[Foundation-l] spamming of the english wikipedia users detected

[Sebastian Moleski]

On 7/3/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The facts are that:
>
> 1) That under 5% of the recently active eligible English Wikipedians
> had participated in the election thus far. (My email said 'under 16%'
> but I was trying to be conservative as there is room to argue over
> what constitutes recently, and the real numbers are just far too
> embarrassing).
>
> 2) The board appointed election com.  has made several serious and
> impacting errors in the handling of the election which has resulted in
> low turnout.  Some of these errors have discriminated against the
> English Wikipedia community although no doubt unintentionally so. I
> have personally, found the election com. to be unable to address most
> issues because they are over worked.
>
> 3) As mentioned above, the responses have been overwhelming and
> intensely positive.


While these are valid points, none of that excuses abusing the e-mail
feature to spam users about the election without their permission,
regardless of whether your messages would be biased or not. If you have a
problem with the way the election committee publicizes the election, talk to
the committee or the board and cooperate in finding a solution. If you want
more users from English Wikipedia to vote, post something to the Village
pump or write an article for the Signpost.

If there had been no other, less intrusive options, I could see why you
would resort to this method. But that wasn't the case.

Sebastian