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

[Birgitte SB]

--- Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/17/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > And how should the Foundation ensure the election
> for
> > these delegates are handled in the proper manner?
> > Would the delegates be issused by langage or
> > community?  How would you define a language?  Or
> else,
> > How would this affect requests for new language
> > creations for projects?  Would all communities
> have
> > the exact same sufferage requirements or could
> they
> > come to their own consensus?  Who would verify and
> > enforce any rules the Foundation requires for
> these
> > elections?  Would people then be allowed to vote
> for
> > several delegates if they meet the sufferage
> > requirements of several communities?
> 
> All of these are good questions.  All of them can,
> and should, be
> answered, but not in the space of a single email
> message.
> 
> > I think this
> > proposal is quite beyond the capability of this
> > organzation.
> 
> That's a very disappointing statement.  Why do you
> believe that?  More
> importantly, what do you think needs to be changed
> so as to not make
> it beyond the capability of this organization?
> 
> Kelly
> 

Looking at the sheer number of delegate elections that
would be necessary, and taking into account the
current lack of communication between individual
communities and the Foundation, I cannot see how WMF
is capable of ensuring fair elections.  And certainly
the possiblity of corruption exists to some degree. 
These proposed elections would give that possibily a
some hundred oppourtunies to pop up.  Also the current
election appears to be quite a strain on election
offcials.  I cannot imagine how that situation would
scale.  If you propose to letting individual
communities handle these elections internally, I
wonder why you do not trust the same people who would
be in charge of elections to have Checkuser abilities?
 If the eletions are to be run by WMF officials then
they will need the budget to hire professional
translators for all the languages they are expected to
oversee.  I don't mean to imply this will always be
beyond our capability, but I certainly think it is in
the near future.  Then there is the greater question
of will having delegations actually solve anything?

There needs to be actual communication between the
various communities and WMF before we can talk about
electing delegates.  I think that there is little
understanding out there of what WMF actually is and
where the line between WMF and the communities is
drawn.  What is needed first and foremost is outreach
from WMF to the communities.  Any current
communication mostly happens in the in the opposite
direction.  When the communities reach a stalemate or
a minority opinion is held by people with strong
convictions then they come to this list.  Where
various people give their various opinions on the
subject and then promptly ignore the problem.  I mean
what are the odds that the Russian WP will atually be
given a road-map much less a solution for the
Verifiabilty problem?  They will get the same
non-answer that Wikibooks got over the ethics
question.  And the trademarks question.  And then when
some intiative is put forward by WMF everyone wonders
why there is little feedback from the communities.

We have all the shiny communications tools of the 21st
century at our fingertips.  Yet there is such support
for using the centuries old delegate soultion for our
*communication problem.*  I really do not understand
this.  I am not going to conclude that there is not
any form of delegation that could possibily benefit
WMF in the future.  However there needs to be strong
communication between the WMF and various communities
before we can talk of how to develop a system of
delegation.

This has been nothing I haven't said before so I am
sure everyone is either bored or depressed at this
point so here are new ideas.  Arrange a weekly
moderated IRC chat panel with people knowledgable
about WMF.  Focus on what WMF is and what it can and
can't do for the communities.  Each week questions
will be taken in a different language which has no
coresponding national chapter.   No questions in
English allowed.  Poll the actual communities in there
own languages about what they would like to see from
WMF (I can guarantee it isn't infighting!)   Here is a
big one.  Read the archive of the mailing list and
*follow up* with past problems.  Find out what
happened and what help is still needed if any.  Ask
the existing national chapters to find a language
community with immigration in their nation and put
together a "Big brother" program to better intergrate
that community into Foundation and chapter issues.  

I think the idea that the majority of votes coming
from en.WP is a language issue is incorrect.  If we
were getting requests for translations that we could
not process I would think it was a language issue.  I
believe this is the same problem that has been going
on since I first started reading this list.  Most
communities expectations of WMF are *very* different
from the role the WMF has given itself.  When people
don't see the Foundation helping them find solutions. 
And they do become aware of the continous power
struggles.  Then they lose interest and just decide to
do the best within their own familiar community so
long as the Foundation doesn't come bother them there.
 And generally the Foundation doesn't.  This is why I
believe many people are not bothering to vote. 
Because they don't believe that the Foundation affects
thier community and what they know about the workings
of the Foundation turns them off.

Birgitte SB

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