[Foundation-l] Volunteer Council - A shot for a resolution

[Ziko van Dijk]

Yaroslav, I think that I understand your concern: to give people a chance
even if they work in a small project / language. I agree. But it should only
be a *chance*, not a *reservation* for beiing Maltese.

Let us think about two Maltese, a bad and a good one.

The bad Maltese is someone *only* occupied with the ma.WP. (Is this the
language code? I should ask my friend in Malta! :-) ) He does not contribute
to any other projects, and his ma.WP is quite bad, pretending a lot of
articles - created by a bot. No, this bad Maltese will have hardly a chance
to be elected to the Board nowadays or to the Council in future. And I think
that he really should not be there.

The good Maltese has helped to create a great ma.WP: small, but of high
quality (bytes per article etc.) You can check that with the help of the
statistics and also have a glance at ma.WP, you don't need to understand the
language. The good Maltese has created the Maltese Wikisource. He has a lot
of experience about fundamental things, and he talks about on Meta. I think
that this good Maltese has a very good chance in the elections. Not only
contributors to other small Wikipedias (the MANY small Wikipedias!) will
favor him, but also me.

By the way, in the Board elections of 2007 I did not choose people because I
knew them from the German Wikipedia (was there a German at all?), because
they a) seemed to have experience in more than one project/language and b)
had a good message.

Ziko



2008/3/14, Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod at mccme.ru>:
>
> > Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
> >> Hoi Gerard,
> >>
> >> I think actually that Milos and you are advocating the two extremes.
> >>
> >> I do not think we can form a board having a representative of every
> >> (reasonably defined) big project.
> >>
> >> I also do not think we should leave these projects without
> >> representation.
> >>
> >> Let us take again the hypotetical Maltese wikipedian (for definiteness,
> >> a
> >> male Wikipedian) who happens to mainly edit a project with 10 other
> >> active
> >> editors (I am not exactly sure what the actual  standing of the Maltese
> >> Wikipedia is, let us discuss this as a hypothetical example). If he is
> >> not
> >> an admin on a larger Wikipedia (say English) and not a steward, he doe
> >> not
> >> get a public exposure outside his own small project. This typically
> >> means
> >> he stands no chance to be elected by a general vote, whatever brilliant
> >> he
> >> is. We can not help this. What we can do is to reserve say one Council
> >> seat all (reasonably defined) small projects and design the procedure
> >> how
> >> these projects will elect their representative. The idea of such as
> seat
> >> would be to ensure that (similar) problems of all small Wikipedias are
> >> being heard. If we reserve zero seats, they are just not represented.
> If
> >> wee select a seat for each project, there is no way the Council will be
> >> operational.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Yaroslav
> >
> > And ?
> >
> > Even if we reserve a seat... who will elect the guy ?
> >
> > The 5 members of the Maltese wikipedia ? Why should I trust 5 members
> > who approve one guy to be in charge of the governance of the Foundation
> > ? For all I know, they might be his 2 brothers, 1 cousin, a friend and
> > his lover.
> >
> > Or the 5 members of the Maltese Wikipedia + 2 members of the corsican
> > wikipedia + 6 members of the volapuck and 7 members from the swahili ?
> > 2+6+7 of those not knowing the candidate and maybe not even sharing a
> > common language with him ? Why would the swahili guys vote for a maltese
> > guy they have never heard about ?
> >
> > Ant
> >
>
> If you want me to elaborate, yes, in my proposal it will be 5 members of
> Maltese wikipedia + 2 members of the Corsican Wikipedia etc. If they do
> not share the common language with the candidate they are not going to
> vote for him, that's simple. If they do not feel they are represented by
> this guy - fine, they vote for somebody else. We can make sure there is a
> rotation, for instance, if a representative of maltese Wikipedia takes the
> seat, next year he is not eligible to run for this seat. And we can think
> about the channels small Wikipedias would reach their representative. But
> if it all goes to unrestricted general vote - none of these projects is
> going to be represented. Then only stewards/active members of big projects
> have a chance to be elected, and we are back to the countless lamentations
> about insufficient representation of the community.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Yaroslav
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Ziko van Dijk
Roomberg 30
NL-7064 BN Silvolde