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

[Andrew Lih]

On 9/21/06, oscar <oscar.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> ... snip ...
>
> for example, the few amount of voters on ja: is striking, in view of the
> size of the project.

This is certainly an argument for the indirect elections using an
elector-style system. In ja: a great many of the editors are
anonymous, and not that interested in the same level of involvement
you see in Chapter organization as in the Wikipedias of Western
Europe. (Aphaia can give some numbers to back this up.) The efforts of
smaller Wikipedias in Asia don't get very well represented and for
Chinese, where potential users are behind the Great Firewall, there
are ready ways to get read access but not as much participation as a
community.

In effect, you do have whole communities that slip between the cracks
of an election modeled upon a type of "citizenship."  The Wikimedia
projects and the welfare of the  users of the may not fit that model.
In fact, it's increasingly clear that model is not serving the project
well in the long run, especially if the size of the board expands.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)