WMF Board candidates share their views with the Signpost
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Three community-elected seats on the Board of Trustees—the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation—will be decided by Wikimedians in the election to be held 17–31 May. Voting will start 00:01 UTC on the Sunday after the publication of this edition, and will end at 23:59 on the Sunday two weeks and a day after. This comes after a two-week period of questions and discussion between candidates and community, 5–16 May.
The three seats are being contested by 21 candidates from around the world, listed below. All eligible Wikimedians are encouraged to vote in this significant event, which comes at a time when major decisions will need to be made concerning the future of the movement.
- Houcemeddine Turki (Csisc)
- Sailesh Patnaik (Saileshpat)
- Dariusz Jemielniak (pundit)
- Mohamed Ouda (Mohamed Ouda)
- Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)
- David Conway (Smerus)
- Francis Kaswahili Kaguna (Francis Kaswahili)
- Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro)
- Peter Gallert (Pgallert)
- María Sefidari (Raystorm)
- Phoebe Ayers (phoebe)
- Denny Vrandečić (Denny)
- Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (Ali Haidar Khan)
- Nisar Ahmed Syed (అహ్మద్ నిసార్)
- James Heilman (Doc James)
- Tim Davenport (Carrite)
- Samuel Klein (Sj)
- Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustanilanguage)
- Edward Saperia (EdSaperia)
- Mike Nicolaije (Taketa)
Pete Forsyth (Peteforsyth)(Editor's note: Pete Forsyth withdrew from the election on 16 May)
Voting process
A ternary voting system will be used, imported in 2013 from the English Wikipedia's ArbCom elections, although there is no mention of this system on the election pages, including the FAQ page. The system gives voters three options for each candidate—support, neutral, or oppose—in which avoiding "neutral" votes strengthens the positions of those whom a voter supports, on simple arithmetic grounds. The formula S/(S+O) will determine the successful candidates, who must then be endorsed by the WMF Board. Vote-checking will be conducted 1–5 June; the election committee's goal for announcing the results is 5 June.
As in the recent FDC elections, the presence of rafts of "translation" links at the top of the election pages—including the candidate statement page—will be met with bemusement by non-English-speakers who click on one: they will typically arrive at the very same English-language page; this is despite the fact that most of the potential electorate of more than 70,000 comprises non-anglophones.
The Signpost will add links to the eligibility tester and voting page when they become available.
The survey
We sent out a three-part survey of attitudes to Board-relevant issues to all 21 candidates, of whom 19 provided responses.[A] The results are set out below in two tables for the numerical responses. In the final part, we invited candidates to write brief comments where they felt they needed to explain a numerical response. Voters may find it useful to peruse the tables in relation to candidates they are considering voting for or against. The data may also interest the movement in terms of the attitudes of this group of Wikimedians who are putting themselves forward for high office, both as a whole and on the basis of the following three demographic groupings that reflect key internal dynamics of the organisation:
- Global south/north: six candidates are from the global south (Sailesh, Ahmad, Muzammil, Josh, Tonmoy, and Mahomed) and 13 from the global north (Mike, Peter, Tim, David, Cristian, Denny, James, Dariusz, María, Phoebe, Pete, Samuel, and Ed);
- Native language: eight candidates are native English-speakers (Tim, David, James, Phoebe, Pete, Samuel, Josh, and Ed) and 11 are native speakers of other languages (Mike, Peter, Cristian, Denny, Dariusz, Sailesh, Ahmad, María, Muzammil, Tonmoy, and Mahomed)
- Gender: two candidates are female and 17 are male, a ratio that itself reflects what is commonly believed to pertain in editorial communities.
The Signpost saw it as important that candidates were put in the position of responding in isolation, without knowing how their colleagues would be reacting. While the whole candidature is large enough to allow for statistical significance, our demographic comparisons involve smaller samples and should be treated with caution in this respect.
