[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

[Gerard Meijssen]

geni wrote:
> On 9/18/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Actually, the translation issue is a very strong argument against
>> direct election of Board members.  Indirect election, via elected
>> delegates at each project (or other appropriate grouping), would avoid
>> much of this issue.  It would also curtail the "popularity effect" of
>> enwiki -- we could use a diminishing-returns allocation of delegates
>> to minimize the "hulking gorilla" effect that enwiki otherwise has on
>> popular polling within Wikimedia.
>>
>> Kelly
>>     
>
>
> I haven't done an exact count but a quick scan (not removeing deleted
> votes) suggests than less than 50% of votes came from en.wikipedia.
>
> Enwikipedia tends to be on the reciving end of rather more board
> actions than anyone else (the downside of not haveing a language
> barrier). Thus it has a greater interest than other projects in the
> outcome of foundation elections.
>
> Secondly there is no reason the descriminate against members of the
> wikipedia community for being part of a popular project.
>
> Thirdly any board member who can't get along we en.wikipedia and
> doesn't have at least a reasonable degree of support from en is
> unlikely to be able to function since en.wikipedia isn't just big in
> voteing power but in everything else (articles publicity effects on
> other projects donations recived representation at the meta level) as
> well.
Hoi,
I think you have it exactly wrong.

*  Wikimedia Foundation is not about the English Wikipedia. If it was, 
the other projects should get out of the Wikimedia Foundation asap 
because it would make it the wrong place to grow their project.
* It would be good to discriminate against the English Wikipedia because 
it gets too much attention. The alternative is that it cannot look after 
itself. If this is the case the project should organise itself and not 
be dependant on outside control.
* Even the Neapolitan wikipedia has had articles in the Italian National 
Press. This is certainly true for all the bigger projects. If you think 
that the domination of the English wikipedia is so self evident, think 
again most of what happens around the other projects you do not know 
about. Also the growth of the other projects is faster than the English 
project. It will not take long and the other projects will be 
substantially bigger.

If you choose a board member only because you think he or she is 
"nice".. you might consider if he of she will also be effective and do 
good for ALL the projects.

Thanks,
   GerardM