Talk:Affiliate-selected Board seats/2016/Nominations/Osmar Valdebenito

Individual & User Group endorsements

• El grupo Wikimedistas de Colombia avala esta candidatura. En resumen: confiamos plenamente en Osmar, y creemos que tiene las habilidades profesionales y cualidades humanas que se requieren para apoyar al movimiento Wikimedia desde el BoT de la Fundación Wikimedia de una manera efectiva y transparente. --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 00:02, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia-l

In terms of very narrow circles, equating wikimedia-l to "closed Facebook groups" looks way too extreme for me. I see you mostly stopped writing to wikimedia-l in 2014, do you plan to resume if you're elected? Nemo 09:44, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Nemo, thanks for your question. I don’t think I’m equating both channels, which are two of several existing ways to communicate within our movement. I just used them as an example of channels that still represent a small fraction of our movement. Using the statistics you provided, around 40 people represent 50% of the mails sent to wikimedia-l in all of 2015, while we have thousands of volunteers. And that should be not surprising considering not all our volunteers have the time, the knowledge and the fluency to speak in a communication channel based exclusively in English and where long, complicated threads are the norm. Even volunteers that have a good level of English sometimes are discouraged to participate because it requires a lot of effort to participate -long emails, difficult rhetorical replies, etc.

And I think this reflects something bigger: we have failed to become a community that embraces and support multilingualism at the organisational (or Foundation in this case) level. It is unbelievable that, while we celebrate ourselves with the 200+ languages of Wikipedia, all official communication sent by the Wikimedia Foundation is done in English or, in any case, in only those languages with enough motivated volunteers to translate. So, it isn’t surprising at all that wikimedia-l will also reflect this limited vision of the movement. We need to change this and look up for ways to integrate, hear and reach out other communities that not necessarily participate in those channels.

I haven’t participated a lot in Wikimedia-l in the past months, but I regularly read the threads (usually I don’t participate because I just don’t like to repeat things already said faster than me by native speakers). But, if I become a Board member, certainly an important part of my commitment is to participate and communicate as often as possible with all the communities, in the best available channels for it, which of course would include those already in extensive use, those being developed (i.e.: Discourse) and thinking new ways to reach to local communities. --Osmar Valdebenito, B1mbo (talk) 15:38, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Questions to be addressed

Hi, I've been reading through the answers to the questions that have been posed by the community, and I note that there are several long-standing questions that you have not yet responded to, including my own question on the openness of board proceedings. Knowing where the candidates stand on a variety of issues is important when deciding who to vote for, and if you have not done so recently it would be worth reviewing the questions that still remain to be answered. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:31, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi Michael! Sorry for being a bit late with the answers in the past weeks. I've had some personal issues in the past weeks, but now they are mostly over. I've answered a few questions in the past days and I'll probably answer the rest this weekend (given it is Easter and I will have more time to reply appropiately). I hope you can understand :) --Osmar Valdebenito, B1mbo (talk) 01:37, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

@MichaelMaggs:, I've just replied to your answer, if you want to check it out. And I've done the same with most of the rest. Thanks again for your interest! --Osmar Valdebenito, B1mbo (talk) 21:05, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

What to do in these cases?

Hi dear Osmar Valdebenito, Talk:Affiliate-selected Board seats/2016/Nominations/Susanna Mkrtchyan#Questions from 6AND5/2, Requests for comment/Indefinite block the user:6AND5 in the armenian Wikipedia ?--6AND5 (talk) 10:30, 24 March 2016 (UTC)