Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2007/Candidates/Ausir/questions

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Are you a Jew?

I am curious

Change

Hi Paweł,

What is the top 3 things you want to have changed in the current strategy of the foundation? Thanks, Effeietsanders 21:22, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Added Value

Hi Paweł,

What kind of value do you add to the current set of boardmembers in the area of Legal, Financial, Accounting etc expertise? Thanks, Effeietsanders 21:22, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Headquarters location

From time to time there has been discussion about whether the Foundation's current headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida, in the United States, is the best location for the office. Do you think that the Foundation should continue to be headquartered in and operate out of Florida, or would you support a move to another location? If you think a move is appropriate, where would you move the Foundation to, and why? Kelly Martin 21:32, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it is necessary for the Foundation to be headquartered in Florida, but on the other hand, I don't think there is a need to move to another city at this moment, since any move would also involve many costs. If, however, such a move were to be beneficial to the Foundation, I see no reason not to move, if all factors are considered carefully.

As for moving to a different country, while it might be beneficial in some regards, like personal visas or taxing issues, it would involve even more costs and legal work, so I doubt it's currently feasible. Ausir 13:33, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Non-membership organization

Last December, the Wikimedia Foundation revised its bylaws to change itself from a membership organization to a non-membership organization. In a membership organization, the trustees are directly responsible to the membership; in a non-membership organization, the trustees are ultimately responsible only to one another (and indirectly to donors, who presumably will not donate if they feel the trustees are not being responsible). Do you feel that the Foundation, constituted as it is as a non-membership organization, provides sufficient structural checks and balances to ensure that the trustees observe their fiduciary responsibilities appropriately? Would a return to a membership structure, with the ability of members to bring policy proposals themselves at the annual meeting or by other methods, to remove board members by appropriate vote, and to sue the Foundation under certain conditions limit the ability of the Trustees to do what they need to do? If you do support a return to a membership structure, how would you determine who the voting members are? Kelly Martin 21:34, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Licences

Have you read the GFDL? What do you think of the current draft of the GSFDL?Geni 21:36, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have read both GFDL and GSFDL, and while I think the current draft is a step in the right direction, I'm more supportive of Creative Commons licenses, especially CC-BY-SA. Wikipedia and other WMF projects are stuck with GFDL mostly because there wasn't a better alternative at the time of its creation and because of Richard Stallman's pressure. As I'm not a lawyer, I'm not sure if relicensing WMF projects to CC-BY-SA in the long run is possible, although if it were, I'd definitely support it. Ausir 13:37, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Bad ideas

Which Wikimedia projects do think were bad ideas ideas from the start, and what should be done with them?--Ragesoss 21:48, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Also on this: please explain your rationale related to this and this edit. 555 17:00, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Probably the worst idea was the 9/11 wiki (that has now been moved elsewhere), although I guess it didn't seem that bad of an idea at that time, since there weren't many MediaWiki wikis at that time outside of Wikipedia itself. Of the currently hosted projects, Wikispecies was a pretty bad idea, since most of its contents can easily fit in Wikipedia's infoboxes and all of them in Wikipedia articles as a whole. I used to consider Wikiquote a good idea, but I don't think it's that good of an idea now, especially since there are some copyright issues involved.

As for projects I think would be better off with someone else, I don't think MediaWiki is suited for creating a multilingual dictionary, OmegaWiki/WiktionaryZ seems to be a better tool for this job. Wikinews could also use a different engine than MediaWiki as I don't think it's well suited for it, so while I support these projects, I think they might have a better chance of development (especially from the technical side) with someone else. Ausir 19:49, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Why do you feel wikinews is not well-suited for mediawiki. I can see wiktionary not being well-suited, I could also see some other projects, like commons not being well-suited, but I don't see why wikinews isn't well suited (disclaimer: I'm a wikinewsie). Bawolff 04:53, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I understand the argument that some of these projects would be better off with someone else, but as long as Wikimedia does have all these projects, which are the ones that you "don't think […] deserve the same level of attention"? —w:en:User:Ruakh/wikt:en:User:Ruakh/c. —129.22.126.166 03:49, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I can see that some projects are not so good ideas to be run by the Wikimedia Foundation, do you think it is enough reason for thist that the mediawiki software (or even the wiki idea) is not suitable for them? Thanks in advance for the answer, – w:en:User:B_jonas 09:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Office evolution

