Hi everybody,
Thank you again to everybody who helped our group create its candidate shortlist for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections later this year. The Elections Committee has announced the final shortlist [1] (in alphabetical order), based on votes from all the affiliates who sent in their shortlists:
1. Bobby Shabangu (Bobbyshabangu)
2. James Alexander (Jamesofur)
3. Lane Rasberry (Bluerasberry)
4. Michał Buczyński (Aegis Maelstrom)
5. Ravan J Al-Taie (Ravan)
6. Wojciech Pędzich (Wojciech Pędzich)
These six candidates will be campaigning until August 26, and then all eligible voters (Wikipedia editors in good standing who have made at least 300 edits before July 28, 2025 and at least 20 edits between August 28, 2024 and July 28, 2025) will be able to vote to fill the two open Board seats until September 10, 2025.
The shortlists submitted by each affiliate (including ours) will be made publicly available at some point, and I’ll let y’all know when that happens.
cheers,
Gaurav
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Shortli…
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Voter_e…
I was part of NC Wikipedians with Frank Jones and crew back in 2019. We're
back in NC for a bit and I'd love to reconnect with the group if that's ok.
Thank you,
Jodi
wertjodi(a)gmail.com
Hi everybody,
Thanks to Jennifer for catching something I completely missed — the 2025 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections [1] are in progress, and affiliates like the North Carolina Wikipedians can help shortlist the candidates [2]. To do this, one representative for our affiliate will need to submit a shortlist of up to six candidates out of the twelve eligible candidates [3] by Monday, July 28, 2025 by 23:59 UTC (7:59pm ET). The combined shortlists from all the Wikimedia affiliates will be used to select the six candidates who will be competing for the two open seats this August.
I can submit the list of shortlisted candidates on behalf of our group if that’s okay by everybody. To identify which six candidates we think would be best for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, I propose a combination of discussion on Etherpad and voting via a Google Sheet [4]. Please have a look at the list of candidates [3], create a column with your name, and then score as many candidates on a 5-point scale from +2 (should be selected) to 0 (can be selected) to -2 (should not be selected). If you’d like, you can explain your score in a comment on the Google Sheet, by replying to this e-mail, on our Etherpad [5] or by privately e-mailing me. If you’d like to ensure that other people aren’t swayed by your votes, feel free to set a fill color of black so the score is impossible to see. I’ve put some example votes under my name to demonstrate what I mean, although those aren’t my final votes at all. If you’d prefer not to vote publicly at all, please e-mail me your votes at gaurav(at)ggvaidya(dot)com and I’ll incorporate them into the sheet at the end of voting.
On Sunday at 11:59pm ET, I’ll make this sheet private, tally up all the votes we’ve received, and add any candidates who received a net positive score to our shortlist. If more than six candidates have a net positive vote score, I’ll choose the top six by net score. I’ll then e-mail the shortlist (in a randomized order) to our mailing list, and anybody on the list will have until Monday, July 28 at 3pm ET to object before I submit the shortlist to the Foundation on behalf of our user group. The six candidates shortlisted by all the affiliates will campaign in August, and eligible Wikipedia editors will be able to individually vote for these candidates at the end of August.
If someone would prefer another method — or if you’d like to call a meeting so we can discuss this on Zoom — please feel free to propose some times we could meet today or over the weekend. Sorry for the extremely rushed process here but hopefully we’ll be able to usefully contribute to the Wikimedia Foundation elections!
cheers,
Gaurav
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Shortli…
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Candida…
[4] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZOh7vqKsIeUm_qmrs0k4cGqSVXQtCE3n8Id…
[5] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/North_Carolina_Wikipedians#L40