Mailing List Archive

Congratz indeed to the (re)elected, and thank you Domas for all your
work, both within and outwith the Board.

Andrew Turvey wrote:
> My first response is that's probably a reflection of the voting system. When you have a non-partisan system like this, there are no clear political pro/con reasons to vote for/against particular candidates and the anti-incumbency factor doesn't really work. Candidates are likely to be successful if they're well known, and that will give an advantage to more established editors.
>
> However, you might be over-stating this conclusion. All three retiring candidates stood again and only two were re-elected - Domas Mituzas lost out to sj.
>

I'll have to agree, and also point out that it's a bit silly classing
Ting as "old guard". Yes, he's a returning member of the board, but
considering he was only elected last year, it's not so surprising he did
well again this year.

KTC

--
Experience is a good school but the fees are high.
- Heinrich Heine

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Steven Walling <steven.walling@gmail.com>wrote:

> While I personally am very pleased with the results, I wonder how the
> election results will be perceived outside Wikimedia.
> With numerous media outlets reacting to PARC's research about the state of
> the community, I fear this endorsement of seemingly "old guard" Wikimedians
> as our Board representation will support claims about the community
> becoming
> unfriendly to new participants.
> Thoughts? Am I being too nervous, or do others see that potential too?
>
>
> Steven Walling
>
>
Yes, you're becoming too nervous.
We're doing fine, we're doing right, we had and election and we have decided
who's going to be on board.

Whatever the "media outlets" want to think is not somethign we should lose
sleep over to.
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Brion Vibber wrote:
> On 8/12/09 12:07 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
>
>> While I personally am very pleased with the results, I wonder how the
>> election results will be perceived outside Wikimedia.
>> With numerous media outlets reacting to PARC's research about the state of
>> the community, I fear this endorsement of seemingly "old guard" Wikimedians
>> as our Board representation will support claims about the community becoming
>> unfriendly to new participants.
>> Thoughts? Am I being too nervous, or do others see that potential too?
>>
> On the contrary, getting the old guard more active is essential in
> resolving such community issues -- Wikipedia was much more
> newbie-friendly in its first couple of years than it is today, and we
> need to recover that spirit.
>

I concur. As you described in another thread about dividing your job in
two, one can too easily get caught up in administrative tasks and forget
what got us involved in the first place. We hang on because we still
believe in the vision, and that vision comes with a deeply felt ethic.
The old guard may even be more committed to democratic principles than
the young Turks who profess to be. The dilemma therein for the old guard
lies in the fact that the solution may lie in bold actions that conflict
with our democratic ethic.

Ec

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