Wikimedia Foundation elections/2022/Campaign Videos

Community members can learn more about candidates during the 2022 Board of Trustees election. Candidates have recorded videos answering 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)

• Video 1 (YouTube)
• Video 2 (YouTube)
• Video 3 (YouTube)
• Video 4 (YouTube)
• Video 5 (YouTube)
• Video 6 (YouTube)

Process

Candidates will answer 6 community-selected questions. The questions will be provided to candidates several days before the videos are recorded, so candidates might think through the issues ahead of time. Candidates will have a maximum of 3 minutes to answer each question. Candidates are asked to have a blank background behind them so the videos are not distracting and there is nothing in the picture to influence the perception of the candidates. There is no need to show your face on the video materials, and candidates are free to use an “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.