Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2011/Extra questions

Do you have optional or extra questions for the board candidates?

Ask as many questions as you want here.

If you want, answer them-- whether you're a candidate or not!

• The questions on this page are intended to be completely optional.
• For questions not intended to be optional, follow the instructions on the Ask the Candidates page.

Optional questions from Alecmconroy

Each question is meant to be 100% optional. Answer them in any order you like, skip any or all of them.

In virtually all cases, I do not know what the "right" answers are, and I don't know whether your answers will help people decide who to vote for or not. Rather, people who represent our community's best and brightest have all gathered in one place and are answering any questions-- why not take the opportunity to actually draw upon their collective wisdom? --Alecmconroy 15:17, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Appetizers

• Is Wikimedia most like a library, a school, a museum? something else?
• Of the other candidates, who do you most support?
• Do you have a favorite article (or more) that illustrates the 'best' of Wikipedia? Favorite on other projects?
• Of the current board members, who do you think is our most effective leader / who do you look to as a role model?
• What's your Myers-Briggs type-- here's a test if needed. (I can't imagine the answer themselves directly affecting any votes-- but it's sorta fun and might help people understand your other responses)

WM in Politics/Activism/Law

• Should WMF have an advocacy role in any circumstances? If so, broadly speaking, how do we decide what issues to take a position on?
• Does the WM Movement have a role to play in local, national and international politics? If so, what does that role look like in the future?
• What can we do to help those directly-affected by 'The Arab Spring'? What can the WM movement do collectively do for those nations? What can the WMF foundation do? What can individual wikimedians do?
• If it were feasible, should the foundation promote 'internet freedom'-- that is, advocate for or actively provide unfiltered internet access to citizens of repressive regimes?
• If it were feasible, should the foundation promote 'universal internet access'-- that is, advocating for or actually providing computer and internet access to impoverished peoples?
• Should the WMF promote "Net Neutrality" in the US?
• Should WMF advocate any position on copyright reform?
• WMF, its offices, and its servers are US-based. Looking far forward, well beyond the next two years-- Should we choose our 'home nation' based on purely pragmatic concerns, one or is it a cultural/ideological motivation? That is if another nation would be demonstrably better pragmatically for us, would we be likely to switch? (This question arises when a nation changes in ways that could either greatly help or greatly hinder our mission).

Movement Vision, Scope

• What's our Big Purpose? What's our Mission? Jimmy Wales famously said "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." Without quoting or paraphrasing, how would you say it?
• What is the "big new exciting amazing thing" that the Wikimedia Movement could potentially accomplish in the next five years?
• Can WM host a 'non-educational' project if we want to? For example, suppose there was a multiplayer online game targeted at Israeli and Palestinian children, in the hopes that this childhood experience will promote future peace. If there's a broad consensus that the non-educational project would bring good in a clear way, could we host it if we wanted to?
• Should promoting "free culture" a goal in and of itself for the WM movement?
• WM content has generally been described using terms like "knowledge" and "educational". Do you think WM has a role in hosting non-notable art, fiction, music, and other works of open-culture? As hosting expenses naturally approach zero due to ever-dropping technology cost, should WM host increasingly more diverse content, or should we stick to the domains we currently focus on-- namely, factual, notable, instructional content of the kind that might be found in an encyclopedia or textbook.
• Looking far forward, beyond the next few years. Should each Wikimedia-named projects have to adhere to the same basic set of values we, as a community, currently hold here in the existing projects? (Namely, valuing the free distribution of factual knowledge). Or will falling hosting costs eventually mean that Wikimedia's projects will eventually become more diverse in their values, methodologies, and purposes?

Innovation

• How can we empower our developers and other programmers to "be bold" in trying to create 'the next big Wikimedia thing' that will do good for humanity?
• How do we fix the "MediaWiki Problem", namely, an over-reliance on a single software platform?
• If it were technically feasible and of negligible cost, should we someday empower trusted users the "be bold" and create new projects on their own initiative, ala Wikia?
• On projects like Wikipedia, how do we fix the quality problem? (some of our articles aren't very good and don't necessarily seem to be improving with time)
• Distributed Wikipedia-- great idea or greatest idea? :)
• On projects like Wikipedia, how can we 'move beyond' the inclusionist/deletionist schism over inclusion criteria? How can we use software or social innovation to create a 'win-win' that gives us the best of both approaches?

**Answers from the Candidates**

• SJ
• Gomà
• ErrantX
• Capsot
• Millosh
• Jdforrester
• Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

Optional questions from <Your Name Here>

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Optional questions from <Your Name Here>

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Optional questions from <Your Name Here>

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