Next year the national organizations of Wikimedia are going to select two new Foundation board members. Due to the nature of the selection it is difficult to make the members of a chapter part of the procedure.
In the Netherlands we did at our general assembly yesterday the follwing. We asked the members what qualifications or traits they find important on a 1-5 scale. Here the results of the paper slip survey (thanks to Hay Kranen for the ‘math’):
Hardly anybody found it important that the candidate supported by our chapter is Dutch or comes from a poor country. There was a little more sympathy for supporting explicitly a woman.
Very important the members found that a candidate can makes things happen, that he is a goalgetter (most important) and is a socially binding factor. Nearly all gave the last question – is it important that the candidate is very familiar with Wikipedia/Wikimedia – a 4 or 5.
Of course, there can be no automatism. The WMNL board will see which candidates apply, are nice to work with and have a realistic chance. But it was important to me giving the members a little bit of say and having a little guidance for hard decisions.
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