In what way do you forsee the office (and staff) evolving under your tenure as a board member, should you be elected? i.e. would you be in favor of expansion, contraction, status quo, more interns, new positions, less, what?Swatjester 00:04, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Checkuser policy

What is your opinion of the privacy policy, particularly relating to checkusering of adminship candidates? Majorly (talk) 09:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Sister projects

In Your statement You write, that You think some of the sister-projects were a bad idea, can You please specify which ones and which ones therefore You would not grant the same level of attention. Thank You, --birdy geimfyglið _{(:> )=|} 11:10, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Same question has been asked higher up.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 11:18, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Communication with communities

Smaller communities in my experience can have problem drawing attention of the Board to important community issues where Board input is really necessary. Do you recognise such needs are currently left unanswered, and what could change to let the Board process such requests? Who should in your opinion be the point of contact for the Communities? And could you maybe share your thoughts on how exactly the Foundation could be helping out? Thanks. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 11:18, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Professional?

By nature and design, wiki communities are an amateur, unstable amalgam of widely differing perspectives and agendas. There is no individual or collective responsibility and no competence test for participation. Yet, the board of the ever-expanding and legally constituted foundation that runs one of the world’s top websites, needs to be highly professionally, highly competent, collectively coherent and responsible. It must have business savvy, and be willing to make hard-nosed and even unpopular decisions. In your opinion:

1. Is the current board, vision and structure fit for that purpose?
2. Are you? (Would you be a competent candidate for a board in any non-profit venture?)

(same asked of all candidates)--Doc glasgow 14:41, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Chapters

Taking into account the growing importance of Wikimedia chapters in furthering our common goals on the one hand and the impact the decisions made by the Wikimedia Foundation have on the work (if not existence) of the Wikimedia Chapters on the other hand: What do you think about the idea of giving the chapters a formal say in WMF's decision making process? What do you think especially about a) letting the chapters appoint one or more board members (beside the ones elected by the community) and/or b) changing the WMF back to a membership organization (with the chapters as members)? Do you have any other ideas to achieve more checks and balances between Foundation and chapters? On top of that, would you care to elaborate on your vision about the current and future role of the Wikimedia chapters? Thanks in advance, Arne (akl) 15:39, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Project policy involvement

What are your views on board involvement in writing and implementing policy for the various projects, especially in controversial areas where it appears that community consensus will be difficult to establish, such as on the "attack" sites [1] and biography of living people (BLP) [2] issues? Cla68 15:48, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Ads, branding, business dev., GHGs.

1. On the board, will you vote for ads on Wikimedia sites?
   1. yes
      1. pop-ups/flash/banners/graphics
      2. flash/banners/graphics in skin whitespace or at bottom
      3. company logos in site notices
      4. prominent text ads
      5. company names in site notices
      6. text ads in skin whitespace or at bottom
      7. opt out
      8. opt in
      9. other
   2. maybe
      1. only for a huge amount of money
      2. only during budget emergencies
      3. only if editors support it
   3. never
   4. other
2. What are your thoughts on Wikimedia branding?
3. What are your thoughts on the foundation's hiring of a business developer?
4. How would you vote on the board about the foundation reducing or offsetting anthropogenic greenhouse gases, e.g. power used by hardware, flights, etc.?

Thanks. -- Jeandré, 2007-06-19t18:06z

What if

What would you do/recommend when elected and faced with 40% budget deficit? Absolwent 18:51, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Suppport

"I also strongly believe in multilingualism and in supporting local communities and involvement of more people from outside the US and Western Europe in Wikimedia affairs."

What would you do to support these views?

Ze Kayl, from the french WP.

Cash & users

We need money and people. We have lost users (for a while) after this event. Nobody expected it, but... the same was in 2006. Do you want to talk about money (with these wealthy guys) and what's your opinion about that event ;)? Przykuta 11:59, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

That event was pretty much an accident and misunderstanding, with one media source misinterpreting Anthere's words and other media following them. One lesson we should learn from this is to be more wary when talking to media, especially about money, since they tend to twist the words and use them out of context. Ausir 13:39, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

more wary? :) Show me this way! ;) Przykuta 13:52, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikinews and Accredited reporters attending events

