The drama surrounding the Wikimedia elections is heating up. The most interesting thing, from my point of view, is Greg Maxwell's single-handed get-out-the-vote effort within the English Wikipedia electorate. This graph, provided by Greg, really demonstrates the efficacy of his efforts; the effect is quite startling.
Also, the Election Committee recently rearranged the "jump page" on Meta; the old version (which you can see here) was designed to make it easy for the majority of voters to find the appropriate voting page by listing the pages for the largest projects at the top. The new version is very prettily organized, but the arrangement (while perfectly rational) makes it hard for the vast majority of voters to find the right page. Greg reports that the number of people contacting him asking for assistance in figuring out how to vote increased considerably after that change was made.
I've also had a few people comment to me about having concerns that either the Election Committee or the Board will simply repudiate results they don't want.
Greg also tells me that while he's asked for volunteers on the Foundation mailing list to send similar emails for other projects, so far the only response was from someone with the French Wikipedia, and that person's proposed email actually sent voters to a page bearing someone's personal recommendations for voting instead of the appropriate voting pages.
The real takeaway of this election is simply how terribly bad it has been handled. Neither the Board nor the Election Committee has done even a halfway acceptable job of communicating information about this election to the various electorates. Fundamentally, I consider this to be a failure of the Board, although it is certainly also a failure of the election commissioners as well. We can only hope that the next election is handled a bit more professionally.
In other news, the Foundation announced yesterday that it had hired Mike Godwin, formerly of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as its general counsel. It is my understanding that the Board intended to delay this announcement until afterthe election was overJuly 4th (thanks for the correction, Kat), but Godwin broke the news himself by editing his own Wikipedia article to state his new position.
Also, the Election Committee recently rearranged the "jump page" on Meta; the old version (which you can see here) was designed to make it easy for the majority of voters to find the appropriate voting page by listing the pages for the largest projects at the top. The new version is very prettily organized, but the arrangement (while perfectly rational) makes it hard for the vast majority of voters to find the right page. Greg reports that the number of people contacting him asking for assistance in figuring out how to vote increased considerably after that change was made.
I've also had a few people comment to me about having concerns that either the Election Committee or the Board will simply repudiate results they don't want.
Greg also tells me that while he's asked for volunteers on the Foundation mailing list to send similar emails for other projects, so far the only response was from someone with the French Wikipedia, and that person's proposed email actually sent voters to a page bearing someone's personal recommendations for voting instead of the appropriate voting pages.
The real takeaway of this election is simply how terribly bad it has been handled. Neither the Board nor the Election Committee has done even a halfway acceptable job of communicating information about this election to the various electorates. Fundamentally, I consider this to be a failure of the Board, although it is certainly also a failure of the election commissioners as well. We can only hope that the next election is handled a bit more professionally.
In other news, the Foundation announced yesterday that it had hired Mike Godwin, formerly of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as its general counsel. It is my understanding that the Board intended to delay this announcement until after
Greetings. To be fair, the proposed French letter was mostly fair, the recommendation to visit a personal recommendation page was buffered with many caveats. Still, that wasn't acceptable and it's been redrafted to exclude that part. The letter is now good, but I lack the data needed to mail the french. Election comm ignored my request for a copy of their voter list, so I'm still on my own. I'll hopefully be able to generate a list of eligible Frwiki voters by the end of the evening.. Still in time to get an effective mailing out.
ReplyDeleteI could email a number of projects right away, if someone would write reasonable letters for them. (All the projects listed on the turnout rate graph). A member of the nlwiki community has demanded I not mail them, and said that I would be blocked if I tried... Amusing as they couldn't stop me anyways, but I won't help where I'm not wanted.
A correction on the Jump page: the introduction of the big confusing table was by Pathoschild.. I don't know why that page wasn't under tighter control by the election com.
After arguing with Pathoschild I went ahead and fixed the jump page myself.
The language on the page is still terrible: "If you meet the voter requirements, you can continue directly to the voting page. You must vote from that project; please select the correct wiki below (you must be logged in there)." That project? what project? huh? I didn't correct the language because I have no evidence that anyone is actually being confused by it... and I've had enough accusations this week.
I've had no new complaints since I fixed the jump page, but I haven't been sending out emails.
so far the only response was from someone with the French Wikipedia, and that person's proposed email actually sent voters to a page bearing someone's personal recommendations for voting instead of the appropriate voting pages.
ReplyDeletePlease be actual. I used this draft to post reminders on village pumps, and I added a link to my personal analysis because I was asked to: many many users didn't know for whom to vote and asked my opinion. Though, there were at least 2 clicks between my message and this page, and many disclaimers. I agreed with Greg this link couldn't be kept in a mass-mailing and I removed it quickly.