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

[phoebe ayers]

On 9/17/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/17/06, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> > I completely disagree with this; I would much, much rather know *more*
> about
> > the people I'm voting for, rather than less
> [snip]
>
> So are you honestly saying that you'd spend 14 hours reading candidate
> statements?
>
> If thats true I suspect that you would be alone.


Sorry, are we talking about the same projects? 'Cause I'm talking about the
projects where people spend days (years) arguing about process and whether
Pokemon is notable (among other time-consuming activities). I suspect that
there will certainly be people in this environment who will happily spend 14
hours reading candidate statements; I for one would welcome the opportunity
to do so. What other people choose to read or not read is irrelevant to my
own decision-making processes.

As for translation, which is of course very important, I think the best
solution is probably more or less what's been done for this election -- make
sure that every candidate provides a short statement of approximately equal
length; make sure that this statement is assiduously translated into as many
languages as possible; but then allow (and encourage) candidates to post as
much additional material as they wish, in whatever language(s) they are
comfortable in, with no guarantee it will get translated. The fact that some
candidates will have more materials than others is no more unfair than the
fact that some candidates are more voluble on the mailing lists, or that
some have global rights and are thus perhaps better known across projects
than those who don't, or that some candidates come from en: and have thus
perhaps interacted with more potential voters, etc. etc.

-- phoebe