Wikinews may be one of the lesser-known projects, but we recently managed to get a contributor entry to the G8 conference. Efforts were made to get the Board involved in the drafting of a letter for the reporter's entry to the G8, but these received no response. As an involved party there is more about this issue on Eloquence's questions page [3]. What is your opinion on this, it is - I believe - an issue the board should take seriously. Those of us who contribute on Wikinews are ambitious enough to think that we can overtake the Wikipedia article count (although I may be retired before we manage it there are new news stories every day). As we really want to be able to do truly original reporting we need people who can "almost" say they represent us. Do you support this, and do you believe the board should have been involved for something as important as sending a reporter to the G8 conference? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:12, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Non-free images and other media

What are your opinions on the use of non-free images and media on Wikimedia Foundation projects? Should they be used at all, or disallowed completely? And what do you think about the 23 March board resolution on this issue? Is it sufficient, too much, or does not go far enough. Thanks. Zzyzx11 00:47, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Impending failure

The Wikimedia Foundation at a corporate level is soaked in its own drama and if conditions don't improve soon, it will crash and burn. I want the newly elected trustees to act as catalystic mediators to simply and peacefully transform drama into productivity and then success for the foundation. How do you plan on doing this? —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 06:04, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Just some questions

Do you think we should have a register system in order to keep the quality of wiki no matter the article or the image use? Do you think ww should have a "free" (no fairuse) wiki? Thanks.Chanueting 10:31, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

IRC Debate

This is a mass question being posted to all candidates. A couple days ago there was a proposal to hold an all candidates debate on IRC at a time TBD. The planning page is at ElectionDebate07 - please indicate if you are interested and if so, a time that would work for you. -- Tawker 22:55, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Experience and Qualifications

Your platform makes no mention of any relevant experience to running a major organisation; please detail what experience you have in the running of corporate organisations, specifically regarding their finance, management, marketing, and human resources. --Alison Wheeler 11:56, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Usability

Most Wikipedia users are technically inclined, but usability studies have turned up serious problems for non-geeks, and many of these problemsd remain uncorrected.

Have you read these usability studies? Do you consider them to be important? Would you commission more such studies? How would you implement their results?

Here's an example from just a couple months ago: a journalist working for a major newspaper thought that "there's no way to tell who wrote the entry or how many people contributed to it" until one of his readers corrected him -- he works for the media! How many regular people know how to check an article's contributors? If i might be permitted to opine for a second: the fact that you can view the revisions of an article should be obvious from the design of the webpage, but it's not: "history" is a terrible, non-obvious name for the function.

Put yourself in your parents' shoes: you're reading a page about Thailand that you found through Google, and you see a square that says "history". You click the square expecting to read about the history of Thailand and suddenly you're faced with a long, mysterious list of nonsensical words and numbers. You click the back button. Aaron Swartz gave one of the best summaries of the issue that I've seen:

"The page design the site uses encourages specific actions by making some links clear and prominent. Software functions like categories make certain kinds of features possible. The formatting codes used for things like infoboxes and links determine how easy it is for newcomers to edit those pieces of the site.

All of these things are political choices, not technical ones. It's not like there's a right answer that's obvious to any intelligent programmer. And these choices can have huge effects on the community.

...

One presentation was by a usability expert who told us about a study done on how hard people found it to add a photo to a Wikipedia page. The discussion after the presentation turned into a debate over whether Wikipedia should be easy to to use. Some...questioned whether confused users should be allowed to edit the site at all -- were their contributions even valuable?

As a programmer, I have a great deal of respect for the members of my trade. But with all due respect, are these really decisions that the programmers should be making?"

How would you solve this problem?

Tlogmer 00:07, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Recruiting expertise

Danny Wool has proposed replacing the current board with "a professional board consisting of captains of industry and academia" -- presumbaly, web leaders and information academics, etc. Do you agree? What do you think Wikipedia can learn from, for example, professional writers of paper encyclopedias like Britannica? How should the foundation best recruit their advice and put it into practice?

Tlogmer 00:07, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Appropriate conduct for Board members

Recently, in a non-Mediawiki forum, Erik Moeller made the following comments: "Cyde's and Kelly's arguments are on the same level: they are driven by blind hostility, not thoughtful analysis." [4] Do you believe that responding to criticism of one's credentials and conduct as a member of the Board with personal attacks such as these is appropriate for a member of the Board of Trustees? Kelly Martin 00:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikiquote & copyright

What's your stance regardgin Wikiquote and copyrights? AS it is, most wikiquotes depend and use extensively fair use, which is contrary to the philosophy of most other projects. What are your views on this? Should wikiquotes move to only free content? Should reolution on fair use have a special exemption for wikiquote? drini ^[es:] _[commons:] 16:06, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Multilingual

Dear Ausir, you stated that know basics of Russian. But the Russian translation of your statements remained uncorrected, although it contained a severe spelling error in the word "Wrocław" and still contains untranslated chunks of English. Do you think that most Russian wikipedians live in West Europe so Russian language is not relevant?

