[Foundation-l] Election mailings

[effe iets anders]

I am very much against these mailings, and would personally consider a
block for spamming on nlwiki. Probably all arguments were on this list
before already, but I have just not the time unfortunately to read all
70+ emails in that thread.

First of all, I think that this emailfunction is *not* meant as a
mass-email-system. It is meant so you can e-mail *induvidual* users,
and I have always promised users that this address could not be used
to send emails on a large scale. That is very much why people are
willing to set their email.

If there has to be an email sent in this way, I think only two bodies
can decide to do so. The community and the Wikimedia Foundation. That
the rate of votes has increased sounds good (at first glance) but
doesn't make your decision per se right. I think the side-effects,
especially on the long term, have to be considered.

I myself would seriously consider now to de-activate my email on the
wiki's in the future, as that is the only way of shutting down the
email. I am afraight that this won't be the last email sent this way,
as I have lately at least received one other email this way, by
xtimeline about wikimania. (three days ago) I assume by the way the
email was set up I was not the only one.

Hence I urge you to stop and go no further, do not send out these
emailbulks anymore. I think this is actually a bug in the software,
and that unfortunately some maximum might have to be set.

Regards, Lodewijk

2007/7/5, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:
> Today some people came forward to ask how to do mailings for some
> other projects. As I said, I'd be glad to do so.
>
> While I would like to generate mailing for all of the projects, the
> time available will probably make that impossible, so the projects
> with the highest absolute participation in the current and previous
> elections will get my first priority.
>
> if anyone would like to do their own mailing for the smaller projects
> that I can not reach I would be glad to help some.. but the process is
> very manual and tedious.
>
> I have generated lists for itwiki and for nlwiki. Fiwiki, Plwiki,
> Nowiki, trwiki, ptwiki should all be no problem.
>
> I understand someone is already working on a mailing for dewiki.  If
> this information is incorrect I can still do a dewiki mailing,
> although I hope someone else is doing it...
>
> I am having trouble generating a list for frwiki, jawiki, and eswiki.
>
> What I am lacking are:
>
> 1) Good encouragement letters to send to voters on projects that would
> like to participate.
>
> A good letter will be encouraging but neutral towards the candates. I
> will not direct people to private recommendation lists, as useful as
> they may be... Perhaps in the future the official election pages will
> offer space for people to link to private reviews of the people who
> are running?
>
> It would be useful and honest to include something like "After sending
> emails across the English wikipedia, the rate of voting increased
> dramatically. I hope this message encourages you to consider voting,
> too.".
>
> 2) Someone from each project who can be the 'apparent' sender of the
> emails.  On enwiki I have received *many* from people who are confused
> by the voting software. Someone will need to answer messages like
> these.
>
>
> Thanks.
>
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