[Foundation-l] elections

[effe iets anders]

I have hard feelings for this proposal. I am afraigh that it will only
mek the gap between the english Wikipedia and the rest of Wikimedia
bigger. In the current board, there is only one native english speaker
on the elected seats, one french, one german and one dutch. I think
"alliences" would only create a schism, and would also enlarge the
idea that the other communities are evil, as it is for instance the
"Dutch candidate" vs the "Frensh candidate", which is ridiculous.
Further it is not that we want a Boltzmann distribution over the
languages, but we want the best candidates. If the best candidates are
all in the French Wikipedia, well, they shoulc be elected. And if they
are mostly in the english, so be it. I think we should prevent that a
boardmember from for instance the Finnish Wikipedia should only feel
him/herself a representative for that single project. With this type
of elections that idea is stringthened.

Of course you can not and want not to prevent that a user is mostly
supported by the people of his/her own project. Those are the people
who know him/her the best, and are easier able to make a good
decision. But I think it is very important that we are not
discriminating in the election rules on whatever quality, not even
language ability or home project. Please leave that up to the
community that is willing to vote.

So: decreasing the number of candidates: great.
Selecting on origin: Please not.

Greetings, Lodewijk

2007/4/7, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton op gmail.com>:
> > It is maybe not good idea, but we could create 2 level elections in such a way:
> > *First level - candidate has to win local election on one of the
> > projects - the rules for this local elections should be similar on all
> > projects, the number of candidates per projects might depend on the
> > size of the project. Smaller projects may create an "alliance" to be
> > able to propose a candidate.
> > *Second level - 7-10 days elections on meta of the candidates
> > preselected on projects.
>
> I like this idea (and was going to suggest it myself before reading
> your email). If done correctly, it should give candidates from smaller
> projects a more reasonable chance of winning. In the previous
> elections, there were too many candidates, so I think knowing lots of
> people (ie. being from a big project) was an unfair advantage, since
> people just voted for who they knew. If we reduce the number of
> candidates, while still ensuring that there are candidates from
> smaller projects (which is exactly what this idea does) should allow
> people to make informed decisions about such candidates.
>
> The hardest part of this idea is working out the alliances - there are
> too many projects to give each project a candidate of their own, so
> some kind of alliance system is essential. I would suggest grouping
> smaller projects first by language (so the wikipedia and the
> wikitionary in a medium sized language would get one candidate between
> them) and then by language groups (so all the projects in native
> american languages [that's a random example, I'm guessing there are
> lots of small projects in such languages] would get one candidate
> between them). Determining alliances by language reduces the need for
> translating candidate statements for the pre-elections.
>
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