On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 7:30 AM, Gregory Varnum gregory.varnum@gmail.com wrote:
Some questions though - if WMUK staff are included, should WUG staff also be included? If they are included, why not include the people doing staff-level volunteer work for non-staffed affiliates? If those volunteers are included, what about user group leaders who are not active editors? User groups are not currently a part of the affiliation seat elections, so what should be done about their leaders? Are we punishing affiliates that are being more creative in finding ways to accomplish tasks without staff support? I see a lot of flaws with leaving this conversation at "staff" and not extending it beyond that, and as I said previously, doing so is rather complex.
To keep the election "fair" - these questions would need to be answered first. It is not as simple as saying "okay - affiliate staff are now in" - as even the term "affiliate staff" is not universally agreed upon yet. Does staff mean they are on a payroll of some sort? This conversation is easy if we are talking about 5-6 of the larger chapters, it is more complex if we are talking about nearly 75 affiliates.
The assumption that WMF impacts the affiliates so much they are paying as close attention as WMF staff does not hold up in my opinion. People ask why treat them differently, and I think there are relatively clear reasons. WMF staff are arguably just as impacted by WMUK business, but are not eligible to vote in their board elections, and I think with good reason. I recognize that WMF is very different as it is the "hub" - but most of the arguments I have seen are about "impact" and based on unproven assumptions based on experience with 1-2 affiliates rather than thinking about all 70 of them. I recognize allowing someone to vote does not require them to, but in some cultures and work environments, that might play out differently.
As KTC pointed out - each affiliate handles their voting in the affiliate seats differently. So even some of our assumptions about involvement in affiliate election are broad and not fully researched yet. Which is the "norm" - is there a norm? In short, we need to do more research on this topic, and that will take time we do not have (as a committee anyway) right now.
-greg
Greg - I think the answer has been presented several times. I think Dariusz' suggestion is the ideal outcome: The simplest way to treat all of the staff the same is to remove recognition of "staff" from the election rules and proceed on (possibly lowered) edit/commit requirements. This is relatively easy to implement and means that many of the questions you have posed in the last several of your posts will not need to be specifically answered. It also reinforces that the Wikimedia movement and community is driven by and composed of volunteers, and it is perfectly reasonable to identify members by their volunteer contributions.