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Wikimedia Foundation elections 2015/Committee/Minutes/11 April 2015

< Wikimedia Foundation elections 2015 | Committee | Minutes

Notes and the agenda from the 11 April 2015 Webex meeting of the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee.

Attendance

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  • Anders
  • Gregory
  • James
  • Katie
  • Mardetanha
  • Risker
  • Ruslan
  • Trijnstel

Agenda

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  • Introduction
    • Who is here?
    • Mandates/Goals from the Board/Letter from Board
  • Should there be a committee chair/coordinator/consensus reader?
  • Schedule
    • Deadlines
    • FDC Election
    • Board Election
    • Discussion
    • Decision on planned schedule (that can go up on meta) or plan to send to the mailing list to get final approvals with close deadline.
  • Voting Requirements
    • Discussion
    • Decision or plan to go to mailing list for approvals and deadline.
  • Voting Method
    • Discussion
    • Decision or plan to go to mailing list for approvals and deadline.
  • Discussion/Next Steps
    • Banners/Banner Text
    • Translations (Professional and Community)
    • Meta Pages
    • Assignments/volunteers?
    • How to find good candidates, can the committee do anything to help?

Minutes

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  • Nominations
    • Concerns about time requirement to set up nominations process, too tight of a timeline and not knowing about the process [Risker/KTC]
    • Anders is interested in the idea, would prefer to get concensuss on the mailing list rather then phone
  • Coordinator
    • Should they vote in committee matters? (yes)
    • Anders proposes Greg
      • Greg is willing to be Coordinator
    • Tasks:
      • Set deadlines for committee discussions and tasks (if necessary)
      • Assess consensus of the committee and summarize internally what is decided
  • Schedule
    • Proposed schedule:
      • Proposal for discussion:
        • April 20th (1 week from Monday) - Banners up for Candidates [Board and FDC]
      • FDC Election
        • April 30th (2 weeks from yesterday) - Deadline for candidates & their Identification (probably take down banners 1 day before)
        • April 30 - May 2 - Question Time/Discussion/Setup
        • May 3-10 - Election (with Banners)
        • May 11-15 - Vote Checeking
        • May 15 - Goal for Announcement
      • Board Election
        • May 5 - Deadline for candidates & their identification (banners probably down day before)
        • May 5-16 - Question Time/Discussion (possibly with banners?)
        • May 17-31 - Election (With Banners)
        • June 1-5 - Vote Checking
        • June 5 - Goal for Announcement
    • There is a need to get things verified (and buy flights) for Board and FDC by Wikimania
      • You must not have been convicted of a serious crime or any crime involving dishonesty or deception; and
      • You must not have been removed from a position at a non-profit organization or other company because of mismanagement or misconduct; and
      • At the time of nomination or election, you may not be banned or blocked from any Wikimedia project for a period of 30 days or longer; and
      • You must publicly disclose your real name in your candidate presentation (because the identities of Board members are a matter of public record, it is not possible to hold a position on the Board of Trustees anonymously or under a pseudonym); and
      • Be at least 18 years old and of legal age in your home country; and
      • Submit proof of your identity to the Wikimedia Foundation (see below).
      • There will be 24 hours of on-list discussion beginning after the meeting
  • Committee is subject to Non-public information policy - and may be subject to either confidentiality or new Open access policy
  • Setup of the ballot is a design concern
  • Requirements
    • Sounds like a few minor changes to last election's requirements are okay with the group
    • Greg will summarize on-list and allow for 24 hours of discussion before posting
  • Private vs. Public voting
    • Concern about manipulation
    • Must make sure it is accessible to all
    • Anders suggested do more discussion on-list
    • James suggested a Tues/Wed deadline
    • Questions on the table:
      • Is it public or private
      • What type of voting system do we want
      • Should be able to comment and where
      • Intermediary results being published publicly
    • Risker brought up concerns about public voting
    • Voter list does not link to the wiki, so the committee will have to manually verify that all voters are eligible
    • How to manage physically the number of votes on a wiki-page challenges in opening sections with thousands of comments/edit conflicts etc
  • Community engagement / outreach
    • Banner text / marketing
    • "Flashier banners"
      • James has talked with outside designer
        • Should have a couple of options to show soon
      • FDC vs. Board banners
      • Board would like link to letter from the board
      • Is there a letter from the FDC
        • James will look into it
        • KTC is not so sure we will have one
        • FDC staff may have something we can utilize ready in time
        • Either both up at once and looking different - or merged into one mega banner
      • Use of social media and blog?
        • James brought up concern about giving all that info to the public
        • Risker brought up that there are a lot of existing internal community communication tools that exist outside of public communications tool that can be used this time around
        • Keegan (WMF Engineering) knows best pages for messaging all projects - list developed for engineering projects including SUL
    • From Trij:
      • "I would also like to talk about how to get the community more involved within all this. Personally I never find the Board elections interesting. It seemed so far away and I didn't see the need. I can't recall I've ever voted for the Board. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. So perhaps it might be useful to think about this, and how to improve it maybe."
    • James mentioned that it will be good to get community input on the candidates and what we want from them
    • Hopefully presenting more info on candidates on election page will help:
    • James has a pleasant size budget to help with translations
      • Will be utilizing system used for strategy session input - which proved successful
      • Priority will be basic info about board, pages about elections, everything in the SecurePoll, and the banners used
    • Strategic planning team has offered to help with outreach - which is great
    • Trij suggested we continue the conversation on-list
  • We will be setting up "framework" pages on Meta-Wiki that are setup to use Translation extension and whose setup may change over time
    • Initial structure is based on 2013
    • Greg is working on making templates more translator friendly
    • Risker - I will help out with importing the 2013 checklist/worklist and then making James/Greg owners
  • Next meetings
    • A Doodle will be sent out for two weekly meetings
    • One based on WebEx
    • One based on IRC
    • Group recognized that we will be unlikely to find times that accommodate everyone
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