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Election guide

The chosen six: 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections

Six candidates stand on an "Election Compass".
Six have been chosen for us to vote on


This article is not an official election material and was not endorsed by the Elections Committee. –E & J

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation and its work, as its ultimate corporate authority. The Board directs the Foundation in its operations, hires the Chief Executive Officer, ensures that the movement stays on track, and holds its management accountable.

Since April 2022, an election has been in the works to select two new candidates for the Board to represent the Wikimedia movement at large. This election is quickly nearing the most crucial phase - community voting! Here's all you need to know to make an informed choice.

Getting to know the candidates

On July 19, the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee published the result of affiliate shortlisting for the 2022 Board elections. Six candidates were selected:

These candidates were selected considering evaluations made by an Analysis Committee selected by Affiliates, which evaluated candidates on their "lived experiences in the world... especially... the regions of Africa, South Asia, East and South East Asia & Pacific, and Latin America & Caribbean", "cultural and linguistic fluency with regions and languages additional to your native region and language", "experience as an advocate for creating safe and collaborative spaces for all and/or experience in situations or contexts of censorship, repression, or other attacks to human rights", and "experience in relation to or as a member of... a group that has faced historical discrimination and underrepresentation in structures of power including but not limited to caste, race, ethnicity, colour, national origin, nationality, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, religion, language, culture, education, abilities, income and environment".

The Signpost has offered each of the six shortlisted candidates an Op-Ed space in The Signpost to express their views beyond their official statements. Please note that the views expressed in each of these opinion articles are those of their authors; they do not necessarily reflect the views of, nor an endorsement from, The Signpost.

Voting on an Election Compass

There will be an "Election Compass" for this year's board election, introduced as a tool to help voters select the candidates that best align with their beliefs and views.

Community members have proposed statements that candidates will answer using a Likert scale (strongly support/support/neutral/oppose/strongly oppose). To use the Election Compass, voters have to enter their own responses to the statements and the Compass will then show them the candidates whose views are most closely aligned with their own.

The statements the candidates have to respond to are key to a good Election Compass. The proposed statements can be viewed on Meta. Community members are now able to vote on the statements they'd like to see included until August 3. The overall timeline, as announced on the Wikimedia-l mailing list, is as follows:

  • July 8–20: Community members propose statements for the Election Compass (already completed)
  • July 21–22: Elections Committee reviews statements for clarity and removes off-topic statements (already completed)
  • July 25 – August 3: Volunteers vote on the statements (ending shortly)
  • August 4: Elections Committee selects the top 15 statements
  • August 5–12: Candidates align themselves with the statements
  • August 16 (now delayed to August 23): The Election Compass opens for voters to use to help guide their voting decision

The Elections Committee oversees the process, supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance team. Movement Strategy and Guidance will check that the questions are clear, there are no duplicates, no typos, and so on.

Asking individual candidates questions or commenting on candidates

This year, candidates will only be formally asked six questions as a whole by the community (fifteen questions were asked by affiliate representatives, but not all community members are represented by an affiliate). In the previous 2021 election, there was significant controversy on how questions were chosen, and not all Wikimedians agreed with the final set of queries.

The Signpost is pleased to provide a space to spotlight answers to additional questions posed by community members. All of the six candidates have indicated interest in answering questions on their talk pages; we intend to republish answers to questions posed on the discussion pages below. Please note that under the Candidate Guidelines, it is optional for the candidates to answer questions outside of the formal Elections Committee-organized process.

Spreading the word

Lastly, we encourage you to share news of the election with your friends, families, acquaintances and enemies! Feel free to link to this article or any other coverage of The Signpost. Social buttons are always available to use at the top of each article, allowing you to download it as a PDF, email it, or share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Reddit.

From the team, happy summer or winter, and thank you for reading The Signpost.


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== Election Compass: Results of community upvoting (confirmed by the Election Committee) ==

The final selection of the 15 statements was confirmed by the Election Committee on August 4.

