Education/News/November 2022/Announcing the Wikipedia & Education User Group Election Results
Announcing the Wikipedia & Education User Group Election Results
Summary: Announcing the Wikipedia & Education User Group Election Results and Welcoming the Board
The Wikipedia & Education User Group, founded in 2018, is a global group of volunteers who are passionate about Wikipedia in Education. The group aims to facilitates, supports, and advocates for implementing Wikipedia and its sister projects into the educational and academic curricula in both the Wikimedia Movement and outside of it, in the Open Education and Open Knowledge movements.
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The Board that facilitates the work of the user group is re-elected every 2 years, and 2022 was an election year. Voting period opened on November 4th, during the group's General Assembly, and concluded a week later, on November 10th.
After carefully examining the votes, here are the results:
- Out of 77 votes (after removing 3 duplicates), only 24 were valid votes made by the User Group's members:
53 votes were counted out as invalid, as they were not made by members. All voters were encouraged to check if their username appears on the membership list, and if not, apply for membership, to better engage with the User Group, and be able to cast a vote during the next election process. Although one candidacy was announced after the call for candidates had expired, the Board chose to allow it and the voting form included an option to vote for 6 candidates. - Out of the 24 valid votes, here is the distribution of votes:
14 votes supported the current 5 Board members (LiAnna Davis, Susanna Mkrtchyan, Ziko van Dijk, Filip Maljkovic and João Alexandre Peschanski) remaining as the Board. 10 Votes supported 6 candidates: the 5 existing Board members mentioned above, and Bukola Olutola James, who presented her candidacy during the General Assembly.
As the majority of members voted to keep 5 seats, the Wikipedia & Education User Group Board for the coming two years is:
LiAnna Davis, Susanna Mkrtchyan, Ziko van Dijk, Filip Maljkovic and João Alexandre Peschanski.
Additionally, as the Board was impressed by Bukola's desire to join the Board and engage more with the UG's activities, the Board has offered Bukola to be an advisor to the Board, which she has accepted. This role will allow her to learn more about the Board's work and the UG's activities first hand, and apply as a candidate in a timely manner in a future election round.
I would like to thank the Board for its continued work and hope you join me in wishing them all another productive and successful term!
Shani Evenstein Sigalov,
Special Advisor to the Wikipedia & Education User Group Board