[Foundation-l] Notice of the results of the WMF Board of Trustees election

[Brianna Laugher]

On 13/07/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> >I hope for future elections WMF (*not* the election committee) will
> >take more concrete action for its responsibility to inform eligible
> >voters.
> >
> I wouldn't blame either the WMF or the election committee for this.  We
> aren't running a kindergarten.  If eligible voters can't be bothered to
> look when an election is advertised in all reasonable places, they get
> the result they deserve.

I consider it WMF's responsibility to communicate to its projects what
the relationship between them is. I consider it WMF's responsibility
to communicate to Wikimedians about why the election (and indeed WMF
itself) is important.

If WMF is not relevant to the projects then what indeed is the point of it?

How can we say we have a democratic result when less than 1% of
eligible voters* take part? That doesn't sound like a healthy
democracy to me.

I want WMF to have a vibrant diverse community interaction.

Turkish and Arabic Wikipedias are the 12th & 13th largest projects
according to number of users. The election information wasn't
translated into either of these projects. It's pretty funny to blame
people for not being aware of something happening when there wasn't
even information available in their language for them to read about
it.

> Democratic institutions are not about the responsibilities of the ruling
> structure, but about the responsibilities of the citizenry.  Do
> countries which make voting obligatory get any better results?

Well, as a citizen of such a country, I've never felt that anyone
could argue the result wasn't actually representative of people's
will.

* re eligible voters: perhaps the edit requirements should be
restricted to have occurred within the last year. that would stop old
eligible accounts artificially inflating the number of eligible
voters.

regards
Brianna