Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2005

This page serves general discussion on Election and voting. If you have a question on Election, please put it on Talk:Election FAQ 2005. We Election Officials will answer your question on FAQ page.

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See also Talk:Elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, 2004

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To do

• Check Talk:Election FAQ 2005.
• Check translation of Election FAQ 2005 subpages.
• Check Election candidates 2005.
  • Statements are available in same languages?
  • Statemens are available in "major Wikimedia languages"?
• Check availability of sitenotice on local projects (once a week) & contact coordinaors, if necessary
• Check vote to find and avoid double votes, frauds or any doubtful votes.
• Update Translation requests, if necessary

Suggestions for election procedures

I have three requests regarding the organization of this year's election:

1) Translations. We need

• the announcement that people can stand for election, and how
• the 1000 character candidate profiles
• the announcement of the actual vote to be translated into as many languages as possible. To avoid candidate bias, a translation of candidate profiles should only be allowed if all profiles are included.

If Sj is not going to stand, I think he would make an excellent organizer for this. Getting longer platform statements translated could remain within an individual candidate's responsibility.

2) I would like the candidate profiles to be displayed *on the voting page* in the language set in the user preferences. This should be doable as a hack by putting them in the language files or the MediaWiki namespace(s); I can write a script to assist with that.

Why? Because this way, voters will not have to seek out information in their language about who they are voting on, which should lead to a much better informed choice.

3) Given the growing importance of Wikimedia and the Board, I'd like the integrity of this election to be closely watched. This should include a post-election analysis of the data: checking for sock puppets, double votes on multiple wikis, etc. This could be a collaborative effort. I'd like to ask the organizers to make this part of their election planning.

I think at least two developers who are not going to stand should serve as security advisors to the organizers. Let's also carefully define the requirements for being allowed to vote. This should be done in private by the organizers and the advisors and published only shortly before the vote to avoid trickery.

All best,

Erik (copied from the mailing list)

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Proposed timeline

Candidates accepted and presentation from Saturday, 0:00 May 14, 2005 (UTC)to Friday, 24:00 June 3, 2005 (UTC)

Vote from Saturday, 0:00 June 4, 2005 (UTC)to Friday, 24:00 June 17, 2005 (UTC)

I fear this timeline is not very good unfortunately. First because a meeting is planned next week (so, AFTER the 14th) to decide whether there is a board expansion or not. Second because 2 weeks is a rather short time to expect statements to be translated, then questions asked. I fear this is not very realistic; Anthere

Right. I suggest:

~May 17th - candidate statements (hopefully you can organize the meeting before then)

June 1st - translation of candidate statements

June 15th - beginning of vote

July 1 - end of vote, new board term begins

I think candidate questions don't need their own period, they can happen during the entire process.--Eloquence 00:47, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Anthere. Welcome back and thank you for your suggestions.

We officers got a mail recently from Angela and she asked us to wait until next Monday. Other three didn't say anything currently (perhaps they are in beds already *g) that is why the schedule above is said "proposed" (before it was said once "exact timeline"). I proposed already to postpone this schedule at least beginning presentation from the next week.

As for the length I am not worry about translation (remember yahoo! press release was translated into several languages in a hour) but I don't oppose to make it longer. How about three weeks? --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 00:49, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

For Eloquence. I am not sure your suggested schedule is the best. I prefer to have a buffer time after we set the rule and the day we begin to accept self-nomination but within a week, I assume. And as for translation, I don't think it is a good idea to have a term only for translation.

I admit it would be the best that all translations can be available at once, but I doubt its feasibility at the same time. First if we don't publish statement before translation is complete, we need to work separately and it become difficult to cooperate. We concent translation will be done on meta, so in public, just after the presentation by candidates themselves. We assure some major language translations including English, French and German [sorry now I can't assure if Ja translation is available, nor if it will be posted to JA projects including JA WP. I have currently no contact between JA WP. I know only it will be not ME the person who will care for JA WP which allows trolls to play with my real name and to edit freely including defaming me.] though there are currently no volunteer for Fr and De translation coordinators. Other language translation will be followed including Pl, It, Nl, Skan(No) and Balkan(Sr, perhaps). I support to make the presentation term longer but don't to separate translation and presentation.

My proposed schedule are 4 days shift, or 1 week shift from the former plan, that is, begins the next Wednesday or the Saturday. But there is no other Election officers available, I would like to wait for them and to listen to them. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 01:01, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Where do I vote?

Can't figure it out...

Thank you for your interest. We'll have to wait devs. I hope to let you know where you can vote as soon as possible. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 08:04, 28 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Seems to have started a day late. But the links are at the top of the main page and articles of en.wikipedia 01:43, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Now you can vote on your local project till July 12. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 01:46, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be noted in the official Election Notice?

