Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2011/en

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The 2011 elections to the Board of Trustees will be held from May 29^th through June 12^th 2011. Members of the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to elect three candidates to a two-year term which will expire in 2013. The Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.

The elections are held securely on servers belonging to Software in the Public Interest. Votes are secret, and no one from the Election Committee, the Board, or anyone not affiliated with Software in the Public Interest has access to them. Voter information is visible to the select few persons who audit and tally the election (the election committee). Voters submit ranked preferences by numbering candidates. The votes will be tallied using the Schulze method to rank candidates based on the number of voters who prefer that candidate over other candidates.

The Election Committee will announce the results on or before June 15^th. Detailed results will be available.

Editors

You may vote from any one registered account you own on a Wikimedia wiki (you may only vote once, regardless of how many accounts you own). To qualify, this one account must:

• not be blocked on more than one project; and
• not be blocked on the project you are voting from; and
• not be a bot; and
• have made at least 300 edits before 15 April 2011 across Wikimedia wikis (edits on several wikis can be combined if your accounts are unified into a global account); and
• have made at least 20 edits between 15 November 2010 and 15 May 2011.

Developers

Developers qualify to vote if they:

• Are Wikimedia server administrators with shell access; or
• Have commit access and have made at least one commit between 15 May 2010 and 15 May 2011.

Staff and contractors

Wikimedia Foundation staff and contractors qualify to vote if they have been employed by the Foundation from 15 February 2011 to 15 May 2011.

Board members and advisory board members

Current and former members of the Board of Trustees and the Advisory Board are qualified to vote.

If you are eligible to vote:

1. Read the candidate presentations and decide which candidates you will support.
2. Go to the wiki page "Special:Securepoll" on one wiki you qualify to vote from. For example, if you are most active on the wiki meta.wikimedia.org, go to meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Securepoll.
3. Follow the instructions on that page.

You have to enable cookies on wikimedia.amellus.net to be recognized by the voting interface, otherwise you'll get an error. If you get the error «Sorry, you are not in the predetermined list of users authorized to vote in this election.», you're on the wrong wiki: try to access "Special:Securepoll" from your home wiki.

From the board manual

The Board of Trustees is the governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation. Responsibilities of the Board include:

• determining mission, goals, long-term plans and high level policies of WMF and its projects
• selecting the Executive Director of the WMF, who oversees its day-to-day operations, and evaluating his or her performance
• ensuring the sustainability of the organization by defining a number of independent revenue sources
• communicating about the direction and the activities of the WMF to the community
• providing oversight to staff with regard to accounting, budgeting, and programs
• maintaining legal and ethical integrity
• recruiting and orient new trustees
• articulating the mission of the WMF in public

The responsibilities of the Board do not include:

• interfering in day-to-day operations, except in emergencies
• setting Wikimedia project-level editorial policies
• resolving basic community disputes
• volunteering in specific areas of regular WMF organizational work

Characteristics of effective trustees:

• Strategic – e.g., to provide long term direction
• Thoughtful – e.g., to avoid being reactionary to controversial issues
• High integrity – e.g., to put the interests of the foundation as a whole over personal or specific constituent interests
• Responsiveness – e.g., to email requests from other trustees
• Follow through – e.g., to complete tasks such as committee assignments as committed.
• Respectful – e.g., to listen carefully to other trustees' points-of-view even as they may differ from one's own
• Collaborative – e.g., to partner with other trustees and the Executive Director on the Board's work

The eligibility requirements for candidates are the same as for voters (see above), with the following additional requirements:

• you must publicly disclose your real name in your candidate presentation (because the identities of Board members are a matter of public record, it is not possible to hold a position on the Board of Trustees anonymously or under a pseudonym); and
• be at least 18 years old and of legal age in your home country; and
• submit proof of your identity to the Wikimedia Foundation (see below).

If you are eligible, you can submit your candidacy by doing the following:

1. Write a brief summary of no more than 1200 characters stating what you would do if you were elected to the Board of Trustees, your relevant opinions and experience, and anything else you think is relevant. You may not use your candidate summary to link to lists of endorsements or other platform pages, and may not run on a slate with other candidates.
2. Submit your summary between 00:00, May 2^nd 2011 (UTC) and 23:59, May 22^nd 2011 (UTC). After May 22^nd, it cannot be changed except for minor corrections (for instance, spelling correction) or translation. Any additions or changes to content submitted after this deadline will be time-stamped and presented separately from the original summary, and will only be presented to voters if they get translated into all of the same languages as the original summary. You should note that earlier submissions allow time for translation into more languages, and that submissions provided on the due date or just before may not be as widely translated.
3. Submit proof of your identity to the Wikimedia Foundation before May 22^nd. You will be privately contacted by a member of the Election Committee with further information about meeting this requirement when you list yourself as a candidate.

Candidates who fail to comply with the above requirements and deadlines will be disqualified.

• 05 April–02 May 2011: primary translations phase.
• 02–22 May 2011: candidate submissions.
• 22 May 2011: deadline to send proof of identity (late or missing submissions will be disqualified).
• 29 May–12 June 2011: elections.
• 13–15 June 2011: vote-checking
• 15-20 June 2011: publication of results.

To ensure that a representative cross-section of the Wikimedia community takes part in this election, it is important to translate election notices and candidate statements into as many languages as possible. To help translate, please see the translation page.