[Foundation-l] Future Board election procedures and guidelines

[Philippe Beaudette]

I agree with Brad, endorse his suggestion, and am pleased to help with this discussion any way that I can.

Philippe
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) 
  To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org 
  Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 3:32 PM
  Subject: [Foundation-l] Future Board election procedures and guidelines


  Let me add my congratulations to the successful candidates in the Board
  election that just concluded, and my thanks to everyone who participated --
  including all the candidates, my fellow election committee members, and the
  voters.  (It feels odd in a wiki context to actually write "voters" rather
  than ! voters. :) )

  I have seen some references in this and other threads to people wanting to
  discuss some possible changes to the way in which future elections are run,
  based on lessons that we have learned this time.  This year, the Election
  Committee members were selected only a few days before the election
  timetable began, which meant that we had comparatively little time to
  discuss the proposed election procedures before we had to get the process
  moving.  Despite this, my opinion is that everything went reasonably
  smoothly.

  Nonetheless, and I emphasize that I am speaking here only for myself and not
  officially on behalf of the Election Committee or anyone else, I think it
  would definitely be a good practice to plan for future elections much
  further in advance than we were able to do this year.

  I suggest that there be an on-wiki dialog regarding some of the matters
  concerning the Board Election procedures that contributors might (or might
  not) want to change for future years.  The purpose would not be to have an
  endless debate for the sake of debating, but to address concrete and
  specific changes that might (or might not) be desirable, with a goal of
  setting the parameters for future elections in advance.  The topics to be
  addressed could include (but not be limited to):

  (1) Voting system (approval voting versus other systems)
  (2) Candidate and voter qualifications and the endorsement system
  (3) Election publicity and communications

  Although we have not decided this as a committee, I believe that most of
  this year's Election Committee members would be willing to set up pages on
  Meta and help to guide this discussion, if there is consensus here on the
  list or elsewhere that this should be done.  It is unlikely that anything
  much would happen until after Wikimania, but I think that it might be a good
  idea to get any discussion going relatively soon while whatever issues arose
  during this year's election are fresh in people's mind.  If we table the
  discussion for too long, then I suspect it will stay tabled until the 2008
  elections are just around the corner and next year's committee will find
  itself in the same position that this year's did.

  Everyone's thoughts will be appreciated.

  Newyorkbrad
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