I'd like the allowed length of the candidate statements to be clearly defined, and the length limit to be enforced. (I suggest 1000 characters of rendered text total.) Every candidate will of course be allowed to link to a detailed statement without a length limit. I'd also like the 1000 character statements to be fairly free-form, i.e. every candidate should be able to decide for themselves how to use that space.
So I can write a statement in 1000 Chinese characters, and get that translated back to English... you sure about this one?
- d.
good point ;-)
ant
David Gerard:
So I can write a statement in 1000 Chinese characters, and get that translated back to English... you sure about this one?
I'm not sure it's a good way to start a campaign by deliberately looking for loopholes in the rules ;-). I don't think this will be a problem in practice, but if you want, you can define that the most commonly used language is used for the count, or you can retain some flexibility in the enforcement. I'll leave it to the organizers to decide this. What is important is that there is at least a basic requirement so that people don't go overboard.
Erik
Would anyone object to an incentive for more people to write in Chinese? ;-) That might not be so bad...
SJ
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de Date: May 1, 2005 5:22 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] board elections : some thoughts To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@wikimedia.org
David Gerard:
So I can write a statement in 1000 Chinese characters, and get that translated back to English... you sure about this one?
I'm not sure it's a good way to start a campaign by deliberately looking for loopholes in the rules ;-). I don't think this will be a problem in practice, but if you want, you can define that the most commonly used language is used for the count, or you can retain some flexibility in the enforcement. I'll leave it to the organizers to decide this. What is important is that there is at least a basic requirement so that people don't go overboard.
Erik _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 5/2/05, Sj 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
Would anyone object to an incentive for more people to write in Chinese? ;-) That might not be so bad...
SJ
我同意SJ的考案好、然又我恐或大半欧米的維期人不備漢字Font於電算機。(30 characters in Kanji, two foreign words, two punctuations)
I agree on SJ's idea is good, but I am also afraid most of Euro-american Wikipedian has no PC on which they can read Chinese characters. (26 words)
Back to the topic, I have no reason to oppose a candidate profile written with 1,000 Chinese characters (or letter),. If it would be translated into English or other European language, there would be no huge difference like the above, I assume.
Is this going to be a vote for another one year term?? As I feel a one year term is to short and very bad for consistency.
I personally feel we should give Angela and Anthere another year btw. But I am afraid we passed that station already.
Walter/Waerth
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