[Foundation-l] Steward election issues

[brock.weller at gmail.com]

So I had an enormously unsatisfying experience in the recent steward
elections, and I'm hoping there might be some lessons learned from this
going forward. I don't spend much time on Meta, notwithstanding the fact
that im almost inexplicably mentioned at the top of the Live mirrors page
the only visits I make to meta are for votes on presumably now deleted
pages, and even that hasn't been for some years. My en.wiki account is
substantially older (edited since 2004, registered since 2005) and more
active (thousand of edits versus a few on meta) so I freely confess that I
may be a little out of the loop in how Meta works, but i think most voters
are, we are funneled here through election notices. My userpage has had a
link to my home wiki since 2007. That's the only thing on the page. I voted
in the Steward elections when I saw a name I recognized on the list. He was
an employee of the foundation and a personal friend of mine and I was very
pleased to see him running considering how helpful he's been to me through
the years. I pay no more attention to this process before coming back to
check election results to find out my vote was struck. No warning a day
before close or similar, no note or even bot-posted warning template. This
is frankly ridiculous. In something as important as a Steward Election our
determining the will of the community seems pretty willing to cut out parts
of the community without giving an opportunity to correct any technical
issues with the casting of the vote. I've been discussing things with the
admin who struck it, and while there's nothing wrong with his responses,
he's not being very helpful in correcting this for the future, and being
vague about what the requirements are for verification. I was told i needed
both a link from meta to my home wiki and from my home to meta, i added the
half that was missing (an edit made by me to the top of my talkpage on en
giving my account name on meta, stating i am that account and providing a
link) still wasnt sufficient but not informing me what more I'd have to
provide to insure disenfranchisement doesn't occur.

Quite simply, if we give a rats ass what the community thinks we need to
come up with a better system for measuring it.

Refs:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dungodung#Possibly_inappropriate_vote_strike
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mask

--Brock