Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2008/Planning/Rules and information

This is an archived committee draft for the June 2008 board elections. Please do not significantly change the content.
See the planning pages index for links to the current pages.

2008 board elections: Planning pages
official pages Announcement Rules and information Candidates Essays and studies Schulze method

The 2008 elections to the Board of Trustees will be held between June 1^st and June 21^st 2008. Members of the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to elect candidates to two-year terms which expire with the summer 2010 Board elections. The Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization registered in the state of Florida of the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.

The elections will be held securely on Software in the Public Interest's servers. Votes are secret and will only be visible to the select few persons who will audit and tally the election. (The voting system has not yet been confirmed.)

All times on this page are 00:00 (midnight) UTC.

Information for voters

Requirements

You may vote from any one registered account you own on a Wikimedia wiki (you may only vote once, regardless of how many accounts you own). To qualify, this one account must:

not be blocked, and
not be a bot, and
have made at least 600 edits before 01 March 2008 on that wiki (edits on several wikis cannot be combined), and
have made at least 50 edits between 01 April and 01 June 2008 on that wiki.

Special exceptions: the following may vote regardless of the above requirements:

Wikimedia server administrators with shell access;
paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation who started working at the office before 01 March 2008;
current or former members of the Board of Trustees.

How to vote

If you are eligible to vote:

Read the candidate presentations and decide which candidates you will support.
Go to the wiki page "Special:Boardvote" on one wiki you qualify to vote from. For example, if you are most active on the wiki meta.wikimedia.org/, go to meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Boardvote.
Follow the instructions on that page.

Information for candidates

Responsibilities of the Board

The Board of Trustees is generally responsible for:

determining mission, goals, long-term plans and high level policies of the Foundation and its projects;
selecting the Executive Director (who oversees day-to-day operations), and evaluating their performance;
ensuring the sustainability of the organization by defining a number of independent revenue sources;
communicating Foundation direction and activities to the community;
providing oversight to staff with regard to accounting, budgeting, and programs;
maintaining legal and ethical integrity;
recruiting and orienting new Board members.

Within the Board, specific positions with additional responsibilities (such as the Chair, the Executive Secretary, and the Treasurer) are defined in the Wikimedia bylaws and elected annually by and from the Board.

The responsibilities of the Board do not include:

interfering in day-to-day operations, except in emergencies;
setting project-level editorial policies;
resolving basic community disputes;
volunteering in specific areas of regular organizational work.

Responsibilities as member of the Board

Being a Board member of a small organization like the Wikimedia Foundation, which faces immense challenges, can be time-consuming. The position is voluntary and unpaid. While board members are not expected to bring personal money to the organisation, they are welcome to help raise funds.

Board members are expected to attend at least 3–4 meetings per year in person, attend Wikimania (our annual conference), and attend other scheduled online meetings and votes. The Board communicates intensively via e-mail, wiki, and IRC. Individual trustees sometimes participate in strategic meetings with other organizations and companies, relaying results back to Board and staff.

Individual board members are expected to be involved in certain activities (such as fundraising, Wikimania, or auditing) and to help draft policies, charters and resolutions on such topics.

The ideal Board of Trustees has a mix of different skills: it is composed of big picture thinkers and leaders, non-profit veterans with accounting or legal experience, fund raising experts, and public figures. It is culturally diverse, mirroring the diversity found in the Foundation's project communities. It takes corporate governance seriously while inspiring staff to strive for ambitious but realistic long-term goals.

The role of a Board member is not always the most exciting or most rewarding position imaginable. Much of their work goes unnoticed; some of it is highly confidential, and some purely administrative. On the other hand, it is a unique opportunity to make a difference in one of the most culturally significant organizations on the planet.

Because Board members owe duties by virtue of their position, candidates who currently hold paid positions with the Wikimedia Foundation must resign from those position before they can be appointed to the Board of Trustees. This is to avoid potential conflicts of interests.

Prerequisites to candidacy

To be eligible as a candidate, you must:

have made at least 600 edits before 01 June 2007 on any one registered account on one wiki (edits across several wikis cannot be combined); and
have made at least 50 edits between 01 April and 01 June 2008 on that wiki; and
publicly disclose your real name in your candidate presentation (because the identities of Board members are a matter of public record, it is not possible to hold a position on the Board of Trustees anonymously or under a pseudonym); and
be at least 18 years old and of legal age in your home country.

Special exceptions: current members of the Board of Trustees may be candidates regardless of the above requirements.

How to submit your candidacy

If you are eligible, you can submit your candidacy by doing the following:

Write a brief summary of no more than 1200 characters stating what you would do if you were elected to the Board of Trustees, your relevant opinions and experience, and anything else you think is relevant. You may not use your candidate summary to link to lists of endorsements or other platform pages, and may not run on a slate with other candidates.
Submit your summary between 00:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC) and 23:59, 22 May 2008 (UTC). Once you have submitted your summary, it cannot be changed except for minor corrections or translation. Any additions submitted after this deadline will be time-stamped and presented separately from the original summary, and will only be presented to voters if they get translated into all of the same languages as the original summary.
Submit proof of your identity to Cary Bass (Volunteer Coordinator) before 29 May 2008. You will be privately contacted by a member of the Election Committee with further information about meeting this requirement when you list yourself as a candidate.

Candidates who fail to comply with the above requirements and deadlines will be disqualified.

Organization

Time line

01–31 May 2008: primary translation phase; subcommittee actively coordinates and promotes translation.
08–22 May 2008: candidate submissions.
29 May 2008: deadline to send proof of identity (late or missing submissions will be disqualified).
01–21 June 2008: elections.
22–23 June 2008: vote-checking.
26 June 2008: publication of results.

Translators

To ensure that a representative cross-section of the Wikimedia community takes part in this election, it is important to translate election notices and candidate statements into as many languages as possible. To help translate, please see the translation page for that language below. If it is not listed, follow the instructions on the English page to create it.