Can I change prematurely in the local translation of the Election Notice?

RaSten 18:28, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment, we will issue an official statement, if necessary. Your patient is appreciated. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 06:39, 2 Jul 2005 (UTC)

When is the voting closed?

I interpreted this ^ as one day extra of voting, but it seems like every wiki is closed now? RaSten 06:38, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Anonymous active users — clarification of ineligible voting status required

If members need at least 400 edits prior to May 30, why does it say "All active members are invited..." Clearly, not all are.

Following on from Bjones' comment above, I originally had the following on the 2004 talk page (203.198.237.30 08:13, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC))

The heading notice should be amended to refer to "all active, non-anonymous users" (or something similar), or the reference to "active user" should link to a clarification on the election page which points out that the set of active users does not in fact include all active users.

As an active user who happens to be an "anon", although I personally feel that I should be entitled to vote (unfortunately some appear to be less equal than others), the exclusion of anon contributors should only be accepted if this point is made clear. The representation that all active users may participate is plainly incorrect if the appropriate changes are not made. No exhortations to damn well log in then, please. Perhaps I will. 203.198.237.30 04:04, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You misunderstood. Those elected people represent the users who are active user members of Wikimedia Foundation, that is, registered editors. You as anon could be an user though, you have no membership as anon, and it is written in Bylaws which you can read on the Foundation Wiki whose link is provided in the message. And I would like you to know that you can't "happen to be an anon" but you and only you are responsible for your anonymity. Thank you. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 21:40, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC)

And you're an election official?? I would like you to know that you and only you are responsible for wilfully choosing to write such an unhelpful and rather churlish response. All you needed to do was graciously provide a link to Article III of the Bylaws for the edification of anyone who was unsure or otherwise ignorant about voter eligibility. The fact of the matter is that you should wikify "active user". 61.10.7.252 16:34, 1 Jul 2005 (UTC)

this "all active users are invited" is really a mess. It is actually a lie. Because also people with 300 edits are active. this whole thing should be boycotted. Tobias Conradi 6 July 2005 12:04 (UTC)

• Yes, it is a sham and a shame that such an arbitrary and dictatorial requirement is misrepresented in this way. 61.10.7.223 7 July 2005 14:06 (UTC)

Bad treatment of Multi wiki editors

• In order to vote you must have at least 400 edits prior to 00:00 May 30, 2005 (UTC) on the Wikimedia project from which you cast your vote.
• Voting from more than one project will also be regarded as sockpuppeting.

So, if a real person is on wiki1 with 201 edits and on wiki2 with 201 edits these are not counted together, what looks like independent treament. But with the second statement independent treatment is not done. Users like me that have the same name on all wikis they are involved with, are easy detected as the same person. Others maybe less easy. Tobias Conradi 10:40, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The point of this is to avoid vote fraud. Under your plan, someone could create accounts on random WP projects with the same name as En:WP users who didn't vote, pretending that they were that user. It probably would be discovered soon enough, but it's too big a risk to take. Ral315 (En:WP) 18:22, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC)

under my plan? I did not announce any plan. Creating an account in the past seems to be impossible anyway? ;-) Tobias Conradi 23:26, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What about checking people's IP addresses? If someone really wants to go through the trouble of voting but only has enough votes over a group of wikimedia projects, then each of their files in each project should be contacted, and if the people behind each file agree that each other person is the same person, then i think they should be allowed to vote. All we would need is a system where the person would contact someone from each address, not the other way around. --Quadraxis 02:37, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)

ANYBODY TO ANSWER WHY YOU TREAT INTERWIKI ACTIVISTS SO BAD? Or are you just fine? This is one of the worst things here, I have seen in my wikilife. It seems bureaucrats are taking over Tobias Conradi 6 July 2005 11:59 (UTC)

No, the election officials are trying to make sure that vote fraud doesn't occur. Besides, if you don't have at least 400 edits on any one WP project, I'm not sure you necessarily deserve to vote. 400 edits isn't that large a number. 69.209.106.236 8 July 2005 20:09 (UTC)

Dear Tobias. I am sorry to hear that this is the worst thing you have experienced in your wikilife. As several people above have alluded to, we have set this restriction in order to avoid sockpuppetting. We would have loved to be able to allow votes from any one user with a total of >400 edits across several projects, however, it is not technologically possible to do this at the moment, and to do it manually would be near impossible. We have several thousand people voting.

Despite being an excellent interwiki activist yourself, it seems quite clear that you are eligible to vote this year, with thousands of edits on en:. I'm sure this applies to most people who actively edit across several projects. Bjarte 9 July 2005 03:33 (UTC)

Required number of edits to vote excessive?

