Hi all,


I have gone through the nomination page and questions asked to the candidates. My choice would be Nataliia Tymkiv and Kunal Mehta.

Both these candidates are well aware of the declining relationship among community, staff and WMF and want to solve them in a transparent wiki way. Both their answers seemed practical to me and I think, if they are selected, they would make a difference.

A newcomer Nataliia's stand against Wikimedia Ukraine ED Yury Perohanych's whimsical approach to community members in 2013 is also worth mentioning. Salute!
(https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016/Nominations/Nataliia_Tymkiv#Deletion_of_the_Bible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_149#a_simple_question_.28i_hope.29_that_can_be_a_tricky_one_.28i_fear.29)

Kunal Mehta is a WMF staff as well as an active Wikimedia volunteer, a combination we obviously need in a BoT member. He has closely observed the crises built in foundation and in my opinion, has more insights in this matter than other candidates.

Other candidates, except few, are also active Wikipedians in their way and if I had another option, I would preferred Osmar Valdebenito.

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P.S.

Satdeep and Sudhanwa preferred Siska Doviana. With all due respect, personally I am not fond of those Wikimedians who are not/less active on-wiki and still are/were EC members of different Wikimedia chapters. I know, that global edit-count is not the best indicator for Wikimedia involvement, but on-wiki involvement helps Wikimedians know the dynamics of the community, realize common community problems by heart and look for solution collaboratively. To me, if you are an EC member, then you have more reason to edit on-wiki (not only meta), because that only makes you build the bond with community members.

In this context, I will NOT recommend WMIN to support Siska Doviana from WMID, who has only around 3,300 global edits!!.
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ACentralAuth&target=Siska.Doviana)
I also do not support her initiative, stated in her nomination talk page, about providing huge amount of money to winners of content competition. To me, its a way to trigger dangerous practice in wiki world.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016/Nominations/Siska_Doviana#Content%20adding

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Bodhisattwa