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

[geni]

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.

-- 
geni