Wikizine - number: 40 Extra

Board Election 2006 candidates

Very soon you will have the opportunity to elect a new board member for the WMF. To help you to make an informed choice Wikizine presents to you a personal statement of several candidates. All candidates where invited to send there statement in. This offer has expired.

This publication is not an endorsement of Wikizine for these candidates.

Charles Matthews

I'm a candidate with experience and skills useful for the Wikimedia Board. I'm not a technical person, and have not been active on Wikimedia issues, preferring to focus on the English Wikipedia. (On en-WP I'm best known for writing about mathematics and poetry, and as as admin and Arbitrator. See User:Charles Matthews there for more.)

I come without any specific template for the WMF. For manifesto, I would say that we still have to match up some things. Implementing the best distance learning experiences, when we know that factual content is a Long Tail phenomenon (to speak modishly), means we have to be both collectively smart and better in the humanities. The aim is to become comprehensive, but also comprehensible and comprehending on a global scale. These are ambitious slogans.
Background: I had 10 post-doctoral years in academia (1978-1989), at the University of Cambridge, with years in France and the USA. After that I have been a voluntary worker in a number of contexts, including publicity work and raising sponsorship. I have written two books (one conventional, one with a Korean friend published online), and many articles. I have travelled, in East Asia, and recently in Uganda, where in June I gave a well-attended lecture on Wikipedia. I speak reasonable French, and some Russian. I'm a married parent.

The role of the Board: what other online extended community gets to hire its own support staff? The Board has stewardship of the most important piece of hypertext ever. Some intangibles, such as 'wiki culture' and 'motivational working atmosphere', matter as much as money. The scale of Wikimedia projects now means that straight management sometimes applies; but the biggest challenge remains the harnessing of those writing on the wikis to projects in the larger scheme. This means not losing sight of the old-school way of thinking.
In short, I have outside experience, communication skills, and a traditionalist wiki approach.

Discuss matters with me at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Charles_Matthews/WMF_Board_Election_2006

Another version of this statement is on the formal candidacy page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/Charles_Matthews/En

Oscar van Dillen

Please read my candidate's statement at;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/En#Oscar   from this i take an excerpt:

"whether we are constructing an ark of noah for human knowledge, or "just" boldly working at the gradual completion of the tower of babel still remains to be seen, but i strongly believe that such is in our own hands for a larger part than could "reasonably be expected". please let it be clear that it is for this very reason that i most emphatically believe in the importance of the wmf's mission, and have been devoting most of my free time for 2,5 years now to the consolidation and further development of its projects and communities. i will continue to do so, no matter the outcome of these elections."

for any further questions, my meta talk page;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Oscar is available, thank you :-) --[[User:Oscar]] 12:34, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

The Other Candidates

There are also other candidates besides them ones who have presented themselves here to you with a personal statement. These candidates listed here did not responded to the offer to publish there statement.

Aaron Swartz
Daniel Arnold (Arnomane)
Carlos Rivera (Cerejota)
Bruce Andersen (Evrik)
Hadraj Said
Pat Gunn (Improv)
Kelly Martin
Alex Schenck (Linuxbeak)
Kathleen (Kat) Walsh (Mindspillage)
Nicholas Turnbull
Juan David Ruiz (Zuirdj)