Rank Votes Question The last user vote
# 1 41 1. The Wikimedia Foundation should conduct all of its activities with absolute transparency (excluding where this would cause legal/privacy/security issues) 2022-08-03 21:08:50 UTC
# 2 40 23. The Wikimedia Foundation should provide more technical support to meet the demand of the community 2022-08-03 23:10:52 UTC
# 3 39 6. I am uncomfortable with the way the WMF increasingly assigns itself unilateral authority to make decisions about the Wikimedia projects which then affect the community 2022-08-03 21:09:16 UTC
# 4 31 31. The WMF should continually seek to reduce, rather than expand, its scope of responsibilities, leaving as much as possible to the community's self-organized capacity 2022-08-03 21:11:47 UTC
# 5 29 4. WMF fundraising is deceptive: it creates a false appearance that the WMF is short of money while it is in fact richer than ever 2022-08-03 21:14:46 UTC
# 6 28 29. The WMF should generally opt for community-vetted ideas, rather than internal ideas, as the basis for its organizational roadmap 2022-08-03 21:11:07 UTC
# 7 28 13. The primary activity of the Wikimedia Foundation should be funding the Wikimedia community's efforts. 2022-08-03 23:09:53 UTC
# 8 27 26. The m:Universal Code of Conduct is a net positive addition to the Wikimedia movement 2022-08-03 19:54:09 UTC
# 9 26 10. Future community seats of the Board of Trustees should be filled purely by a contributor (editor, volunteer developer, and so on) vote on all nominees 2022-08-03 21:16:26 UTC
#10 25 5. I am uncomfortable with the way the WMF organization has continuously grown its staff headcount and budget and taken on more and more tasks that are not directly related to the Wikimedia projects and the volunteer communities working on them 2022-08-03 21:15:04 UTC
#11 24 2. Well over 50 percent of Wikimedia Foundation expenses is spent on salaries in the US; that percentage is too great 2022-08-03 21:14:11 UTC
#12 23 27. Simplify the Board of Trustees Election Process to keep Community Members interested and engaged 2022-08-03 20:36:15 UTC
#13 23 11. The Election Committee must be made actively accountable to and selected or elected by the community 2022-08-03 21:16:35 UTC
#14 22 8. The software development should be focused on constant development and core features instead of short projects and new features. 2022-08-03 20:35:39 UTC
#15 22 20. The WMF should initiate a participatory budgeting process, in which the editor community participates in the allocation of funds 2022-08-03 23:50:51 UTC
#16 21 32. The WMF should voluntarily recognize a staff union with proof of support from a majority of eligible unit members 2022-08-03 21:12:20 UTC
#17 20 25. The Wikimedia Foundation should allocate additional resources to research, documentation, and advocacy of real-world policy issues that affect Wikimedia users and Wikimedia projects (for example, issues of access and free expression) 2022-08-03 23:11:29 UTC
#18 18 19. The Wikimedia Foundation should allocate a higher percentage of their resources into tasks related to contributing to the projects 2022-08-03 12:38:34 UTC
#19 16 35. Had I been a member of the Board of Trustees in May 2020, I would have voted in favor of the Brand Project Support resolution 2022-08-03 20:36:52 UTC
#20 16 33. The WMF should get consensus from respective communities before running fundraising banners on their wiki 2022-08-03 21:12:34 UTC
#21 15 16. Wikimedia Foundation projects should compete for Movement funds with projects of other Wikimedia organizations (except for keeping the sites up) 2022-08-03 19:51:28 UTC
#22 15 18. The represented diversity is more important than individual qualifications of members of the Board of Trustees 2022-08-03 20:35:57 UTC
#23 15 7. I am uncomfortable with the way the Wikimedia Foundation serves the interests of Big Tech (Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft) 2022-08-03 21:15:38 UTC
#24 13 3. The Wikimedia Foundation does not spend enough money in countries of the "developing world" 2022-08-03 23:16:14 UTC
#25 12 24. Had I been a member of the Board of Trustees at that time, I would have voted in favor of the Wikimedia Enterprise project 2022-08-03 20:36:10 UTC
#26 12 30. The community may recall a selected candidate for any reason 2022-08-03 21:11:25 UTC
#27 11 9. The departures of numerous senior staff members in 2021 indicate a problem at the Wikimedia Foundation 2022-08-02 19:05:35 UTC
#28 11 22. Regional and Thematic Hubs create more unnecessary hierarchies and complex structures in the Wikimedia Movement 2022-08-03 09:06:54 UTC
#29 10 28. The details of the evaluation of each candidate done by the Analysis Committee should be shared with the community 2022-08-02 19:07:18 UTC
#30 9 12. Wikimedia Foundation spending by country must be prominently reported 2022-08-03 19:50:17 UTC
#31 8 21. The "Global Council", recommended in the Movement Strategy recommendations, will not fulfill the goal of equitable representation in global decision-making 2022-08-02 20:30:23 UTC
#32 7 15. Staff of the Wikimedia Foundation should be totally excluded from organizing the Board of Trustee elections 2022-08-02 06:21:39 UTC
#33 7 14. Grantmaking to Wikimedia editors and community affiliates in the Global South should be increased to 5% of gross Wikimedia Foundation annual budget 2022-08-03 12:37:26 UTC
#34 7 17. Regional quotas for grants/funding and participation (e.g. to Wikimania) should be removed 2022-08-03 20:35:52 UTC
#35 6 34. Nowadays, it is practically impossible for Wikimedia user groups to be recognized as a Wikimedia chapter 2022-08-03 20:36:35 UTC
Andreas JN466 15:13, 4 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Jayen466:.. the "Votes" link are very weird. They're random diffs of random articles. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:21, 4 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, fixed. They were Meta links, of course, and I hadn't added the meta prefix. --Andreas JN466 17:47, 4 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Candidate participation

