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Revision as of 23:59, 20 July 2022
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
We've been pleased to offer each of the six shortlisted candidates an Op-Ed space in The Signpost to express their views. During consultations with candidates, some articulated that they felt the candidate statements program provided by the Foundation did not allow them to fully answer the question of "why did you run", and that the statements only allowed for specific responses to certain questions. You can see each of the Op-Eds linked below! Please note that the views expressed in each of these opinion articles are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of nor an endorsement from The Signpost.
- Link 1
- Link 2
- Etc
Voting on an Election Compass
There will be an Election Compass for this year's board election. The Election Compass is 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 (agree/neutral/disagree). To use the Election Compass, voters enter their own responses to the statements and the Compass then shows 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 able to vote on the statements they'd like to see included until August 1. 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 23 – August 1: Volunteers vote on the statements (ending shortly)
- August 2–4: Elections Committee selects the top 15 statements
- August 5–12: candidates align themselves with the statements
- August 15: The Election Compass opens for voters to use to help guide their voting decision
Per the email announcement, 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. 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 for community members to ask individual candidates questions through the pages listed below. We hope that this provides an opportunity for editors to ask or comment exactly what they wish, and so that if contributors have a specific question they can ask it, rather than only being stuck with generic questions that apply to all six. This process is designed to be similar to that of the Steward Elections, which are organized by community volunteers instead of the Foundation.
- Link 1
- Link 2
- Etc
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.
This page is a draft for the next issue of the Signpost. Below is some helpful code that will help you write and format a Signpost draft. If it's blank, you can fill out a template by copy-pasting this in and pressing 'publish changes': {{subst:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Story-preload}}
Images and Galleries
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To put an image in your article, use the following template (link): This will create the file on the right. Keep the 300px in most cases. If writing a 'full width' article, change
Placing (link) will instead create an inline image like below [[File:|300px|center|alt=Placeholder alt text]]
To create a gallery, use the following to create |
Quotes
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To insert a framed quote like the one on the right, use this template (link): If writing a 'full width' article, change
To insert a pull quote like
use this template (link):
To insert a long inline quote like
use this template (link): |
Side frames
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Side frames help put content in sidebar vignettes. For instance, this one (link): gives the frame on the right. This is useful when you want to insert non-standard images, quotes, graphs, and the like.
For example, to insert the {{Graph:Chart}} generated by in a frame, simple put the graph code in to get the framed Graph:Chart on the right. If writing a 'full width' article, change |
Two-column vs full width styles
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If you keep the 'normal' preloaded draft and work from there, you will be using the two-column style. This is perfectly fine in most cases and you don't need to do anything. However, every time you have a However, you can also fine-tune which style is used at which point in an article. To switch from two-column → full width style midway in an article, insert where you want the switch to happen. To switch from full width → two-column style midway in an article, insert where you want the switch to happen. |
Article series
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To add a series of 'related articles' your article, use the following code or will create the sidebar on the right. If writing a 'full width' article, change Alternatively, you can use at the end of an article to create For more Signpost coverage on the visual editor see our series. If you think a topic would make a good series, but you don't see a tag for it, or that all the articles in a series seem 'old', ask for help at the WT:NEWSROOM. Many more tags exist, but they haven't been documented yet. |
Links and such
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By the way, the template that you're reading right now is {{Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue}}. |
Discuss this story
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.
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]
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]
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]