Results for the most contended Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election

Translated version on Meta

Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2021 Board election. The Elections Committee has reviewed the votes of the 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election, organized to select four new trustees. A record 6,873 people from across 214 projects cast their valid votes. The following four candidates received the most support:

• Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
• Victoria Doronina
• Dariusz Jemielniak
• Lorenzo Losa

Waiting for the Board’s appointment

While these candidates have been ranked through the community vote, they are not yet appointed to the Board of Trustees. They still need to pass a successful background check and meet the qualifications outlined in the Bylaws. This process can be longer depending on the country of residence of the candidates. The Board has set a tentative date to appoint new trustees at the end of this month. The Board also has approved a short extension to the terms of the exiting trustees to allow a smooth transition.

Thanks to all the candidates

Thanks to all candidates for their participation. They achieved a record in the number of candidates and regional diversity, with more than half of the 19 candidates from regions outside North America and Western Europe. This election used Single Transferable Voting for the first time. This system does not indicate a number of votes or percentage of support. Rather, it shows in which round each candidate was eliminated. You can review the full results on Meta-Wiki, which document the order in which the candidates were mathematically eliminated.

Thanks to all the election volunteers

The Board of Trustees stressed the importance of increasing diversity on the Board. Dozens of volunteers supported by a team of multilingual facilitators promoted the election in up to 61 languages. They hosted many conversations about the Board election in more than 50 languages and encouraged community members to participate in all areas of the election.

Statistics

The 2021 Board of Trustees election broke new ground in several areas. The Movement Strategy and Governance team will publish a report with the most remarkable metrics soon. In the meantime, some statistics can be found on Meta-Wiki. Here you have some highlights.

• Participation increased by 1,753 voters over 2017. Overall turnout was 10.13%, 1.1 percentage points more than in 2017.
• The highest participation among wikis with at least 5 eligible voters was seen on the Hausa and Igbo Wikipedias. Both wikis had a participation of 75% (6 of 8 eligible voters). Other high participation numbers were seen on the Telugu, Nepalese, and Punjabi Wikipedias.
• The largest increase in participation among wikis with at least 50 eligible voters was the Catalan Wikipedia, on which 36.3% of eligible voters voted (28 percentage points higher than in 2017).
• There were 214 wikis represented in the election. This is determined by the wiki on which the account was originally created.
• A total of 74 wikis that did not participate in 2017 produced voters in this election.
• A total of 226 wikis had at least one eligible voter but produced no voters. The largest electorate in this group was Cantonese Wikipedia, with 25 eligible voters.

In the upcoming days, an anonymized list of votes will be released that will allow deeper inspection and publication of more metrics.

2022 election

The next Board of Trustees election is planned to take place in 2022. Interested community members can watch the Wikimedia Foundation elections page for updates. Four community seats will be selected at that time. It is not too early to consider and prepare for candidacy. Community members may like to check out Candidate Resources to learn more about what to expect and how to prepare for this role.