[Foundation-l] board candidacies

[Delphine Ménard]

On 8/10/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 8/10/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Internationally, it means that countries where the English languages
> is widespread are probably going to have a greater representation.
> Changing this would be likely be extremely difficult and/or expensive.
>  And it's somewhat of a catch-22: Wikimedia probably won't have very
> much representation from non-English speakers until it's easy for
> Wikimedians of different languages to communicate with each other, but
> until Wikimedia has more representation from non-English speakers
> translation issues will probably remain a relatively low priority.
>
> As for project representation, I don't think board members should be
> representing individual projects in the first place.  Wikipedia is by
> far the largest and most successful project, so it doesn't surprise me
> that board candidates use that project for their discussion pages.

I think you are missing the point entirely.
What we are asking is for this election to be representative of the
Wiki*m*edia community in its entirety, ie. all languages and all
projects. Being on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation as Florence
pointed out, does not mean changing policies in the English Wikipedia,
no more than in Wikisource or the Chinese Wikipedia for that matter.
It means seeing the greater vision, understanding, or be ready to
understand what's at stake in all projects and all languages, making
sure the projects are able to flourish regardless of their size or
fame in the outside world. It means taking the right decisions as to
where Wikimedia will use the money it has, the right decision on which
partners to choose so as to allow to pursue our mission, ie. support
free and open knowledge and access to information.

A good wikipedian or wikisourcian does not automatically make a good
board member. And vice versa. We are not electing people on the basis
of their number of edits or their influence in the projects, but
rather on a program they might have concerning the organisation, to
structure it, better it and make it realize its potential while
keeping in mind its real responsibilities.

I sincerely hope that the international and cross project community
will get organized and vote on this election, so as to balance the
natural weight of the English Wikipedia and make sure that the person
elected on the board has the skills necessary to the position.Whether
they are or not from the English Wikipedia is indeed, irrelevant.


Delphine
-- 
~notafish