Regarding contents / geographic vs. cultural areas: I think either would
make sense. One way of looking at cultural areas would be the ways that the
affiliates spontaneously organized ourselves at WMCON, possibly with a few
additions.
Regarding differing population sizes: yes, but there will be imperfections
no matter how we arrange a system. Regardless, we can design a system that
is better than the one we have now, and I hear no one in this thread saying
that the current board structure should be maintained.
Regarding negative votes:
# We use S/N/O for many other kinds of votes, including FDC, steward,
Arbitration Committee, and featured content votes. I have not heard
disagreement with it until now, which suggests that generally there is
consensus for this system.
# If the system was confusing, I would have expected people to ask
questions on the vote talk page for FDC and Board elections. While there
were other questions on the vote talk page, no one asked about the S/N/O
system. See
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015
# One of the best features of S/N/O is that it works to favor candidates
who have consensus for them, i.e. have both a good quantity of supporters
and have few people who oppose their election. If someone has many support
votes and many oppose votes, this suggests that the person is relatively
controversial, which probably makes them a less optimal choice for roles
like FDC, Steward, Arbitration Committee, and WMF Board roles.
I'm open to hearing of better systems than S/N/O, but at this point I
continue to support S/N/O, and judging by how many kinds of votes we have
in the Wikimedia community with the S/N/O system, it appears that there is
general consensus for this model.
Pine