I think being required to have 400 edits is excessive. I've been a member of Wikipedia for a year now and have made "only" 200 edits. What's the point of this? --JulieADriver 21:29, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't think so, 400 is not excessive. Very active contributors can make 100 edits in a day. Those people can prepare easily sockpuppets with 200 edits criteria. And we found some sockpuppets with over 200 edits but there were very rare a sockpuppets with over 400 edits. Thank you for your understanding and your vote in the next year in advance. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 21:47, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree it's excessive. Especially when the message on the main page says "All active users" can vote. I'm an active user, but I also have a career and other obligations so I can't make 100 edits a day. I feel I should be allowed to vote, since I participate in the project as much as I can, and I find the restriction unfair and exclusionary. --82.45.252.4 08:19, 4 Jul 2005 (UTC) (ARGH it's wikipedia user Leiwenxiu)

I agree with the board's view that it's easy enough to produce 400 edits from sockpuppets, so 400 real edits is not too much. A 100 edits per day would give 400 edits in only 4 days. If you spread these out over a longer period, you won't need 400 edits per day. 81.224.167.16 10:14, 4 Jul 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that this decision ingrains a particular view which will become self-fulfilling: that users with fewer edits are less important to the Wiki project. It is also backing a political decision (who may vote) on a technical reason (essentially, cheats have difficulty meeting this criterion). The problem is that genuine users (even the majority of users) are caught up with the cheats. The answer surely is not to discriminate against those who may be more thoughtful about what they write, but to have instead better mechanisms to catch cheats. --81.154.201.232 18:35, 4 Jul 2005 (UTC)

You're right. It discourages casual users from editing (why contribute when the project doesn't seem to care about my opinion?) and it encourages fewer well-thought updates. I guess next year I should do an update for every single word I want to change in an article, instead of doing multiple things at once. That way maybe I'll have enough edits. Someone could have written 100 articles from scratch and been ineligible while a user who fixed 400 spelling errors is voting. Something is wrong here. 141.152.190.4 6 July 2005 15:13 (UTC)

We do not think somebody who have edited <400 times are less important than others, as somebody above seems to think. Apart from technical reasons, though, I dare say that most democratic societies set certain restrictions on who can vote. In the country where I am a citizen, Norway, for instance, it took me 18 years of living in the society and learning about it before I was able to vote for the first time. In the case of immigrants, they can only vote once they are citizens, which in practical terms generally means living in the society for some time. Four hundred edits and three months of activity is not a particularly strict requirement, I believe. It could e.g. be ~5 edits/day over three months, or ~1 edit/day over a year. If you logged in and did not discuss this anonymously, you would all have a couple of edits more here on meta already! Bjarte 9 July 2005 03:44 (UTC)

I don't log in here because I don't participate here, I participate at Wikipedia. Since the edit total doesn't count across projects anyhow, there's no benefit to me creating an account to comment here. If someone wanted to cheat, they could simply edit their own talk page 400 times and be eligible. I try to contribute where it's valuable, which can't be quantified with an edit count. 68.106.180.237 9 July 2005 17:22 (UTC)

I definitely consider myself an active user - at times I'm sure my wife has considered me almost an obsessive user. I've written whole articles. But I have lots of other things to do (like a business to run), so I am very disappointed that, being invited to vote, as an active user, I am then told that 136 edits is not enough. I agree with Sj that there needs to be much more encouragement to ordinary netizens to edit Wikipedia. And if ordinary netizens who have crossed the intial hurdle and now do *some* editing are not valued enough to vote, then I think Wikipedia is unwell! --PeterR 22:35, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Your contributions are appreciated! At the current rate, I am sure you can vote in next year's elections. Bjarte 02:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I just read the criteria for being a candidate, and the criteria for voting and running are the same. This will obviously require some public comment and participation for the next election, but I'm sure that goes without saying. JulieADriver 04:29, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

The message about the elections

The message about elections is displayed now at hebrew wikipedia. The problem is that the message is at english... How I can change it? (I am an administrator). Troll Refaim 16:47, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Did you translate the texts in m:Election UI text 2005 and put the translations into texts with names like [[:he:MediaWiki:boardvote_entry]] on your local server? RaSten 17:57, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I translted it. The translation is existed at [[1]]. Troll Refaim 18:47, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)

But you have to copy the separate text items into new ones.

For example, the text (which I found here:

את/ה הצבעת בעבר.

בכל מקרה אתה יכול לשנות את הצבעתך ע"י הטופס למטה.

בבקשה סמן/י את תיבת הסימון ליד כל אחד מהמועמדים המועדפים עליך. .

Candidate statements

should be put into a new text as he:MediaWiki:boardvote_intro_change.

