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

[Aphaia]

On 9/18/06, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:


> I completely disagree with this; I would much, much rather know *more* about
> the people I'm voting for, rather than less.

I would like to point out, unless we cannot provide the good amont of
translation resources (both material and human), responce to requests
like Phoebe made, does only enlarge the hiatus between English and any
other language, that is hiatus English competent voters and the
editors whose English competence is not enough to skim up such a
volumn of texts.  And in the current situation, we rely on only unpaid
volunteering translators, it is unfeasable to provide all information
even in major lanauges on our projects  (here "major languages" means
"one of eight languages edits in that language is included into "80%
of edits on the whole Wikipedia).

I personally would like rather to provide equal amount of information
to "every" language communities. I don't welcome nor that only English
editors can access the information about the people they are voting
for nor that there is enouous different of amount which voters can
consider between editors having English competence and not. It would
mean the elected one cannot represent the community as a whole, but
not only a part of it, community of a certain language, in the worst
case, I am afraid.

And I think it is nor unwise nor kind for volunteering translators to
expect  to translate thousands of words text only in a week, or even
in days. Translation is in general a task boring, painful and took
many times. People who are not multilingual tend to think it is only
to replace one word with an equivalent. No. It is a sort of
reproduction and you need to understand the text in a whole, usually
with its background. (That is why machine translation is only helpful
to prepare a draft, not the completion in many cases).

> Effe's idea of a debate is also not terrible, though it is also late in the
game: perhaps next election?

In the same reason, in our current situation, I don't think it nice.
It helps only English editors whoe are one third of our community, I
am afraid. Even  candidate presentation hasn't been completely
translated. I prefer to see them finished to see candidate debates, so
strongly objected to be involved into the latter; due to time
limitation, I couldn't manage both at the same time and I thought
support for the former belonged to the primary mission of Election
Officials, but not the latter.

As Election Officer, I feel I am of responsibility to the whole
community, not only the communities I am active as editor, but
literally all communities. Even in this last week of voting, I found
some projects had been not noticed this Election from some reasons. It
is my regret and currently one of biggest concerns of mine as Election
Officials. I don't oppose candidate debate per se, but under our
current condition I don't feel that is exactly what our best effort
should go.

-- 
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vox populi, vox dei *