Just fyi for those not following things on meta, it seems like there is a thread on meta at meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2022/Community Voting/Questions for Candidates suggesting that the election committee is discouraging candidates from participating over here. I find that bizarre and sad, as what is the point of an election where the candidates are discouraged from (not allowed to?) talk to the electorate. Bawolff (talk) 02:29, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This note confirms that the Editors-in-Chief are aware of this situation, and that we have been contacted privately as well. Coverage will be added in the September issue. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 06:43, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from candidates

Thank you to the Signpost team for writing this article. We are collectively writing here to clarify a few issues.

We were first asked to contribute to this by email on the 25th July, with a deadline of 30 July (in a period where other election activities are ongoing). When we as candidates were discussing this amongst ourselves, there was a consensus from five of us to respond to the Signpost with a request to follow a different procedure: instead of asking us to write new text, we requested that they used existing materials, and followed an equal process for all candidates. The one candidate who did not support this was the one who suggested to the Signpost that they ask us op-eds, without consulting others beforehand. We were hoping for an equal and fair process for all, which respects the existing election process.

We are disappointed that the Signpost did not follow this proposal, instead publishing one op-ed, and not making it clear why the others of us requested that they reuse existing materials. We also did not agree to answer questions as part of this article (although some of us may choose to answer anyway) - instead suggesting an alternative of an online discussion session with all of us. The Election Committee has designed a defined way to ask questions of candidates, which takes into account that we don't have unlimited time to contribute to the election process, and makes the process as inclusive and as equitable as possible, including embedding translations into the process.

We do not ask the Signpost to change things at this point, we simply want to point out these issues with this comment, with the hope that this situation does not arise again in future elections. On behalf of Shani, Farah, Mike, Tobechukwu, Michał. Mike Peel (talk) 08:31, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Mike Peel, could you clarify why you requested they reuse existing materials? I see your "equal and fair process for all", but your message here does not seem to expand beyond that, aside from noting time committments and translations, which I understand but question as to why that would preclude prospective Board members from communicating with the people they hope to represent outside of Election Committee-designated areas. Vermont (🐿️🏳️‍🌈) 15:19, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Vermont: We've already put a lot of work into the existing text, particularly those that aren't native speakers. Asking for more text on very short notice (while everything else is also happening) was really not very feasible. We are communicating, but we can't spend all of our time communicating - we have other things (like editing!) we want to get on with as well. :-) Also, see the election committee's comments at meta:Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Community_Voting/Questions_for_Candidates, which also answer your question. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:45, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Video answers posted

The WMF board candidates' video answers to six questions proposed and selected by the community have been posted on Meta-Wiki.

Written answers to additional community questions that were proposed but did not make it into the top six can be found here (further answers may still be added to this page in the days ahead, so do check back). Andreas JN466 07:54, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

















Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-08-01/Election_guide