[Foundation-l] 2011 Board Elections: Input needed

[Theo10011]

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 6:54 PM, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:

> Lowering the edit counts sounds good, it does however also have a
> downside, in that it makes it easier to vote using sockpuppets or
> meatpuppets.
>
> I agree with voices speaking out against giving voting rights based on
> donations; I do also think giving people voting rights based only on
> being 'readers' basically means giving it out to random people.
>
> There's two groups I would be first thinking of when extending the
> voting populace. The first is those with commit rights on the
> Mediawiki code (I'd feel a single commit in the last year would be
> enough - in general having been granted commit right shows already
> that one is active as a Mediawiki community member). The second would
> be participants of Wikimania or other Wikimedia or chapter events
> (using a specific but extensive list).
>
> --
> André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
>
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I don't think it's a good idea to include donors especially donors above or
below a certain point, to essentially buy the right to vote. As for
developers, campus ambassadors - most of them are already community members,
its their decision to vote or not. They are already composed of community
members, their inclusion hasn't really been an issue in my opinion.

The discussion about including readers into the voting pool has also been
going on Meta [1]. I believe the 'reader' group is far too wide and random
to be successfully considered a separate entity in the elections. Its also
getting too close to the election to come up with policies and
infrastructure to implement suffrage for random readers.

I would point to the recently concluded Steward election as an example of
who to include in the voting process. I would hope that the selection is
limited to the community, at almost a 100,000, it's far larger than the
voting pool of any other similar organization.


Theo
User:Theo10011


[1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2011#Participation