[Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?

[Anthere]

Delirium wrote:
> Mathieu Amo wrote:
> 
>>On 6/6/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>  
>>
>>>To remove the bias of large language groups or large projects and to
>>>make elections a less painful system, we might also rely on a system of
>>>"grand electeurs" (each language/project nominate a couple of people to
>>>vote in their name). The "grand electeurs " group being more likely to
>>>elect people based on their participation on Foundation issues, rather
>>>than purely on their fame.
>>>    
>>
>>I really like this idea, but it will be a tricky work to write down a
>>policy for this kind of elections. This sounds a lot like the US
>>Electoral College (that's where it's come from, I guess), but I think
>>it will give us everything we need : the possibilty for the
>>communities to really express themselves, and the assurance that the
>>electors will have a good knowledge of the Foundation and its works.
>>However, this would mean more wiki-politics. And nobody likes that.
>>  
> 
> 
> Is the whole issue really a problem?  It only would be if everyone votes 
> mainly for "their" people, but I'm not sure that's the case, and 
> instituting a system like that might actually make it happen.  When the 
> first board elections were held, for example, Americans made up at least 
> a plurality of those voting, possibly a majority, and yet the two 
> winners were French and British (and the next-most-supported was German).
> 
> -Mark

I have no evidence Americans made up a least a plurality of those 
voting. English-speaking did, yes.

Still... it is significant that the candidate with the most votes is 
from the language wikipedia which is the largest. Then that the two next 
candidates were respectively from the second biggest and third biggest 
languages (as well as in both cases participants to the english speaking 
version). Would a great italian person, not participating to the english 
or the french or the german languages have a chance ? Unlikely.

Then, there is also the issue of project, which was recently mentionned 
as being a problem (projects other than wikipedia may tend to be forgotten).

We can not do much with regards to numbers. If we were to adopt such a 
system, we might decide for something such as
* en.wiki : 10 votes
* de.wiki : 6 votes
* it.wiki : 4 votes
* ar.wiki : 1 vote
* en.wikinews : 2 votes
* commons : 10 votes
etc...

Is there a chance that in the end, the elected ones end up voting for 
*their* people ?

I would say no. Simply because of an observation. In communities around, 
there are some voting taking place so that people access to specific 
positions of trust (arbitrator, checkuser, stewards etc...). I think we 
can assume that most of these people are actually given this position 
because they are highly trusted to be informed and reasonable. Chance is 
that the big electors would be of the same type.

... generally, we observe that arbitrators (en, fr), checkusers, 
stewards... are people who do not stick to their language project, but 
rather participate to the global life as well. And as participants of 
the global life, they often know the leaders of other projects, who are 
likely to candidate for the board (actually, chance is that some of the 
grand electors be candidate themselves). And I firmly believe they would 
  give their piece of advice based not on the fact the person is from 
their language, but because they happen to know him/her and value him/her.

Note as well that this is a return to the notion of wikicouncil... one 
role of which would be ... to elect people on the board (depending on 
the size of the wikicouncil, it might be an election or a decision based 
on consensus building actually).

Ant