Yes.. But which wikis are about to be eligible? For example: Wikimedia Polska wiki is on WMF servers within SUL framework so it is possible to start voting from our wiki. So our secretary, who is not active ony other WMF projects can vote because she made enough "secretarial" edits on our wiki, as she maintains regularly severa pages... But if our wiki would be on separate servers she could not vote... So.. what about outreach wiki, some internal wikis etc?
If taking the idea of wiki "citzenship" seriously, there is question of definition of this "citzenship"... Maybe in order to became "wiki-citizen" one need enough edits in "content" WMF wikis? So no meta, no outrech and other "internal" wikis but only Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikicites, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisources and Wikivoayage?
2014-10-05 14:09 GMT+02:00 Craig Franklin cfranklin@halonetwork.net:
I think the issue is that the employee vote is now a significant proportion of the electorate. When this was originally set up, nobody complained too loudly about giving WMF staff the vote simply because their numbers were small and they were too small a constituency to sway the result on their own. The number of voters choosing to exercise their suffrage is decreasing, while the number of staff are increasing. While this illustrates a problem all on its own, it also means that WMF staff who may not be participants on the projects may now have enough pull to decide a closely fought election.
I know it's too late to change the rules for this year, but I'd really recommend getting rid of the complex criteria for the next election, and dialing it back to a simple "X number of edits, or Y number of patches" rule. Not only would this be simpler to administer and easier to understand, but I would imagine most of the WMF staff who care enough to actually vote would probably qualify through those criteria anyway. A few "worthy" folk might miss out on the chance to lodge a ballot, but then that's going to be the case in any situation other than complete and universal suffrage.
Cheers, Craig Franklin
On 5 October 2014 18:04, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Itzik,
If I understand you correctly, you are asking about whether WMF and thematic organization bylaws should allow employees to vote in trustee elections for their own orgs.
I can see how this could create interesting conflict-of-interest problems.
However, in all non-autocratic republics that I know about, government employees can vote as any other citizens can. I'm also of the view that WMF operates like a university, and a modest amount of staff involvement in selecting their supervisors in that environment is ok.
Pine On Oct 5, 2014 12:41 AM, "Itzik - Wikimedia Israel" < itzik@wikimedia.org.il> wrote:
Hey,
Don't worry, we indeed have a lot of time till the next elections, but as this issue had been raised during the last elections - and we decided
that
we can't change the rules few weeks before the elections, now I want to raise the discussion enough time before.
According to the current rules [1], in order to influence and vote in
the
elections, you need to be active editor, developer or WMF
staff/contractor.
Last year this issue concern some of us. The foundation is not small organizations as it been before, and by comparison, the number of people participating in the elections every year is not high.
For example, last elections there were 1809 valid votes. By comparison,
the
number of WMF staff this days is 218, what makes there voting power 12%
of
the total voters last year. This consider to be a great amount of power when we are talking about elections (In the last election you would have around 650 votes in order to be elected...)
Wikimedia thematic organizations staff and contractors for example don't have the same privilege to vote only because they are employees of the movement, only if they are editors as well. The question - what make the WMF staff different, and if this is not a little bit problematic that the staff have such power to decide on their direct board, but in general -
the
board of the whole movement.
Do we need to give the same privilege also to all the staff in our movement? Should we limited the elections to staff (both WMF and chapters) that are active editors or developers as additional to their work in the movement?
I'll be happy to hear yours input.
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Vote_Que...
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Results
*Regards,Itzik Edri* Chairperson, Wikimedia Israel +972-(0)-54-5878078 | http://www.wikimedia.org.il Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment! _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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