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

[Anthony]

On 9/21/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
> > On 9/21/06, oscar <oscar.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> it is my conviction that for the future, more than "just" translations for
> >> elections (i take them as an example of a bigger thing to consider here) are
> >> mandatory to evercome this *gap in culture*. (a point of attention for the
> >> board retreat imho)
> >>
> >> oscar
> >>
> >
> > A reasonable conclusion.  In trying to think of a solution, I found
> > myself searching for a precedent of a truly international/global
> > direct election.  I couldn't think of any.  Can anyone else?
> >
>
> The Debian project organizes itself largely around direct elections, and
> has a pretty international base of voters.  They do only let official
> Debian developers vote, though, which is maybe more like if we only let
> admins vote in our elections.
>
> They do seem to be moderately successful at it.  I don't recall much
> controversy about the nationalities of project leaders---disputes about
> the direction of the project and technical issues play a much bigger
> role in voting than whether someone comes from the same country as you.
>
> -Mark

Interesting.  Debian seems to accomplish the task of having a direct
election by, just having a direct election.  Translation issues seem
to be handled ad hoc and totally "unfairly" - the 2005 debate for
instance is available in English and French.  Presumably the nominees
could all speak English to some extent, but maybe this is an incorrect
assumption.

You also mention that nationalities of project leaders don't play much
of a part in Debian's elections.  I do think it is somewhat inevitable
for Wikimedia to get caught up in this to a bit greater of an extent,
as most Wikimedia projects and therefore communities are quite
naturally segregated by language.  With Debian translations certainly
play a large role, but the meat of the product is language-neutral.

Anthony