[Foundation-l] elections

[effe iets anders]

Note that a short statement doesnt exclude a longer statement. I think
it would be very good too if there would be a set of standard
questions asked to every candidate, and answered upon. But that kind
of stuff is finally up to the community to ask. What we are discussing
here is the set of rules. I think it is a very good thing to ask the
candidates to summerize shortly their ideas, and 50 or 100 words are
not a bad idea for such a summery. It might actually say a lot about a
candidate, as (s)he would have to characterize him/herself, and could
lift out the points (s)he finds the most important.

It is of course possible that candidates have besides that a longer
statement, but that should not be on the election page, but maybe on
some seperate page. I can imagine that that should be hosted on meta,
maybe somewhere central with for every candidate a page being set up
so it would be easy to find.

On the part of election officials, I think it is a good idea to ask
organizations such as debian to help us. I think it would mean a good
deal for trustworthy however, if multiple outside parties would be
involved. I would very much appreciate the thoughts of the advisory
boardmembers on this, as they have a broader scope here.

I could imagine a comittee of for instance five people, from different
organizations, with one or two wikimedians in it, who know their way
in the wikimedia communities for stuff like sitenotice etc.

Greetings, Lodewijk

2007/4/8, Robert Horning <robert_horning op netzero.net>:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Longe statements written in Englishe are bad even if you do not
> > considere translacioun.
> >
> > You always run the risk of tl;dr. While obviously some voters are
> > going to be all enthusiastic and willing to read anything you write, I
> > think the majority is going to have the type of mentality where they
> > do respond to long statements with a hearty "tl;dr".
> >
> > Mark
> >
> Unlike elections for admin or other actions on projects involving
> personalities, very few Wikimedia users are going to know any of the
> individuals who are running for a position on the board.  I know in the
> last election I felt a little overwhelmed at trying to even find out
> what the key issues that were of concern, and it was even harder to see
> who might have philosophies that were similar to what I thought should
> be happening as well.  In a very short statement of just 50 words, I
> don't see how you can address even a single issue, much less multiple
> issues.
>
> Long is relative as well.  It just doesn't seem like there should be
> some arbitrary limits if candidates are are actually covering issues.  I
> agree that any such statement ought to be concise, and in the interest
> of helping translators be as brief as possible.
>
> And as your reply has indicated, it should be free of obscure acronyms
> that are not defined.or understood by a large audience.
>
> -- Robert
>
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