Five propositions
The first part of the survey presented each candidate with five propositions and a Likert scale, asking them to assign a numeral to each:
- 1 = strongly agree
- 2 = agree
- 3 = neutral/no response
- 4 = disagree
- 5 = strongly disagree
We calculated averages within the four-point space between 1 and 5, and the sum of the positive responses (1s and 2s), negative responses (4s and 5s), and neutral/no response. The first two propositions garnered roughly equal numbers of positives and negatives:
- (a) "The Board should implement a merger of affiliate-selected with community-elected Board seats." Average score 2.9 (stdev 1.1); 7 positive, 8 negative, 4 neutral/no response.
- (b) "The Board should appoint more technology experts as trustees." Average score 3.0 (stdev 1.1); 6 positive, 7 negative, 6 neutral/no response.
The last three propositions show strong skews towards positive or negative:
- (c) "Wikimedia’s two big annual conference formats—Wikimania and the Wikimedia conference—should be merged." Average score 3.6 (stdev 0.8, a tight spread); only Mahomed is positive; 13 are negative; and 5 are neutral/no response.
- (d) "The WMF's current reserves of some US$47 million should be transformed into the seeding for a WMF endowment, thus increasing yearly returns from the endowment." Average score 2.2 (stdev 1.0, a reasonably tight spread); 14 are positive; only Mike and Ahmad are negative; and 3 are neutral/no response.
- (e) "The WMF's terms of use should forbid paid editing of any type on its sites." Average score a low 3.0 (stdev 1.3); only David and Tonmoy support the proposition; 13 are negative; and 2 are neutral/no response.
For proposition (a), the global north is slightly less supportive than the global south (averages 3.2 vs 2.5, with stdevs 1.0 and 1.2, respectively). For proposition (e) the same is true (4.2 vs 3.3; stdevs 1.1 and 1.5). There is otherwise little difference between the demographic groups in their responses to the five propositions.
| Propositions | Mike | Peter G | Tim | David | Cristian | Denny | James | Dariusz | Sailesh | Ahmad | María | Muzammil | Phoebe | Pete F | Samuel | Josh | Ed | Tonmoy | Mahomed | Av. (StDev) | Positive | Negative | Neutral |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Merge affiliate-selected with community-elected Board seats | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2.9 (1.1) | 7 | 8 | 4 |
| Appoint more tech experts as trustees | 4 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 3.0 (1.1) | 6 | 7 | 6 |
| Merge Wikimania and Wikimedia conferences | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3.6 (0.8) | 1 | 13 | 5 |
| Use reserves to seed new endowment | 4 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2.2 (1.0) | 14 | 2 | 3 |
| Terms of use should forbid paid editing | 4 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 3.9 (1.3) | 2 | 13 | 2 |
Ten priorities
The candidates were asked to number 10 priorities using all numerals from 1 to 10, allocating each number once and only once. Unlike the first part, here there was no opportunity to opt out by choosing the "neutral" number. The thematic order in the list was deliberately scrambled.
Based on the averages of all candidates, the order of perceived importance is set out below. The average placement of the 10 priorities occurs in three clusters: the first two, then a gap between them and the next five, then another gap separating the last three from the rest. [B]
- Increasing editor retention [1st priority – average placement of 3.6 out of 10 items]
- Increasing reader and editor participation in the global south [2nd – average 3.7]
- Reducing the gender gap in the editing communities [3rd – average 5.1]
- Providing more engineering resources to improve editors' experience [4th – average 5.2]
- Investing more in collecting data relevant to our mission [equal-5th – average 5.3]
- Investing more in mobile [equal-5th – average 5.3]
- Providing more engineering resources to improve readers' experience [7th – average 5.5]
- Advocating for freedom of information on the internet [8th – average 6.9]
- Funding more offline meetups (e.g. conferences, editathons). [9th – average 7.1]
- Implementing VisualEditor [10th – average 7.3]
| Priorities | Mike | Peter G | Tim | David | Cristian | Denny | James | Dariusz | Sailesh | Ahmad | María | Muzammil | Phoebe | Pete F | Samuel | Josh | Ed | Tonmoy | Mahomed | Av. (StDev) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Increasing global south reader and editor participation | 6 | 3 | 8 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 10 | 1 | 1 | 3.7 (2.9) |
