[Foundation-l] for the future...

[Peter van Londen]

Fact is that it is too late to try to correct the mess Mr Maxwell started.

The proper way would have been:
*Notification of the intention to start a campaign to turn-up voter
participation and the way to do it *on this list* (I think nobody disagrees
that high participation is wished for)
*After discussion (if the idea would have attracted enough back-up) take
care that all the Wikimedia projects would have been treated the same way
(not just the EN and not just the WP).

Mister Maxwell might, just might, have started his e-mail campaign in good
faith, but the fact is that he was campaigning for candidates well known
within EN:WP, no matter what you say the content of his mail: it can be
understood to support those candidates you know on EN:WP: this is
campaigning on election day. I agree he tries to correct it later, but this
damage is not easy repairable, also because of the timing of his e-mail
campaign. Good faith would have been to announce his plans here before he
started them.

By stating that percentage of votes from EN:WP should be the same as from
other projects, you intrinsically imply that after all it is a bloodgroup
vote, not a vote for the best people (the site notice is there for every one
on every project). You are bound to have differences between languages as
not every one and therefore not every project is equally participating on
Foundation-level, trying to equal that out is artificial. Most of you seem
to want to bring this to a political thing including heavy campaigning; I
think that this is a pity and hoped that Wikimedia had grown beyond that.

Anyhow this vote has now turned-out to be unfair due to heavy campaigning, I
really like to know what the Election committee has to say about that.

Kind regards, Londenp (who could have voted from several projects as well).

2007/7/6, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>:
>
> On 7/5/07, 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.
>
> The issues keep coming back up.
>
> The most neutral way of looking at this is that we really want to
> encourage everyone to vote, equally enthusiastically, across all the
> projects.  To that end, an open, evenly applied get-out-the-vote
> campaign should be planned for all projects for next time.
>
> Regarding this time, there was no such open, planned, even campaign.
> I assume good faith regarding lack of intent to slant the election
> towards en.wp voters.  I think reasonable efforts to extend the
> notifications, or a notification campaign, to non-en projects would be
> good.  Some of that has already been made.  If non-en people still are
> uncomfortable with it, we should work to rectify it now and not let it
> simmer.
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
>
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