Meta:Babel/Archives/2010-01

request for comments and feedback: talk:public speakers

concerning the page public speakers, a page where there have been quite some disagreements recently, i would like to ask for feedback of impartial wikians. please see the talkpage (also its history) and the history of the page to get an impression of what has been going on and discussed, which i will not try to summarize here; please form you own opinion.

not having participated in the older discussions myself, i recently asked some imho fundamental questions which may lead to some kind of resolve, trying to find out at the root "whether" and "why" to have this page on meta, before attempting any "how" at the moment; they are quoted here:

1. what does this page have to do with the coordination of wikimedia projects?
2. does this clearly controversial page belong at all on this rather central wiki (both its content and all the links to it)?
3. why not remove the page for now and first clearly define its purposes and usage on meta, prior to its publishing?

as the current situation can use some more to the point feedback, please consider responding at Talk:Public_speakers#Page_to_be_or_not_be_on_meta_-_a_critical_survey, thanks in advance! all the best, oscar 02:11, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

2010 Steward Elections

schedule

I have started creating the pages for the election and am going to continue doing that tonight. We need to make sure we agree on dates etc. as well. From what I can see there haven't been issues with the suffrage requirements so I'm leaving them unchanged at the moment and assuming we will start around Feb 1st like we did last year? If we change that we would likely want to change when the accounts need to be created etc. I don't THINK we need a lot of new translations, most of what we had from previous years should be good right?

We do need to find a way to advertise for candidates soon though if we want to do Feb 1st, We have the GS vote notice up at the moment but I assume we can put it into a rotation. James (T|C) 01:16, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that if we want to start Feb 1, we should start advertising 1/15, to give one week for saturation and one week for people to post statements. Should statements be accepted right up until the vote opens or should there be a "frozen" period for people to review/comment? -- Avi 06:09, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not totally sure what was done before on that... Personally I think a frozen period (even if just a day or two) would be good but I'm not sure. I agree with the 2 weeks notice though. Have we traditionally done a central notice? We can send out notices to the mailing lists as well of course. James (T|C) 06:12, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't recall from last year, but even if we haven't, a global notice is one of the better ways to get full wikimedia penetration; better than mailing lists, in my opinion, as I'm pretty certain that the people who follow lists are a small subset of those who log into all the wikis. -- Avi 06:15, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Definitely, hopefully I can find one from a previous year... that way we won't have to do as much translating. James (T|C) 06:19, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

<-- The vast majority of translations and pages have been ported over now for 2010 (i.e everyone I can find). I found the old central notices and ported the translations. Most are already in mediawiki space from last year but we need to change the dates there. If someone else wants to do that please feel free :) :) but if not I'll probably ask for temp sysop tomorrow to do so. Assuming we are using the Feb 1st date the templates ask for nominations to be in by January 25th so we probably want to get them up soon if we want to do that, they also have to identify by the 1st I believe. James (T|C) 10:10, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

That seems like a rather tight schedule. Remember that candidate's statements have to be translated, which is huge amount of work. But I guess now it is too late to just change the election start. --Church of emacs talk 11:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The election period hasn't been discussed yet. The date which is currently mentioned in the 2010 election pages is exactly the same as used in 2009, due to copy and paste rather than due to consensus. We can change it. The first candidate in 2009 added their statement on Jan 10.[1]. IMO we either need to start advertising for candidates immediately, or push the election back a little. John Vandenberg 13:09, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

As most of the templates and infrastructure has been ported over from 2009 (thanks, James) perhaps the following makes sense. Another three/four days for crossing t's, dotting i's, and starting to spread the word--which means starting to get notices out today. Accepting statements immediately up to 1/24, freezing the week of 1/25-1/31 for review and translation, and we can still start the elections on 2/1. Is that too optimistic? -- Avi 15:16, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

This is what I would personally like because I'd rather not wait longer then we have to but as John said we can definitely change the date if we aren't ready and want more time. I honestly think we "should" be ready to advertise tonight to be totally honest. I'm going to go poke for either an admin to help with the Mediawiki msgs or temp sysop. James (T|C) 17:41, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it'd be a good idea to push the elections back a week or so. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 17:46, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

A week more won't hurt anyone (I guess). --თოგო ^(D) 18:54, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Let's get started, try to get as much done as quickly as possible, and see where we are. If we need to push the election back to give more time for translating statements & questions (likely, I think), then we can do so when that becomes clear.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:57, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we can do so, but it isn't the best way. We should estimate dates before rushing and announcing them somewhere (and if we use a global sitenotice, we should have some information ready, like when the elections are actually going to start). It makes the process look stupid, if we have to move the elections by a week because of problems we could have anticipated from the beginning. Better not use a tight schedule from the beginning.
What exactly is the problem with moving the elections by ~1 week? We could start on 7th of February, that means we finish on the 28th (which is an easy date to remember). --Church of emacs talk 21:28, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with delaying either. How much work is left, and where is the list in case we have some time we can spend on it? -- Avi 21:36, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd rather move the elections by a week then having too tight a schedule. Like Church of emacs says it's probably better to take our time then rush into things. We could start announcements tomorrow, have at least two weeks for accepting statements and then start elections a few days up to a week later, so it seems to me Avi's schedule is doable if all goes well. --Erwin 21:49, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