| Increasing editor retention | 1 | 1 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 3.6 (2.5) |
| Investing more in mobile | 4 | 8 | 5 | 9 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 7 | 3 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 10 | 3 | 8 | 2 | 5.3 (2.7) |
| Investing more in collecting data | 7 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 5 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 4 | 9 | 3 | 1 | 8 | 5 | 9 | 8 | 5.3 (3.1) |
| Funding more offline meetups | 5 | 6 | 9 | 6 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 3 | 2 | 8 | 6 | 10 | 8 | 10 | 4 | 7 | 7 | 3 | 7.1 (2.7) |
| Implementing VisualEditor | 10 | 7 | 4 | 10 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 4 | 10 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 10 | 7 | 7.3 (2.1) |
| Reducing the gender gap in editing communities | 8 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 3 | 9 | 2 | 9 | 5.1 (2.4) |
| Advocating for freedom of information on the internet | 9 | 2 | 10 | 5 | 6 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 3 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 10 | 6.9 (2.3) |
| Providing more engineering resources to improve readers' experience | 2 | 10 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 9 | 3 | 7 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 5.5 (2.8) |
| Providing more engineering resources to improve editors' experience | 3 | 9 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 9 | 10 | 4 | 8 | 5 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 5.2 (3.0) |
Demographic analyses
The three graphs below display the differences among the three demographic groups (global south/north, anglophones/non-anglophones, and females/males). A stark south–north difference is clear in prioritising the need to increase global south reader and editor participation; the priority gains second place overall only because it is placed in top position by five of the six global-south candidates, and second by the other; their average is 1.2, with a tight spread (standard deviation just 0.4). No northerner places this priority first, although five place it second (one, Ed, places it last of the 10), to give an average of 4.8 (with a larger spread, stdev of 2.9).
Surprisingly, what has been widely assumed as a greater reliance on mobile devices in the global south is not reflected in the ratings by each group, with the south's average of 6.5 (stdev 3.7) and the north's of 4.7 (2.0). Funding offline meetups such as conferences and editathons is much more important to the southern candidates—4.2 (1.9) as opposed to a dismissive 8.4 (1.9) among northerners. Southerners place slighly more importance on WMF advocacy for internet freedom, at 6.3 (2.7) versus the north's 7.2 (2.2), and slightly less on collecting mission-relevant data—6.2 (2.4) against northerners' 4.9 (3.4). Northern support for investing in editor retention is slightly greater at 3.2 (2.4) than southern support at 4.5 (2.9). Engineering to improve readers' and editors' experience is significantly more valued by the north, at 4.8 (3.1) and 4.4 (2.9), respectively, than by the south, at more tightly converging scores of 6.8 (1.7) and 7.0 (2.4), respectively.
As might be expected, the anglophone/non-anglophone differences are not unlike the north/south, even though these categories are by no means a one-to-one match. Weaker non-anglophone northern support for investment in the global south and offline meetups is evident; support for mobile investment is almost equal between these two linguistic groups.
Disparities in terms of candidates' gender are interesting, even given the low sample size. Most striking is that the two female candidates placed the need to reduce the gender gap as a high priority on average—2.0 (1.4)—whereas the males gave it 5.4 (2.3). Six of the 17 males rated the gender gap as 7th, 8th or 9th out of 10; only one, Tonmoy, rated it 2nd, and four rated it 3rd. The women rated the global south and mobile investment more highly than the men, and collecting data and offline meetups less highly.
This analysis of a sample of Wikimedians may be of limited demographic generalisability; however, it does suggest that the WMF might consider gathering similar data from larger samples to provide insights relevant to the movement's policy-making.
Candidates' comments
We limited candidates to a total of 20 words, given their large number. Most did not write comments, and while we are including a brief list, paraphrased or quoted, those who are not mentioned should not be regarded as having no opinions on the issues.
- On "Appoint more tech experts as trustees", Mike writes: "Appoint experts as non-voting board members."
