[Foundation-l] for the future...

[Jon Harald Søby]

(This is my personal opinion, and not that of the election committee, etc,
etc.)

On 7/6/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Rock the Vote was aimed specifically at a younger demographic due to
> our chronic apathy and low voter turnout when compared to the
> influence we could have on politics if we all tried.
>
> Given that turnout, %age-wise, for en.wp is still much lower than for
> most other major Wikis, I don't see any problems here.
>
> Mark
>
> On 05/07/07, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) <pathoschild at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7/5/07, Gabe Johnson <gjzilla at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Yes, but nothing is wrong about, nor is it forbidden, to try to
> > > increase voter turnout. I see nothing worse about this than, for
> > > example, [[Rock the Vote]]. ~~~~
> >
> > There *is* something wrong with 'increasing voter turnout' from a
> > specific portion of the electorate, but not for others. For example,
> > artificially increased turnout from en-Wikipedia means less
> > representation of other projects and wikis. This should be done
> > globally or not at all, and by mailing list or opt-in rather than with
> > notification spam.
> >
> > Yours cordially,
> > Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)


There is one flaw to the percentage thing. Many users who are eligible on
other language projects may also be eligible on the English Wikipedia.
English is, like it or not, very much the international Wikipedia, and users
who are active on other projects are almost invariably registered on the
English Wikipedia, and have many edits, depending on how many they have on
their home project (by adding interwikis, etc).* Therefore the number of
eligible voters on the English Wikipedia is actually quite a lot higher than
what it seems; the numbers are lying, and I would guess the turnout is just
as it should be at this moment, if not higher than that of other projects.
So my point is, I hope SUL is here by the next election.

* I checked some of the people who had voted from the Norwegian Wikipedia,
and several (though, expectedly, not all) met the criteria to vote from en:.




-- 
Jon Harald Søby
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by