(I hope the quotation succeeded as I have no idea at all what I did whith the individual charachters; I just copied what was there, and it behaved rather peculiar.) RaSten 19:26, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. [he: משתמש: טרול רפאים|Troll Refaim]]. 19:34, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)

And as for the sitenotice (the text appearing at the top of each page) You should put the Hebrew version (probably this:

<a href="/wiki/Special:Boardvote/vote">Wikimedia Board Elections</a>: ההצבעה פתוחה עד ה-12 ביולי

as he:MediaWiki:sitenotice rather than he:MediaWiki:boardvote_sitenotice RaSten 19:37, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I did it. Most of the texts alredy changed, but the "Boardvote/entry" page didn't. Troll Refaim. 20:05, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)~

Error?

This happened to a German user, what happened? He is working longer than 90 days. -- 84.60.15.103 18:52, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Urgent

The user who wanted to vote in the elections is de:benutzer:gmoeller.

He is author since 17. Nov 2004

The message says his membership was less then 90 days. This is not true obviously. It is 249 days.

Why can he not vote via German Wikipedia? -- Simplicius 19:24, 1 Jul 2005 (UTC)

If you are being told you have zero edits...

Sorry, you made only 0 edits before 00:00, 30 May 2005. You need at least 400 to be able to vote.

• The above message may be because the Elections for the Board of Trustees link in the notice has brought you to Meta-Wiki, thus the vote link is now within Meta. Go back to your preferred Wiki and try to vote there. (SEWilco 20:07, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC))

And also ask your local administrator(s) to fix the sitenotice. Thanks. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 20:17, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Withdraw my vote?

Is it possible to withdraw my vote? As the persons I voted for kinds disappoint me at the moment! In their reaction to the 4th time I am being blocked. Waerth 02:28, 2 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Please see FAQ in English. Thanks. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 07:09, 2 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Who are the candidates?

Hello, I am Fg2 from the English Wikipedia (and Commons). When I click on Vote at the top of the Main Page (and then on Vote again on Meta) I get the following list of candidates with buttons for voting:

 Sj (Samuel Klein)  
 Anthere (Florence Nibart-Devouard)  
 Francis Schonken  
 Cimon avaro (Jussi-Ville Heiskanen)  
 Arno Lagrange  
 Angela (Angela Beesley)  

but when I click on the Elections for the Board of Trustees link at the top of the English main page I get this list:

Danny Aphaia Datrio Bjarte

My question is this: Who are the candidates, and how do I vote for them?

The first list is the list of candidates, and the second list are the Election Officials. Of course the officials can't stand in the election.

If you have enough edits on the wiki you are visiting, the Special:Boardvote link (on your local wiki; this link gives you the Meta one) should give you a menu, where one option gets you to the entry of the voting section (if you are qualified as a voter; otherwise you will se a message why you can't vote). The candidates present themselves here at Meta at Election candidates 2005 (translations into several languages available there).

How Does One Vote?

How does one enter their vote? It is not at all clear on the main page how one can vote, or if it's even possible to vote. The closet I found was an entry if you want to be a candidate for the Board of Trustees. 66.55.217.228 05:46, 6 Jul 2005 (UTC)

If you have enough edits on the wiki you are visiting, the Special:Boardvote link (on your local wiki; this link gives you the Meta one) should give you a menu, where one option gets you to the entry of the voting section (if you are qualified as a voter; otherwise you will se a message why you can't vote). The candidates present themselves here at Meta at Election candidates 2005 (translations into several languages available there).

Poorly worded invite.

’‘All active users are invited to vote in the Elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation.’’ This is rather inaccurate, considering there are plenty of active contributors (myself included) that do not have enough edits. Perhaps “Qualifying active users...”, or ‘Users with at least 400 edits are invited to vote..." would be more appropriate. It’s mildly insulting to see that message day in and day out, knowing I’m an active contributor (to Wikipedia), yet I am not allowed to vote. — Dan East 00:38, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

• I concur. —220.233.29.169 02:57, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Election over

The page needs to be edited to say the vote is over and X and Y have been elected. 213.122.172.138 00:03, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Also, the text at the top ("The election for 2005 now opened.") should be changed. RaSten 06:47, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

time stamps

• Halló Elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, 2005/En|&direction=next&oldid=168960 shows the timestamp as

< Elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, 2005
Revision as of 05:55, July 13, 2005; view current revision
←Older revision | Newer revision→

• The message itself contains

09:57, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

    Election Officials, Wikimedia Election Committee 

• I thing that more care should be payed to these issues especially in a case like these elections. Please compare also with the timestamp of this note. Best regards Gangleri | Th | T 21:20, July 14, 2005 (UTC)