Wikizine/2006-34-extra

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                                    .org 
Year: 2006  Week: 34  Number: 39 Extra       

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An independent internal news bulletin 
for the members of the Wikimedia community

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=== Board Election 2006 candidates ===

==== Erik Möller ====

The Wikimedia Foundation must meet many critical challenges in the coming years, including, but not limited to:

- getting as many people as possible involved in important organizational tasks and making the Foundation transparent, open and accountable
- accelerating technological innovation to make projects such as Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons, Wikibooks, Wikinews, and Wiktionary succeed in the same way Wikipedia has
- finding new ways to systematically improve and label the quality of Wikipedia content, without destroying the principles that have enabled our fantastic growth and that make Wikipedia fun
- developing a large network of partnerships with organizations and individuals who can help us in our ambitious goals, particularly with regard to building sustainable free knowledge communities in developing nations
- responsibly and thoughtfully dealing with legal risks and conceiving a sound legal strategy that covers all projects, all chapters, and all languages.

After 5 years of contributions to Wikimedia on almost all levels, I believe I am ready to help to guide the organization to meet these challenges. I would like to gain your trust and your support in this coming election. 

Please review my candidate presentation at 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/Platform_2006

and tell me what you think on the associated discussion page.

Sincerely,

Erik Möller

==== Cimon Avaro ====

Hi. I have been editing wikipedia and the related projects for three years now. My focus has been always finding where I can do most good, even if it has meant sacrificing my own ego in the process. Attempting to find solutions in a forward thinking way; such as conceiving the cleanup process out of thin air, and making an honest go of steering the nascent mediation committee away from a bureaucratic model. (Cleanup turned out to be a phenomenal success, although it quickly surpassed all my planning through the miracle that is collaborative wikiway, the mediation committee less so, but that is how it goes).

My last real life job was about "herding cats" in a heavily geek-oriented environment (16-19 age group), as a librarian at a Sciences oriented "magnet" high-school. My modus operandi there was to meet the students at their own level, as far to being one of them as possible. Having established early on that I could not be provoked into over-reacting to their lively antics, I only had to raise my voice once (when a student juggled a switchblade in a dangerous fashion) and it was immediately effective, largely in part to not establishing myself as an authority figure to start with. Over here in Finland this model is called leading from the midst of the troops, rather than from the front, or the rear.

As you can read from my [[w:en:User:Cimon Avaro]] userpage, I have had a decades long interest in encyclopaedias and systematizing the worlds knowledge in general, and have witnessed the whole history of The Net, far from being a pure spectator; for instance participating in the founding of the first commercial ISP in Finland.

Although you can read much more about me on my candidacy page, I would like to end this short introduction by recapping what you will get, if you vote me in as trustee of the board of the WMF:
* Someone who listens before he talks, talks before he acts and thinks before he either talks or acts.
* Someone not beholden to authority, or intimidated by it, but realizing that the potential of collaboration can acheive developments that individual planning might not ever be able to conceive. 
* Someone who firmly believes that people will do what people will do, and the role of people in positions of responsibility in an organization such as ours is to apply the "art of the possible" rather than impose superficially ideal seeming constructs. Evolution, not "intelligent design" for WMF. Our part as trustees should be to fend off harm, not believe we can deliver some great boon. The great and wonderful things we acheive are in large part due to communities brewing "stone soup", each bringing to the pot what they can, and spicing up the broth.

Thank you. -- User:Cimon Avaro 02:07, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Vote for who you like, but do vote. Read http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/En 
and make your own mind up.

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