Дорогой Павел, Вы утверждаете что немного знаете наш язык. Однако Вы, вероятно, не соизволили взглянуть на русский перевод Вашей предвыборной программы, который содержал грубую ошибку в написании названия Вашего города w:ru:Вроцлав (было «Врослав»), и продолжает содержать куски английского текста. Вероятно, Вы полагаете что бо́льшая часть носителей русского языка из Википедии проживает в западной Европе, и потому язык наш не заслуживает внимания.

Best regards, Incnis Mrsi 19:27, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

IRC Debate

Hi, as this seems to get closer to the time that the elections are to start, I thought it would be best to go ahead and attempt to get the unofficial IRC debate a time and a place. By the time analysis on the talk page, the best time for the debate appears to be 1800 UTC, to 1900 UTC. As it would be best for this debate to occur before the elections, June 27 was chosen as the day. I know that this is short notice, but the whole unofficial debate thing was on a very short notice to start with. I hope that you are able to attend. Again the time is 18:00 UTC, June 27, 2007, it will be held at ##wikimedia-debate. Please do note that this debate is unofficial, and you are not required to attend. —— Eagle101 ^{Need help?} 20:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Donors and scope

Asked of all candidiates: Okay, I'm not naive so yeah, it follows that large donors will probably get some pull when policies, direction and the scope of the foundation get decided, but what's your take on it all? How far do we bend to satisfy our donors, and to what extent are ideals of the foundation non-negotiable? In five years say, would you expect the foundation to still exist in the same legal fashion as now and assert ownership over the assets it currently has? Steve block 20:40, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

What do you do when faced with a difficult decision to take ?

I saw in the recent irc debate the following question. Would you support releasing the state of the foundation's finances quarterly? Why or why not.. Of course, making such a decision is a matter of board-level policy. Now, the job of the board is also oversight. So, let's imagine the hypothesis that the board made a policy for quarterly release, the staff was asked to provide the statements according to the policy... and in spite of this, the report does not come. As board, you are embarassed. First because the policy is not respected. Second because the community is complaining. And third because, with no financial statements, there is no oversight possible. Please imagine you are facing this situation, reminded the staff once, then twice, then three times, and still no report.

What do you do ?

fund raiser and chapters

do you support to facilitate fundraising by offering a direct link to country specific donation possibilities? an example woulde be medecins sans frontier's donation page. in wikimedia's case the donation page for the year end fundraiser would contain flags, and the links behind the flags would go to the donation page of local chapters, for two reasons:

1. local law (which donators know and can make use of) strengtens donators feeling, that their donations are used at their will
2. local tax exemption allows to donate up to 50% more without paying more

--ThurnerRupert 12:08, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Committees

The committee system has been around for roughly a year and a half now, not counting previous initiatives. Several of the committees are now dormant and some never got off the ground. Some, conversely, have done fairly well.

I know this is a long-standing and groan-inducing topic of debate, but what is your view on the committee system? Do you have ideas for reviving the current committee system or making it more functional? Do you think there is a place in the Foundation, in theory at least, for community-based committees to do some of the day-to-day work or oversee certain areas? Who should the committees report to, ideally? Are there new committees that should be formed, or old ones to be reworked?

Sorry about posting my question(s) so late! -- phoebe 00:21, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Free resources

Wikipedia, being one of the ten most visited sites in internet, has some negotiation power. I believe we should be able to use this power in order to increase both the freedom and quality of the encyclopedia. In example, the board could contact copyright holders of promotional images (places, objects, models, singers, bands, etc), and convince them to release their items under a free license. I have been doing this myself, but I believe the Board could have better chances than a single person, a WikiProject or even a Wikipedia project. What do you think, do you think this could be a priority? And good luck! -- ReyBrujo 18:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Several questions

I am asking these exact same questions of you and all your opponents so I can make an apples-to-apples comparison.

