Amical Wikimedia publishes its vote on the election procedure of the members of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees according to our will and principles of transparency with which we are committed.
From Amical we have decided to abstain on the election procedure of the members of the Board. We do not have time to participate calmly in the discussion nor we do completely agree with the proposal, so we cannot vote positively. We have decided to abstain in the vote because of the following reasons:
Our comments primarily focus on ensuring transparency. Firstly, we would like the practice of making public nominations and questions/answers done in 2012 [1] be fixed in the rules of the electoral process. Point 5 [2] says that the nominations will be published on Meta but it mentions nothing about questions/answers. Secondly, against what is established in point 6 we would like that the vote cast by each entity is also made public. Thirdly, instead of just a simple vote, as provided in paragraph 7, we would prefer that each elector also posted a brief statement justifying their option according with the requirements and the information of the candidates.We think it’s important that the community of editors see that affiliated entities work actively and transparently for the best of the projects and the entities themselves. If they see it, it can help to improve relations between the organizations and communities of editors and make impossible any suspicion of selfish action from our part. We believe that these proposals can make of the election of members of the Board an opportunity to improve ties between the communities of editors and affiliated entities.
To finish up, we would like to clearly express that our intention is not to put difficulties in this process but help to improve it. We also want to express that we understand that we are expressing our opinion very close to the closing dates of the votes and thus fully understand the process go ahead as planned and that our observations remain to be discussed for the next elections in 2016.
After the approval of the election procedure, Amical Wikimedia, consulted with its member base and ratified by the Board, voted the candidates according to the following order of preference (from strongest to the fewest preference): Alice Wiegand (1), Anders Wennersten (2), Frieda Brioschi (2) and Patricio Lorente (4). Amical Wikimedia considered the contribution of the candidates to our strategic plan and values.