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

[Erik Moeller]

On 9/21/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> > 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.

I think the fundamental issues we are dealing with are quite simply
culture and language barriers. Electing electors, creating councils or
forming multilingual committees does not help us to cross those
barriers. We're only going to end up encountering the same barriers on
a smaller scale: in the Board, in a council, in the committees.

We are trying to build one of the most multilingual, multicultural
organizations on the planet, one which is driven and enabled by modern
communications technology. Yet, the technology we're using right now
-- an e-mail list -- is quite outdated. Indeed, this very message does
not even carry the most basic information what language it is written
in. There's no way for any translator to easily attach (in a
machine-readable way) a version in another language. Filtering by
language is non-trivial. There's no method to assign priorities for
translation, and to manage these tasks. The Wikimedia Foundation does
not employ any language or culture experts, or translators.

As a consequence, the possibilities for a non-English speaking
Japanese Wikipedian who wants to be involved in Foundation matters, or
to even just follow what's happening, are very limited. There may also
be cultural barriers -- some cultures may be reluctant to use e-mail
addresses for communications.

I'm not aware of any forum system which handles multiple content
languages well. Indeed, building such a system may be a great service
not just to our community, but to organizations in very similar
situations. With the technology in place, we can build sensible policy
around it, and enable people to participate who couldn't before.

David McCabe has made great progress on implementing LiquidThreads, a
new forum system for MediaWiki. With some funding and management, it
could lead us in that direction.

If we can enable multilingual and multicultural participation on a
_large_ scale, it will be relatively easy, I think, to transfer that
model to smaller scales if we deem it necessary. The opposite is not
true.

As for the Board, so far no candidate has ever been elected who does
not respect the multilinguality of our community. In fact, the two
community-elected members, Angela and Anthere, are both outspoken
supporters thereof. Yes, they both speak English, one of them
natively. However, nobody can deny that speaking English is a useful
skill.

Trying to make the Board literally representative of all languages or
cultures is trying the impossible. However, making the ability to
speak English no longer a requirement to participate in Foundation
matters, _is_ possible. And perhaps, as part of that process, it will
even become possible for a person who does not speak English to be
elected to the Board.
-- 
Peace & Love,
Erik