[Foundation-l] Call for nominations: chapter-appointed seats on the WMF Board of Trustees

[Joan Goma]

Hi Bence

I did my own non official statistics about voters and candidates by
language.

Here you are:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gom%C3%A0/Elections_2011

en-wiki presented 39% of the candidates, casted 30% of the votes and
obtained 66% of the members.
de-wiki presented 18% of the candidates, casted 14% of the votes and
obtained 33% of the members.

The next languages casting most votes where French (8,5%)  Spanish (6%) and
Catalan (4,9%) . None of them obtained any seat although the candidate who
were native speaker of  French and Catalan (Claudi Balaguer) was very close
to be elected together with two very well known members of the community
Milos and Lodewijk, with about 30 votes of difference among those 3
candidates.

In those elections more than 60% of Catalan editors with right to vote
participated while percentage of participation in English was ridiculous.

My conclusion was that for even relatively big languages like Catalan it is
impossible to get representation in community elections unless you start
writing in English Wikipedia.

The Situation of countries without a chapter is a problem but situation of
languages without a country is a disgrace. The problem can be solved by
setting up a chapter but the disgrace has no solution they will never be
able to be represented in the board.

Board cannot be widened to an unbearable number of members but if we
increased the number of community elected board members to 6 by
transforming chapter selected members and by picking one from board
selected (or perhaps having a board of 11 members as even numbers are
always more advisable for decision bodies than odd) then:

1) Communities could have the feeling that Foundation is an organization at
their service because the majority of the governing body is elected by them.
2) Chapters doesn’t lose their capability to participate and influence in
elections if they where able to mobilize their affiliates.
3) Candidates of languages able to mobilize around 5% of the votes could
have some chances to be elected opening doors to more diversity.



Anyway it seems to me that we should find mechanisms to allow participation
in governance to editors of those projects that neither have a chapter nor
is likely that can have influence in community elections.



Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 01:46:12 +0100
> From: Bence Damokos <bdamokos at gmail.com>
>
> I think the community elections are sometimes perceived as en.wikipedia
> centric, even if the actual voter turnout could suggest otherwise. (I
> haven't been able to find voter statistics per project, so the perception
> might actually be correct even if the people who win are at least partially
> international.)
>