Wikimedia Foundation elections/2022/Campaign Videos
Community members fi learn more about candidates during de 2022 Board of Trustees dema election. Candidates get videos dem record wey dem dey answer 6 questions proposed and selected by the community in July 2022.
Videos
English-language transcripts of these videos.
The total running time of the videos is 53:24; the total wordcount, just over 7300 words. If you can read at over 130 words per minute, reading will be faster.
Translations (subtitles)
Process
Candidates go answer 6 community-selected questions. Dem go provide de questions to candidates several days before de videos go be recorded, so say candidates fi think thru de issues ahead of time. Candidates go get maximum of 3 minutes so say dem go answer each question. Dem biz candidates make dem get blank background wey dey dema back so say dem no go distract de videos wey nothing go dey de picture inside to influence de candidates dema perseptions. No need say you go show your face for de video materials top, wey candidates be free make dem use “icon”.
Candidates may record their own video if they wish, but a staff member can provide support by recording the videos, ensuring the candidates are audible, asking each question to the candidates, and keeping time for the candidates if needed. A Wikimedia Foundation staff member will reach out to ask for the availability of the 6 selected candidates in case they would like support in recording their videos. Staff will reach out to candidates and ensure that minimum technical requirements on recording the video, if any, is met by the candidates. This also helps with the post-production process and uniformity.
A staff member will edit the videos together so all candidates answer each question in a single video. Post-processing should be taken care of by the Movement Strategy and Governance staff assigned to do the editing. This is to ensure uniformity and the look of all candidate videos. Candidates will answer questions in an alphabetical rotating order so each candidate will be first in one video. Example: 123456, 234561, 345612, and so on. The result will be 6 videos, each approximately 20 minutes in length. Time stamps and captions will be added to the videos and shared on Meta-wiki.
History of campaign events
During the Call for Feedback about the Board of Trustees elections, several community members said they would like to have conversations where candidates answer questions from the community.
In 2021, the Movement Strategy and Governance team supporting the Board election tried something similar. These types of events were not typical during Board elections. The events came from an idea to provide the community members with more opportunities to interact with the candidates. The number of candidates, short planning time, and trying to serve too many time zones led to chaotic events.
In response to the 2021 candidate and community experience around the campaign events, the Movement Strategy and Governance team developed a proposal to improve the events. The proposal was to have each candidate receive their own conversation hour to answer questions and engage with the community. The questions would be sent to the candidates before the meeting so they might prepare answers and reduce the inequity created by language.
This proposal solved many issues that arose from the 2021 campaign events, but caused new ones. Giving each candidate a conversation hour would mean 6 hours of sessions for the community to watch. That created a different inequity as not everyone has that much volunteer time or they may not wish to spend so much of their volunteer time in that way. The Board of Trustees and Elections Committee want to be sensitive to the varied community needs and be considerate of candidates’ and community members’ time. They developed this new plan.