FDC candidates respond to key issues
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Elections have begun for five community members of the Funds Dissemination Committee, the Foundation's volunteer body for judging and recommending millions of dollars worth of annual grants to affiliates in the movement. This is the first year in which Wikimedians will elect the full quota of five members, who will serve until the next election in mid-2017. The election lasts just eight days, from Sunday 3 May until 23:59 UTC on Sunday 10 May, so at the time of publication, voters will need to act promptly. All Wikimedians who satisfy the requirements may vote. Voters can update their selections by simply going through the process again before the deadline.
Eleven candidates are competing for the five positions: Snezhana ("Zana") Shtrkovska (native speaker of Macedonian, from Macedonia); Tanweer Morshed (Bengali, Bangladesh); Shawn Chen (English, US); Itzik Edri (Hebrew, Israel); Mike Peel (English, UK); Pete Ekman (English, US); Felix Nartey (English, Ghana); Liam Wyatt (English, Australia); Ad Huikeshoven (Dutch, the Netherlands); Lorenzo Losa (Italian, Italy); and Michał Buczyński (Polish, Poland). The Signpost put 10 propositions to each candidate for their response; the results are set out below.
Candidates' basic details and election statements are displayed on Meta. Links to translations in many languages are trumpeted at the top of the election pages, showing yet again that relying on pro bono translation ends up almost nowhere: non-English-speakers beware. A table of further information on the candidates, including total edits on their home-site and on all WMF sites, appears on the talkpage of the German Wikipedia's news outlet, Der Kurier.
A ternary voting system is used, imported last year from the English Wikipedia's ArbCom elections. This gives voters three options for each candidate—support, neutral, or oppose—in which avoiding "neutral" votes strengthens the positions of those whom a voter supports, on simple arithmetic grounds. The formula S/(S+O) will determine the successful candidates, who must then be endorsed by the WMF Board.
Elections for the FDC ombudsperson—who receives, documents, and makes recommendations to the WMF Board on complaints concerning the FDC process—are being held concurrently. There are two candidates, Kirill Lokshin (English, US) and Mykola Kozlenko (Ukrainian, Ukraine/Paris).