Template talk:Board elections 2011 infobox

This part with "Voters Guide" should be removed and the guide itself deleted. It is a pure try of canvassing. --WizardOfOz ^talk 13:50, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Voters guides aren't my idea, they're standard practice. Voters Guides have been a popular centerpiece of the elections at EnWiki, and other projects have similar documents for their elections. I'm not trying to innovate, I'm just trying to imitate the excellent work done on the December 2010 elections team, which had huge turnout, massive community participation (and 24 separate voter guides).

The Board's more important than an Arbcom, but we're seeing far less participation than we should. We need more people here, we need more opinions, and we need them badly. The way things stand, the average community member coming here to vote will have ZERO realistic info about the candidates beyond the limited information the candidate themselves provided. Very few community members will have the time to do all the research and investigate the opinions of the community. Unless we supply them with more information, many community members will look at a list of strange names and simply not vote-- or worse, vote semi-randomly.

If I don't know half the candidates, how can I rank them? Based on their 1200 word essay contest, a snapshot, a few short answers, and the melodic sound of their name? That's not enough information-- we need to tap into the wisdom of the crowd. I need to know what the other editors more knowledgeable than me have to say about the candidates. I _cannot_ make a truly fully informed decision without access to the thoughts of people from outside the EnWiki bubble. Cannot.

The solution, WizardOfOZ, is to make your own voter guide. Have your friends make their own voter guides. Have _everybody_ interesting in this election make their own voter guides, ask their own questions, and them to tell others to do the same. That's how we'll get a good election. --Alecmconroy 14:46, 29 May 2011 (UTC)