- On the endowment issue, Phoebe writes: "I am strongly in favor of an endowment, but not including 100% of the current reserves." She also writes that "we have many pressing challenges (participation, etc.) that must be worked on in parallel, and engineering investment is one means toward addressing these challenges." Ed: "Perhaps not all of it, but an endowment for core functions seems sensible given our current fundraising situation, which is strong in the short term but may start to wane in the medium term." María: "Agree with endowment, but no so large so fast."
- On advocating internet freedom, Muzammil writes: "Although I am all for it, I gave it a lower priority because of the political overtone and the fear that pushing it too much may jeopardize core Wikipedia objectives in some geographic locations."
- On forbidding paid editing, Muzammil writes: "we should stop paid editing for promotion or those edits which forward some agenda – ideological or political." James: "The WMF has forbidden non-disclosed paid editing. It should now help enforce this. Not all types of paid editing should be banned." He also points to the relevance of engineering to improve editor experience to attracting and retaining female editors and those in the global south. Ed: "Forbid, no. Manage, yes."
- On the relationship between several of the issues, Ed writes: "I see global south gap and gender gap primarily as symptoms of ageing product design."
- On the merging of Wikimania and Wikimedia conferences, Ed writes: "Their scope isn't tightly defined at the moment, but I feel they don't overlap that much."
- Saileshpat believes that offline meetups are important to increasing editor numbers, awareness, and educational potential in the global south, where some WMF language sites are inactive or growing only slowly; he also stresses the importance of VisualEditor to making sites more editor-friendly.
- Dariusz: "There has never been anyone outside of Northern America/Western Europe elected to the Board, maybe it is time to change that. One of the biggest issues as a movement we face is finding balance of power between the WMF, the chapters, and the communities ..."
- Tim: "Spending money on programs without researching volunteer demographics and needs and reader desires is putting the cart before the horse."
Footnotes:
- ^ Despite our invitations and reminders, Francis Kaswahili Kaguna did not communicate, possibly due to internet issues, and Houcemeddine Turki responded just before publication, nearly three days after our requested deadline and after the tables and graphs had been completed.
- ^ The spectrum is from 1 to 10, not 0 to 10, so the average of these averages is 5.5 rather than 5.0—they are skewed by half a point towards 10, compared with what might at first be thought of as a gravitational centre.
Discuss this story
I find it disappointing that so many candidates don't want to merge the affiliate-selected and community-selected board seats. The former is not always aligned with and is certainly not representative of the latter, yet they are granted two seats on the Board of Trustees. In comparison, the community gets three. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:38, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just want to give props to Tony1 and the signpost team for this excellent piece of coverage. Winner 42 Talk to me! 18:56, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Csisc responses
I did not give my overview to Signpost as I had exams from 10 to 15 May 2015. However, I have the great delight to show it here.
Part A: (a) The Board should implement a merger of affiliate-selected with community-elected Board seats 4. (b) The Board should should appoint more technology experts as trustees 2. (c) Wikimedia’s two big annual conference formats—Wikimania and the Wikimedia conference—should be merged 2. (d) The WMF's current reserves of some US$47 million should be transformed into the seeding for a WMF endowment, thus increasing yearly returns from the endowment 3 (e) The WMF's terms of use should forbid paid editing of any type on its sites 3
Part B: Increasing reader and editor participation in the global south. 5. Increasing editor retention 6. Investing more in mobile. 8. Investing more in collecting data relevant to our mission. 4. Funding more offline meetups (e.g. conferences, editathons). [My priority 9. Implementing VisualEditor 7. Reducing the gender gap in the editing communities 1. Advocating for freedom of information on the internet 10. Providing more engineering resources to improve readers' experience 3. Providing more engineering resources to improve editors' experience 2.
If elected, I will give more interest to the amelioration of the localization of WMF wikis and the implementation of more independent wikis in the WMF ones. I will ensure more importance to community as I will create a council of admins for each wiki that will take decisions on the regulation of projects and policy change in that particular wiki. --Csisc (talk) 08:18, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
On me placing the Global South second rather than first
I think at this point, I should explain why I placed editor retention first rather than onboarding the Global South despite being a Global South candidate, because had I voted the other way like the other candidates from the Global South, it would've tipped the balance in favor of the former. (If I was able to, I would've voted 1.5 in favor of both.)
