[Foundation-l] 2011 Board Elections: Input needed

[Milos Rancic]

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 12:11, FT2 <ft2.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Allowing votes based on donations is likely to send the wrong message,
> however noble it might be.
>
> It really is too problematic - if the level is high then it allows "buying
> votes" where lower level donors could not; if it is low then paid-for voting
> swamps the informed users who may know the candidates and makes it more
> "political".  If donations are to be a criterion then I would suggest it
> must be met at least the last 2 years, not just one year - regular donors
> may be seen differently to "once off" donors. But this one is a can of worms
> and more trouble than it's worth - best not.

Yes, if it would be, let's say, $1000 and indiscriminately for the whole world.

But, let's say $100 based on US nominal GDP PPP (let's say, according
to CIA Factbook, as it is giving the widest range of countries) and
adjusted for other countries' nominal GDP PPP would be, actually, a
positive sign. That would mean that inhabitant of Qatar would have to
give ~$350 to vote, while inhabitant of Burundi ~$0.5. That would,
actually, raise a level of awareness that Wikimedia projects are
working thanks to everybody's donations, while it would say that there
is no need to be rich to give valued contribution.

That's, BTW, the rule for present elections and based on previous
donations. If the next Election committee realizes that there is
significant abuse of that principle, it could change rules for the
next elections.

> What I would be interested in is some representative way to involve our
> other big category of the community - readers.  Speculatively one could
> allow up to 50 or 100 reader votes, invite non-logged-in readers to apply by
> submitting their email address, select 50 - 100 by random poll
> proportionately by country (after checking for obvious duplicates) and allow
> them to vote.  Again may be more trouble than it's worth, but it is
> important to consider if readers may have a say in what matters at the
> election. After all they are whom the project and all of our efforts are
> aimed at supporting.

That would be interesting! I would give that right not to 50-100
random users, but to 10,000. It is not likely that more than ~10%
would use that right and readers are important to us.