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

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 9/16/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's very long, but well worth reading if you're serious about your
> vote: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/Platform_2006

Personally, I found Erik's verbosity to be inconsiderate and something
of strike against him in this election.

I think my reasoning was best explained by Erik on Wikien-l a few months back:

On 06/27/2006, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>There are good votes and there are bad votes. A good vote is one where voters
>are presented with a concise summary of the different arguments that have come
>up in a discussion that preceded the vote, where the _options_ in the
vote have been
>developed through consensus, and where there is a strong culture that pressures
>voters to read and understand all arguments before voting. A bad vote
is one that is
>done ad hoc, out of process, with poor methodology and no clear prerequisites.

Erik may have some views on the value of voting which are perhaps
unusual in our community, but here he has stated something that we all
agree with: A vote where the voters do not understand their choices is
not a good vote.

Between Erik's lengthy platform, his candidate statement, and other
directly linked campaign materials there was a grand total of almost
20,000 words.

I think that it is safe to say all our candidates have a lot to say
about the election.. but  if all 17 of our candidates used as many
words as Erik there would be a grand total of around 330,000 words to
read.

Could anyone expect any of the voters to spend *14 hours* of
continuous reading on the election?

So we are left with a situation where one candidate more than all the
others has not followed the request to be concise, where that
candidate takes much ground by making all the "Well DUH" statements
which sound good but don't actually differentiate the candidates, and
where our readers and translators will get tired of reading long
before they have given a fair treatment to all the candidates.

As it stands it took me an unreasonable amount of effort to read what
has been written and, perhaps more importantly, even with all those
words I found it hard to determine the meaningful differences between
the candidates by contrasting their statements.

I, like Jimbo, have had the opportunity to work directly with many of
the candidates... so I too have strong views on the several I would
support, and the ones I would not support. Without this experience my
ballot would probably be nothing more than a lottery ticket.

I think that the Election has so far been a bad vote.

I believe that, in part, this is due to the community failing to
engage in discussion as advocated by Jimbo, and the rest of it is that
some candidates have managed to aggressively promote themselves to the
exclusion of an equitable and fair election.

I don't think the bad behavior on the part of the candidates is
limited to Erik, although I do believe his excessive verbosity in the
material directly linked from his candidate statement epitomizes the
worst of it.