1. Do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should invest in stocks and bonds so that it has a source of income if donations dry up? If so, should its investment strategy be active or passive, diversified or focus, value or growth?
2. Do you think the Foundation's spending on travel and conferences before it has a long-term source of income is responsible?
3. Should some of the Foundation's major financial decisions, such as expansion of the paid staff, be subject to referenda of the editors and donors?
4. The oversight function -- where edits are hidden even from admins -- has legitimate uses, but the potential for misuse is Orwellian. How can abuse be avoided?
5. Do you believe control over Wikipedia content policy should ultimately rest with the man who created the skeleton of the site, or the editors who create its flesh and blood and/or their elected representatives?
6. What is your position on freedom of expression in the User namespace?
7. Where U.S. copyright law unfairly impedes Wikimedia Foundation projects, should the Foundation lobby for the law to be changed? If so, how should it do so without spending money it can't afford?
8. To what extent is Wikipedia yet reaching the developing world, and what could you do during your term to speed that up?

Seahen 05:37, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikinews and building on an unexpected publicity opportunity

As I would hope you have seen, Wikinews has made a splash in the news as the original non-blog source for the story of a prank edit to w:Chris Benoit's Wikipedia page. Our Alexa rating has skyrocketed, Google news has hundreds of articles that mention - or cite - us. I had planned to sponsor a Writing Contest on Wikinews following these elections - but this seems like too good an opportunity to miss. I've asked a few people to contribute to the prize pot, but most of our local contributors don't have the spare cash.

• First question, should we do things like this - we've had other competitions in the past and the daily article count has gone up significantly.
• Second, are you prepared to put your money where our projects are and donate to the prize fund?
• Third, if you are prepared to donate to the prize pot would you also be prepared to help out as a judge? I feel the impartial position the board should strive to take day to day would be welcome in defining rules and judging a competition.

— The preceding unsigned comment was added by Brianmc (talk)

International Symbol of Access

If elected, would you act to remove the Foundation's ban on the use of the International Symbol of Access and International Symbol for Deafness outside the scope of fair use? If you are unfamiliar with this issue, it boils down to the fact that these symbols may be freely used for their intended purpose but are extremely unlikely to be released under a free license. Because they are internationally recognized symbols, no free equivalent could be created to replace them. There would be no legal risk to either the Wikimedia Foundation or to downstream users if we were to use these symbols in infoboxes to designate handicapped accessible metro stations, Disney rides, etc. I'm not asking for permission to use them in userboxes or the like. I just think that the current Foundation-level policy of lumping them into the "fair use" category is quite detrimental our goals. —Remember the dot 03:51, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

"Attack site" link bans

On English Wikipedia, there has been some controversy about whether it is, or ought to be, the policy that linking to so-called "attack sites" against Wikipedia and Wikipedians is to be banned. Some administrators have (overzealously, in some others' opinions) removed links to criticism sites from such places as talk pages, evidence pages for ArbCom cases, and even in a few cases from actual articles where they were being used as a source. I wrote an essay on this issue. What is your opinion? Dtobias 03:57, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I am very aware of the multilingualism

I am a native chinese speaker,and I will be very likely to back you if there's appropriate roadmap for the multilingualism proposal.Do you get any basic ideas to promote the Multilingualism?--Ksyrie 09:03, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Fair use

Can you clarify your position on exclusive use of free content? Should fair use content be completely eliminated? How do you feel about the so-called copyright witch hunt on enwiki? Noclip 19:16, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

How will you deal with this...

Whenever I can not find the specific answer to a question in an article I turn to Wikipedia help. In many instances, however, the reply is devoid of thought or knowledge and merely a student's guess to fill blank space on the page as if to say: "Here is my guess. I've done my job. You have received my authoritative response."

How to deal with consensus of uninformed editors

Sometimes a popular opinion is contradicted by scientific evidence. Majority of editors stick to the popular opinion (which is also theirs) and vote to delete all pages that contradict their opinion (intrinsic weakness of democracy). As a result Wikipedia propagates old prejudices. How would you solve this problem?

Supporting evidence for the problem: Once I wrote several pages on Einsteinian physics (I'm just doing my PhD on it) and all of them were deleted by consensus of editors (9:1) who preferred their old high school physics :-). Unfortunately their high school physics was invalidated about 100 years ago by Einstein. Yet till today one can read as the first statement of Wikipedia's Gravitation: "Gravitation is a natural phenomenon by which all objects attract each other". According to contemporary science objects don't attract each other they just look like they do. Similarly as the Sun looks like running around the Earth while it doesn't and there exists a simple explanation in both cases. So I just explained the simple Einsteinian mechanism of this apparent attraction, since I thought it may be interesting to Wikipedia's readers. All those pages were deleted by consensus of editors cooling my enthusiasm for Wikipedia. So the issue of propagating old prejudices, because of democratic process involved in editing, seems to be very real in Wikipedia. JimJast 13:44, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Pawełku, jak nie będziesz walczył odpowiadając (sensownie) na pytania to możesz przepaść w wyborach (czego Ci oczywiście nie życze). JimJast 06:34, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Czy może wiesz jak zmusić Wikipedię do wyświetlania polskich liter?

