Talk:Wikimedia LGBT+/Membership

Membership call

Hello! I am removing redirect as I wanted to comment and ask about Membership call page exclusively.

I got input from multiple potential members that they were not informed of deadline (I see message was distributed to some User talk pages, but many not), also I see it was not advertised on Village Pumps, or even on our Twitter and Mastodon accounts...additionally it has not been much translated here on Meta, nor posted on MS2030 Forum where it would have automatic translation...so I worry that this call did not reach widest possible audience. Hope that this can be fixed and deadline moved to late November so this can be done and that more people can register. Thank you! Zblace (talk) 06:37, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

+1 on extending the deadline. Irdiism (talk) 18:31, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

@Zblace: Confirmed - the call did not reach the widest audience, but we did meet our goal for membership applications.

@Irdiism: My wish for after this election is to have membership applications open all year. I only stopped accepting applications because if someone registers now, during the election, then I cannot give them a ballot. We needed to have a voter registration deadline, and for example, we cannot allow people to register during this election and also vote in it.

I am a few days late with getting ballots out as it is. I expect that ballots will go out today. I am proceeding with the election. We have another election planned for next year, so if anyone missed this chance, they have another one they can join in about 8 months. This election is only for 2 of about 10 board seats, so there is opportunity for more people soon.

How fair does that seem? Do you have ideas for what more I can do? I am trying to balance the need for elected trustees, with managing an election, and with also developing our process for governance. I would appreciate more input into any of this. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:00, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry it is not about widest audience possible, but diverse. Also it is not just 2 extra but confirming existing ones - no?

Anyway I fully empathize with need and practicalities of need to make election related deadline cut at some point, however if call was mostly advertised on internal Telegram channel (centered around EN and possibly on SP one also, but without SP translation), without use of our key social media accounts, lists and forums I do not consider this to be a good start - on contrary. Considering that existing Board seats are filled (exclusively?) by either EN Wikimedians or people based in US, that not only perpetuates (IMHO highly) problematic lingual, social and cultural hegemony, but also sets the stage for exactly opposite of what I was suggesting as Federative LGBTIQ+ operation. I am happy to help test and advance your work (sorry to learn you are still doing it alone), but at this point I feel I lean to opt out of voting myself. Zblace (talk) 08:43, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

@Zblace: I do not expect anyone to say that this election process is good, but I do challenge anyone to find a better one or to make this one better. Some context you may want is that the planning for this election formally began in February 2023 and progress is documented in many of the Category:Wikimedia_LGBT+_meetings, with notices for both those meetings and the elections going into multiple channels. I will not try to convince you that this is a good election, but I would like for you to agree that evidence exists to demonstrate that this election was much more organized, planned, and documented than the elections of most Wikimedia affiliate groups.

To clarify - yes, this election is about two candidates only, and not a full board. If this election confirms trustees, then those trustees will be an incomplete board in a transitional state which co-governs with the existing non-elected governance committee.

Yes I agree - there is a problematic lingual, social and cultural hegemony in Wikimedia LGBT+. We have lots of ideas for addressing that. As you know, the organization has a budget of $0 to freely spend and currently also has $0 in restricted programming budgets through partner organizations.

Please, advance your idea for any LGBT+ federation. If anyone has some power to grant that will support you, then identify it and ask for it.

If you do not wish to vote for candidates, then I invite you to use the ballot option to abstain from voting. At the end of the election, I expect to report counts of votes for candidates, counts of abstentions, and counts of unused ballots. I wish that I could interview every member of what they want but with this year's election design, these are the choices. If next year you want to vote with spoiled ballots, "reject all options", or any other protest vote, then we can discuss incorporating it. For this year, the only signal I have for people who see ballots and do not vote is the abstention option.

For redesigning future elections, consider posting to Talk:Wikimedia LGBT+/Elections.

As always, anyone who wants to talk to me by recorded video chat is invited to do so. I want to give more information, but it simply is not feasible for me produce enough text documentation to anticipate the questions that people have. Feel free to ask more questions as you like. Some of your questions are more strategic and better to post in an upcoming governance or user group meeting. Talk here should be about membership or the election, which I can speak to as the organizer. Bluerasberry (talk) 21:07, 21 November 2023 (UTC)