[Foundation-l] Pointing out to an oddity

[Robert Rohde]

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 8:39 AM, Kwan Ting Chan <ktc at ktchan.info> wrote:

> On Wed, 2008-05-14 at 17:12 +0200, elisabeth bauer wrote:
>
> > I don't see any candidates on
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Candidates
> > (the place where I would expect candicacies to show up)
>
> Candidate's submission is on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Candidates/Submissions. Once the close of candidate submission period comes round, the election
> committee will transfer the listings of those that are verified to be
> eligible to the page you linked to, and translation will also begin.
>
> Wily D wrote:
> > Apparently we're not supposed to know that they exist yet - I don't
> know why.
>
> They are available on the submission page if one want to see it. The
> committee would just prefer they not be as visibly available until we
> have confirmed the candidates meet the eligibility criteria and that
> their candidate submission meet the election regulation. This is partly
> to ensure fairness to all those who stand. Say a candidate submission is
> too long (as has been the case a couple of time), it does take time for
> them to correct it. In the mean time, if it were all widely visible, the
> other candidates can/will complain about unfair advantages gained over
> the exposure to the longer statement.
>
> KTC
>


Then you should remove submissions that are too long (that part at least is
trivial to check), or take less time promoting the ones that are okay, or
handle all submissions in private.  However, hiding all of the ongoing
submissions on a somewhat hard to find subpage is not a good answer in my
opinion.  Seeing who intends to stand for the elections and why has an
important influence on recruiting others.

Incidentally, my instinct was the same as WilyD's, and I added another link
to the submissions page prior to seeing this discussion.

-Robert Rohde