On second thought: how about announcing and accepting candidates from 14 up to and including 28 January, translating up to 7 February and having elections from 7 February to 1 March? --Erwin 21:58, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Also fine, but the sooner we lock it down, the sooner we can esnd out notices, which will bring in the statements, etc. :) -- Avi 22:03, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree we want to lock this down as soon as possible, while I want to do it as soon as possible I'm not horribly opposed to a weeks delay, hopefully not more then that. I believe basically all of last years pages have been transfered over, the main work would be changing the dates once those are set and updating the MW versions of the central notice which hasn't been done yet. Other then that we'd be set to go. James (T|C) 22:09, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Summarized timeline (basically by Erwin)

• 14 January – 28 January: Candidate submissions
• Until 7 February: Translation
• 7 February – 28 February: Election [revised 22:26, 13 January 2010 (UTC)]

This gives us time to finish the notices (which are pretty much written, Az1568 will commit them soon) and get all the pages ready. Cbrown1023 talk 22:16, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Seems good , thus i  Support :) --Mardetanha ^talk 22:25, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

 Support Looks good to me too. -- Avi 22:38, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Loogs good to me concrete = good :) James (T|C) 22:40, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Just noting that I agree with this. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 00:41, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, I hereby set the timeline to Cbrown's summary. So what else to talk about? --Erwin 22:56, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I have updated Stewards/elections 2010/Introduction and Stewards/confirm/Introduction10. Translation updates required. --John Vandenberg 00:38, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Pushed the ending date back to the 28th: that's actually three weeks and requires less translation updating. Cbrown1023 talk 22:26, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

It'll be starting on my birthday … if anyone opposes me then, it will make me cry. And people shouldn't cry on their birthday. xD Kind regards, —DerHexer (Talk) 22:52, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

candidate requirements and suffrage

We have a small issue with the location of the steward application guidelines, as we have two pages, "Stewards/Application_guidelines" and "Stewards/elections_2010/Guidelines". See Talk:Stewards/elections_2009/Guidelines#page_location.

Also, we need to decide whether candidate requirements and suffrage should stay the same. Were there any complaints last year that we need to consider? When should the cut-off date be for the suffrage date. February 7? John Vandenberg 00:38, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm fine with leaving it at 31 January. VVV is currently writing up some JavaScript that will only show the notice if the user is eligible to vote or nominate themselves (for the most part), so that should remove some of the complains from last year ("Why are we seeing this notice if we can't vote?"). Cbrown1023 talk 00:52, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

A JavaScript suffrage check would be lovely. If possible, it would be nice to add it to an edit notice. If it finished soon, could we add it to the global sysops vote page. Talk:Global_sysops/Vote#edit_notice. --John Vandenberg 01:14, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Will Pathoschild be updating his tool? It is linked to many of the language pages. -- Avi 06:57, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I know pathoschild is updating his and it should be ready very soon, he was rewriting a bit of the code. An edit notice would be good to, possibly similar to what we put on the GS vote page last night? We should make that soon though so that it can be translated for these elections. James (T|C) 19:30, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I would like to see the suffrage requirements kept effectively the same as last year. I'm not too concerned about the exact cutoff date as long as it's before the start of the election. ++Lar: t/c 03:43, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Candidate statement template

I've moved the 2009 version into 2010 (see {{Sr-new statement 2010}}). Can someone double check that it is correct, please. Statements start tonight. -- Avi 20:46, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Seems fine to me. --Erwin 21:18, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

How are statements submitted actually? Apparently it's not just adding {{:Stewards/elections 2010/statements/Your_username_here}} to Stewards/elections 2010, is it? That's what you should do according to Stewards/elections_2010/Guidelines and what was done last year, but that changed halfway through the elections. So should candidates add {{Se2010 candidate indexer|Your_username_here}} now? --Erwin 21:30, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Good question, I actually have the candidate indexer direction in a comment on the page they are editing to transclude but I think both would work. I guess my preference would be to use the template since that looks easier for making the charts (and thats what I set up the main page for) but it wouldn't be hard to change that. James (T|C) 22:02, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

So what should the text be, being that statements are actually able to go live now… -- Avi 01:41, 14 January 2010 (UTC)