[Foundation-l] Official Election Notice -- concerns aboutsuffrage requirements

[Philippe Beaudette]

Hi Phoebe,

Thanks for your comments.  As you note, our intent is not to disenfranchise 
anyone who is a part of this community.  I'm curious about how many people 
we're actually talking about, and perhaps we can get someone to run some 
numbers... (x number of community members who would otherwise meet voting 
requirements would be disenfranchised by the "50 edit" clause).   I'll take 
them to the election list and discuss; once we have an outcome I'll share it 
with you and the group.

Philippe

--------------------------------------------------
From: "phoebe ayers" <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 3:35 PM
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Official Election Notice -- concerns 
aboutsuffrage requirements

> On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Philippe Beaudette
> <philippebeaudette at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The 2008 Board election committee announces the 2008 election process. 
>> Wikimedians will have the opportunity to elect one candidate from the 
>> Wikimedia community to serve as a representative on the Board of 
>> Trustees. The successful candidate will serve a one-year term, ending in 
>> July 2009.
>
> Thanks Phillipe for the announcement and thanks to the election
> committee for their work!
>
> I have one concern about the new requirement that voters must have 50
> edits between April 1->June 1 on their voting project, as well as the
> old total edit requirement, in order to gain suffrage in this year's
> election.
>
> To quote the election information page:
>
> "You may vote from any one registered account you own on a Wikimedia
> wiki (you may only vote once, regardless of how many accounts you
> own). To qualify, this one account must:
>    * not be blocked, and
>    * not be a bot, and
>    * have made at least 600 edits before 01 March 2008 on that wiki
> (edits on several wikis cannot be combined), and
>    * have made at least 50 edits between 01 April and 01 June 2008 on
> that wiki."
>
> I know several previously very active editors, people I would consider
> core Wikimedians who know the projects as well as anyone, that happen
> to be taking a wikibreak this spring -- and this new requirement would
> disenfranchise them. I can't imagine this was your intent.
> This problem is compounded by the fact that a) April is already almost
> over, leaving people just a month to get their edits in; b) the
> editors most affected by this may not be paying attention to these
> early election notices (but will want to vote when the time comes); c)
> since we have not had this requirement in previous elections, it is
> unlikely that people will be expecting it.
>
> I have two suggestions:
> Either
> a) drop this part of the requirement
> or
> b) start a site notice now for logged-in users on all projects,
> reminding them of the candidacy cut-off date and suffrage requirements
> for the election.
>
> A site notice, if not already planned for, is probably useful anyway
> as potential candidates may not read the mailing list or catch the
> election posts to it.
>
> thanks!
> -- phoebe
>
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