Talk:Election Rules

Number of Directors

How many should we have? AndrewRT 00:59, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Voting system

Should we use approval voting? AndrewRT 00:59, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Majority criterion

Should we only have directors elected if they get more than 50% approval? AndrewRT 00:59, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Proviso for one director

If all the directors get less than 50%, should the highest placed candidate be elected notwithstanding this? AndrewRT 00:59, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

In my email on the subject I supported this idea, but I've been thinking since and I'm not sure how it would work. It takes an ordinary resolution to appoint a board member, that means 50% support. We could propose a motion at each AGM saying "This meeting resolves to hold an election by approval voting, appointing the top five of the following candidates that receive 50% approval. If less than five candidates receive 50% approval, only they will be appointed. If no-one receives 50% approval, the top candidate will be appointed." (We can have a Rule that says this motion must be put forward at every AGM, and before any other motions regarding director appointments are considered.) We would, however, have a problem if that motion failed to pass (effectively, a mass vote for "none of the above"). Subsequent motions to appoint directors individually could be considered, but the notification requirements would prevent anyone not already on the list from being considered, so that wouldn't work. There could be a motion to re-appoint the old board, but that could also fail (or the old board could be unwilling to stand). This is another problem with having the whole board resign at once, if the meeting fails to appoint anyone, we end up with no board (there will be something in legislation to deal with this scenario, I'll take a look...). --Tango 13:41, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Any other changes

Do we need to specify anything else in the rules? AndrewRT 00:59, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Answering this question myself, I wanted to put a suggestion regarding minority languages.

Most of the people active in Wikimedia UK seem to be active in the english Wikimedia projects. However, there are some other smaller Wikimedia languages where UK editors form a vital part of the editing and readorship base. I'm thinking particularly of the native languages of the UK such as Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and maybe Irish, Scots/Ullans, Cornish, Manx etc.

As well as recognised the diversity of the Wikimedia community, there are also significant public funds available for promoting these languages which could be used by us to support these projects.

The Board has already reached out to these projects by asking if the newsletter could be translated into these languages. My suggestion is we set aside two reserved seats on the Board for people who actively contribute to at lease one wikimedia project in a minority language of the UK.

What do you think? AndrewRT 00:41, 29 November 2008 (UTC)