how will you deal with transparency and corruption

how come that some admins in wikimedia can take over and block other users at their own will? More than one year ago the wikimedia world seemed nice to me. By edit count I was quite high in en:WP. But then the first out-of-policy block came in (3RR violation, but I only did 2RR). Then the next. And so it went on and on. Blocked for blanking a user page (this blanking was based on prior agreement with that user), blocked for moving "Eisenkappl" to "Bad Eisenkappl", admins directly lieing to me "I have a checkuser at hand that confirms you used socks" - it turned out there never was a checkuser. And I never used socks. ... On and on. I collected evidences, they got deleted, just because some admin in the middle of a discussion decided to do so. This deletion even did not show in the deletion log.

I asked at ComCom about transparency and corruption handling - this was directly deleted, with claim that it does not belong there (ComCom task page says otherwise). I called the Foundation where Danny shouted at me, hang up the phone in middle of talking, talked in hebrew etc.

What can a normal editor do to stop admins abusing their rights? - Tobias Conradi

Majority biasing the facts

12:33, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Dear Candidate,

it is an increasing frustration to me that a supermajority of wikipedians has apparently decided to defend their common view of the world as the only truth. All minority views are blocked. This goes so far as to not allow facts, which are acknowledged to be true, on article pages when they are seemingly at odds with this view. This tends to make the articles POV and destroys the knowledge and hard work brought together by many, many editors in this unique enterprise. It makes wikipedia a very unreliable and biased source of information. Subjects are e.g. terrorist attacks. Will you make an effort to change this trend? It is imortant to us that the guidelines are upheld fairly and equally, and not just to defend a single viewpoint.

regards,

Xiutwel

NL

Majority biasing of the facts

12:35, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Dear Candidate,

it is an increasing frustration to me that a supermajority of wikipedians has apparently decided to defend their common view of the world as the only truth. All minority views are blocked. This goes so far as to not allow facts, which are acknowledged to be true, on article pages when they are seemingly at odds with this view. This tends to make the articles POV and destroys the knowledge and hard work brought together by many, many editors in this unique enterprise. It makes wikipedia a very unreliable and biased source of information. Subjects are e.g. terrorist attacks. Will you make an effort to change this trend? It is imortant to us that the guidelines are upheld fairly and equally, and not just to defend a single viewpoint.

regards,

Xiutwel

NL

How to attract authors who know facts

How to attract authors who know facts (e.g. from the scientific literature) and could pupularize them dispelling cultural prejudice about those facts but don't have time to waste on fighting misinformed editors. Those editors unconcsiously push their popular, and therefore already generally accepted, POVs (since brain, being a perfect antibody, automatically rejects any new idea) deleting the new pages by those authors. Those editors always prevail since they have much more time than those authors. How would you address this issue? JimJast 17:19, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Who Writes Wikipedia?

Late question: do you have any thoughts on this essay (and if so, what)? It suggests that Jimbo formed a radically false picture of anonymous users and their contributions to Wikipedia. This may have far-reaching implications. Dan(pedia) 21:01, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Coredesat

What would you do when a entry was deleted, then the person admitting to the deletion out of "Hate"? Is this not a place of shared knowledge, not exclusive to the degreed?

A Fairer Voting System

Would you support the use of choice voting in the next Board Elections?

Choice voting protects majority rule while providing for the fair representation of minority views. Voters rank the candidates 1, 2, 3, and so on, in order of preference. If your top choice either is not elected or already has enough votes to win a seat, your vote goes to your next choice. No vote is wasted, and all viewpoints are represented. Choice voting would drastically reduce the number of wasted votes.

Choice voting can be used for single or multiple position elections. It is used for national elections in a number of countries including the Republic of Ireland. It is also used by a wide variety of organsations such as students' unions, charities, trade unions, universities, hospital trusts and housing associations. Choice voting is already used to elect the board of Nominet UK.

Choice voting is also called preference voting or wikipedia:single transferable vote (STV)

John Cross 16:59, 7 July 2007 (UTC)