[Foundation-l] board candidacies

[valdelli at bluemail.ch]

I completely agree,
when I have seen the candidatures, I have had this first feeling: 
"a lot of candidates only english speaking (with a little knowledge 
of another language)".

The board should have a good communication and should be 
representative...  this don't mean that the members should be 
polyglot, but these are little signs... how many languages has got 
Wikipedia? Why?

Ilario

----Messaggio originale----
Da: notafishz at gmail.com
Data: 10.08.06 19.58
A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

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.