Milos, thanks for initiating the conversation. Some random thoughts: 1. The efforts to get people to vote are admirable, and it's heartening to see the participation trend reversed.
2. There is the elephant in the room which is the recent DE Mediaviewer/super protect issue. It is possible it has energized voters to get to the ballot box in 2015. It's hard to tell, but the number of comments and candidate questions on Meta around super protect was interesting to see. 3. Participation in the mailing list may be a misleading indicator of activity or interest, as other regional or specialized forums (eg. Facebook, GLAM-oriented lists, etc) have emerged in recent years. -Andrew On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 3:48 AM, Milos Rancic <mill...@gmail.com> wrote: > So, there are two good news and one bad. > > The most important good one is that efforts made by James, Philippe > and EC have given [global] results. It's always good to hear that we > depend less on weather conditions and more on our own work. So, thank > you for your good work! :) > > I agree with you in relation to the standing committee. Most > importantly, we need it exactly because of the continuity of the work. > Besides obvious benefits, standing committee would be able to create > the foundations for elections all over the movement, not just for > Board and FDC and it could become the guardian of the democracy inside > of our movement. With standing Election committee, it would be much > easier to organize any kind of referenda, as well. > > The second good news, the Ukrainian one, is on the line of the first > one and it shows that it's possible to engage particular community. > Nat, it would be good if you could prepare the analysis of what you > did on Ukrainian Wikipedia and present it not just inside of an online > document, but during the conferences in 2015 and 2016. Obviously, > you've shown one of pretty valid methods to increase participation in > elections. That's good not just because of the magic number of 25%, > but because Ukrainian Wikimedians have much better potential to be > involved into the global matters in the future. > > Very bad news is participation of English Wikipedians; and thus, to be > more precise, American Wikimedians. More than 50% (I think, the number > is more than 60%) of our editors are Americans (and, I think, 80% of > money comes from US). While it's better to have more balanced ratio, > those are the facts and whenever we are talking about "us" and "our > movement", we have to have in mind that more than half of "us" are > Americans. Low participation there means low participation in the > numbers which matter the most. > > We are still inside of the field of small numbers. Engaging one or few > particular communities could give us impression that we are going very > well, while we are in troubles. Thus, we should find a way to increase > participation of our largest community. At this moment we have a > number of chapters and user groups in US and Ukrainian experience > could help them, too. Besides on-wiki engagement, it would be good, > for example, to have few community meetings organized by chapters or > user groups before every election. > > Anders, this list is quite relevant. It's the main forum of our > movement and it represents the movement well (up to this moment, > thought it's not always the case, this thread has involved five > non-native English speakers and just two native ones; that's much > better than editor ratio). And although my method of checking > community health is quite arbitrary, it could give a clue of what's > going on here. If we are more engaged it will affect this list. > > > On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 5:43 AM, Anders Wennersten > <m...@anderswennersten.se> wrote: > > I believe the Ukrain case well illustrates a key characteristic of this > > election - the high participation rate from the middle and small sized > > communities. It looks like we have we had voters from 184 wikis > > participating, an amazing number! > > > > As greg already pointed this is probably related to the Board clear > > statement for the election, the high number and diversity of candidates > and > > active encouragement from local communites and local affiliates. > > > > And for the original question from Milos. Yes I agree we should try to > > collect more data on the health of our communities. And participation > rate > > in election can be one of these indicators. And then it tells us, we have > > vibrant communities among the middle and small sized projects, but people > > from these extremely rarely participate in lists like this. This list I > find > > mainly engage people from our biggest communities, especially English, > and > > in this election actually the participation rate from enwp was lower > then > > the mean participation rate.... > > > > Anders > > > > > > > > > > attolippip skrev den 2015-06-01 00:14: > >> > >> There were only 9 votes from Ukrainian community in 2013, I believe > >> > >> So this year we just made sure that our community REALLY knows about the > >> elections, thus we: > >> > >> - translated the candidates statements into Ukrainian > >> - prepared a short table with the essence of these statements in > Ukrainian > >> and posted it in the Village pump [1] > >> - created a list of everybody eligible to vote from Ukrainian Wikipedia > >> and > >> sent them a message with invitation to vote and with the links to read > >> more > >> about the candidates via talk pages > >> - and just talked :) > >> > >> [1] > >> > >> > https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%96%D1%8F:%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8_%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%96%D0%B0-2015 > >> > >> Best regards, > >> antanana > >> ED of Wikimedia Ukraine > >> > >> 2015-06-01 1:00 GMT+03:00 Johan Jönsson <brevlis...@gmail.com>: > >> > >>> 2015-05-31 22:57 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic <mill...@gmail.com>: > >>> > >>>> ... it would be good to talk a bit about the state of our community > >>>> and movement. > >>>> > >>>> Initially, I was quite positively surprised by the fact that this will > >>>> be the best WMF Board elections ever in the terms of turnout of > >>>> voters. It will beat 2007 elections and it will be likely 2.5 times > >>>> better than previous one. > >>>> > >>>> I would really like to know what's so different than in 2013. Also, if > >>>> this is the sign of the community health, how come that we are now > >>>> better than we were at the peak of our movement? > >>>> > >>> There's a fair chance the difference says far more about the amount of > >>> effort spent getting the word out about the election, than about how > much > >>> the movement cares about it compared to previous elections. > >>> > >>> //Johan Jönsson > >>> -- > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > >>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > >>> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > >>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > >>> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > >>> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > >> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > >> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
