A theme that has run through my comments in recent days has been the America vs. Europe angle, which some commentators have tried to discredit. Interestingly enough, early numbers show turnout from the English Wikipedia (which is almost 50% American) to be very poor. While both the German and Italian projects are holding direct voter turnout drives (there is even the statement on the German Wikipedia's mailing list that the English Wikipedia has too much influence and so German Wikipedians must be certain to all vote to eliminate this), other people are actively working to ensure that English participants aren't even aware that there is an election going on.
It seems likely that, unless something is done, the Europeans will win this one, due mainly to lassitude on the part of American participants. Americans are a plurality of participants in Wikimedia projects (27% based on statistics gathered last year), and I'd be willing to wager a majority (by monetary value) of donors. It seems quite inappropriate for Americans to be so heavily outweighed by Europeans.
Then again, when the supposedly impartial election committee spews forth nonsense about how two-thirds of voters don't speak English when 45% of last election's voters voted from the English Wikipedia, what can you expect?
It seems likely that, unless something is done, the Europeans will win this one, due mainly to lassitude on the part of American participants. Americans are a plurality of participants in Wikimedia projects (27% based on statistics gathered last year), and I'd be willing to wager a majority (by monetary value) of donors. It seems quite inappropriate for Americans to be so heavily outweighed by Europeans.
Then again, when the supposedly impartial election committee spews forth nonsense about how two-thirds of voters don't speak English when 45% of last election's voters voted from the English Wikipedia, what can you expect?
other people are actively working to ensure that English participants aren't even aware that there is an election going on.
ReplyDeleteCare to back this charge up with evidence, Kelly.
Question: what is the dispute resolution process for the actions of a board candidate?
ReplyDeleteDanny has made some very serious charges against other candidates that could potentially have life altering consequences to the victims. Upon closer inspection, these charges seem to be wildly exaggerated grains of truth taken out of context, and oughtright bald-faced lies.
If Danny had made these edits to a wikipedia article of a living person, he would have been banned from the project.
He's using basic character assignation to compete for a board seat - seems to be his nature.
Since this behavior happened on the mailing lists as well as Meta, what is the Foundation's dispute resolution process for "people" who behave like this?
For those who doubt the efforts to keep enwiki voters in the dark, check out the edit war and heated discussion regarding the enwiki site notice.
ReplyDeleteHey! I haven't voted not because I'm apathetic or lazy, but because I think that the entire idea is flawed. The communities are not going to make good choices and the time devoted to the election is not truly enough to make an informed decision anyways. Then after the elections various people are randomly appointed to the Board, the Board seems to do nothing of value, and it is impossible to evaluate the candidates as nothing the Board does is transparent. It reminds me a lot of farcical shareholder elections.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather vote for a ficus--it would be essentially the same as any other candidate. Sadly, there is no way to write-in a candidate. If I vote for none of the candidates it does not show, a vote for every candidate is just the same. Additionally, both would increase the appearance of voter turnout. I'm considering changing my vote a multitude of times based on a mersenne twister (or the motions of a "motion lamp" that I would never, ever called a LAVA® BRAND LAVA LAMP®) and making a picture with my useragent, but only the people overseeing the election will see it (and everyone else will wonder why I changed my vote 50 times in a minute).
Lol. Lavalamp found its way here.
ReplyDeleteLooks like I have to change my statistics on my Selectorate vs. Winning Coalition post. Kelly, do you have accurate figures I could use?
ReplyDeletehttp://wikilaw.blogspot.com/2007/07/analysis-part-2-correction-of-figures.html
ReplyDeleteI've revised some of my figures based on Kelly's information, although they are likely highly inaccurate anyway.
I voted for all of the Americans running in this election. I find it sad that if we are going to be run by a Canadian, we need to have one American on the board to deal with American issues.
ReplyDelete