This week, the Signpost covers the candidates for the 2008 Board elections.

The fifth election to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees begins on Sunday. Fifteen users will be vying for one (1) one-year seat, to be filled in the election.

Last year, we interviewed most of the candidates individually. This year, however, the Election Committee has provided a way for each candidate to answer the same exact questions, by providing a central question-and-answer page where eligible voters can submit questions, and each candidate provides their response. So, instead, we've compiled the answers to some of these questions (particularly those judged most interesting, and those similar to the questions we asked last year, and posted them on a separate page:

Candidate responses

Voting will run for three weeks, from 1 June through 21 June. The voting method will be the Schulze method, a form of preferential voting.

On the left is a screenshot of what the interface of the voting system will look like. Voters can give candidates any ranking from "1" to "99" (or leave the field blank), with "1" being the most preferred candidate, higher numbers corresponding to candidates who are less preferred, and a blank space being the least preferred. Where two or more candidates have the same number, or are left blank, none of the candidates are preferred over the other.

Thus, in this example, Jane Doe is the favorite candidate of the voter. John Doe and A.N. Other are tied for the next preference. Joe Bloggs comes next, and John Smith, who is not ranked at all, is the least favorite candidate.

In other election news, the proposal to send an official e-mail to all eligible voters regarding the election was taken up, and an official notice will be sent by the Committee. If a full translation of the notice is not completed, notices will instead be sent in English, so translation continues to be of concern. Many languages also need updates, or full translations, of the voting interface, and many languages also need translations of candidate statements.

As in previous years, election officials will monitor votes for voting irregularities, and discount votes as necessary, if it is deemed that some votes are those of sockpuppets. All voters must have made at least 600 edits before March 1, 2008 on any one wiki, and have made at least 50 edits between January 1 and May 29, 2008 on that particular wiki. The wiki for these requirements must be the same one for both, and edits cannot be combined across multiple wikis to gain suffrage. Exceptions to these edit requirements are given to Wikimedia server administrators with shell access, paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation who began working at the office before March 1, and current and former members of the Board of Trustees.

Next week: The elections begin.