Unlike the other candidates from the Global South, I predominantly edit on the English Wikipedia like most Filipino Wikipedians, and editor retention is very important to our community where we've lost editors, new and old, either to real-life commitments or arguments on-wiki. This was a very difficult decision for me to make as I was answering this survey, but I feel at this point that we need to grow our existing community so that we actually have new people to welcome. As much as we want to make our new editors feel comfortable (and we definitely should bring them on board!), we can't onboard new editors from the developing world when they have no tight-knit community to look forward to who could help them with on-wiki issues or who could better translate Wikipedia's "quirks" if you will to an appropriate cultural context. New editors, especially on the English Wikipedia, are some of the most vulnerable members of our community, and I strongly feel that it's the responsibility of older, more experienced editors to make them feel at home and to help them grow into becoming more experienced. This doesn't happen when there are no older editors.
That being said, I am still strongly committed to the onboarding of Wikimedians from the developing world, I still believe that we need to grow our developing world presence in an environment where editor trust is present, and retention of good editors is a good strategy towards realizing our goal of expanding our reach in the developing world. Thank you. --Sky Harbor (talk) 11:05, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Small correction
I'm from Namibia. That should be Global South, not Global North. --Pgallert (talk) 08:38, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is this article a sufficient lens into candidate qualifications?
For those who have looked at both the official candidate questions page and this article: What do you think of this article as a tool for evaluating candidates? It seems to me that the questions (from many different Wikimedians) reflect a broad array of concerns, interests, and hopes around Wikimedia. This piece, which according to discussion above was prepared by only one reporter, reflects a view which seems to me rather narrow; and yet it is presented as the totality of the Signpost's news coverage, not as an opinion piece.
I brought up this issue with Tony1 when I was still a candidate (as noted above, I have since withdrawn), suggesting that broad, emerging themes in the questions and answers (such as those in Question 3) were not reflected or addressable with these questions. Tony's response was:
I don't think readers, who might or might not take the time to read all 31 questions and each of the 21 candidates' lengthy answers, would be bored by summary and analysis. I'm concerned that many voters will look to the Signpost for comprehensive analysis (even if that is not a fair expectation of a volunteer publication). I respect and value the efforts of Tony and the Signpost editorial staff to produce this publication, and I certainly do not think there is any intent to advance an agenda here. My question is not about intent, but about the consequences: are voters adequately informed/guided here? What do others think -- and if you agree, are their ways this can be improved, either in this cycle or in the future? -Pete (talk) 20:38, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Candidate names in the table
Is there any particular reason why the first names of all candidates *except* Ali Haidar Khan are used in the table? Why is his the only column using his username? And would it be possible to add in the name you are using in the tables for each candidate with the list of candidates at the top of the page, or at least sort the names in the order that they appear in the list of candidates? Thanks. Risker (talk) 12:30, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This coverage was an enormous task that I did as a volunteer in good faith; just sending the emails and posting talkpage notifications involved some 70 actions, including thank-yous and clarifications. Let's not even mention tabulation, data analysis, and writing it up. It took days, just when I had clients with sharp deadlines; but I'm keen, just as are my Signpost colleagues who watched it progress, to provide community coverage separate from the election pages themselves. One of the rewards for me was that candidates were a pleasure to communicate with.
At the moment I'm finding your comments to be in bad faith; I'm happy to engage more positively when you're in a better mood. I don't think you realise what a tricky and time-consuming undertaking it is to try for balance—with a close deadline—where there are 21 candidates in a complex, multi-linguistic global organisation. Tony (talk) 16:47, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you!
Thank you for this article and the work it took to produce it. I found the prioritization exercise very insightful. Ijon (talk) 00:49, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
My opinion
I think that:
Therefore, my top two candidates are Cristian Consonni (CCantoro) and Josh Lim (Sky Harbor). The top six is completed by Phoebe Ayers, María Sefidari (Raystorm), Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustani) and Peter Gallert. --NaBUru38 (talk) 01:11, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]