Lords of the Flags

I admit not having heard anything about Greg Maxwell and his emails until I read this. It seems to have driven lots of people mad, although I would not bet that this was his original aim.

IMHO, the one and only "not 100% positive" side to what Greg is doing is that this is not an automated email sent world-wide to everyone having the right to vote, as it should be. We have lots of more or less useless extensions; having one that would deliver crucial deadline reminders to all WMF voters would really be welcome.

From a strictly formal POV, I don't understand why should we need an intercultural war creep at all. I understand that people use whatever they can to motivate users to vote, yet maybe one could simply play on the legitimate pride of being part of the "biggest wiki ever". Besides, one of my public votes was for a native English speaker. It got canceled when another native English speaker publicly convinced me to do so. Would anyone tell me where's the darn conspiracy? Is there a fifth column from Oz or what? Is Elise a Venusian spy? Come on...

Also, will anyone tell me why there are only a few candidates from the English speaking community? By making a simple extrapolation based on the number of active users it kind of should be more of them. So maybe conspiracy theories aren't that relevant, the real question is where does en.wiki lack of interest comes from? Sorry, I can't suggest any answer, yet the numbers speak for themselves. Greg is right in calling people to vote, and if you skip the emotional part of his emails you find a genuine truth: democracy can't work if the majority of the people do not vote.

Now, no matter how the elections will end, I don't think anyone should worry about en.wiki being on a losing streak. En.wiki is what gives us the most of our trademark power (i.e. financial income), and as such it can all only receive special care. Once people are elected (no matter WHO they are) they will be confronted with this extremely simple reality, and they will behave accordingly. Even if Board members should conspire to delete en.wiki from their brains, the market (i.e. donors) would stick the concept back to its place in a second. No way out of that.

My one and only concern is that we don't start to "vote by tribes". I don't vote in political elections anymore mainly because during such carnivals people simply follow a flag, instead of reading a candidate's statement and using their brains to judge what they get offered. It takes but waving a flag at the TV to turn millions of political voters all over the planet into a bunch of hysteria-driven morons. The outcome is in the news, each and every day, at world wide level. Political candidates wave the flag, smile to the camera, cash in the election bucks and immediately after that they simply do whatever they please. All of them are free to do so only because people vote by choosing a flag, instead of a statement.

So CAST YOUR VOTE(S), no matter to whom it will go, but PLEASE, CAREFULLY READ THE STATEMENTS, not the candidate's id/flag/sexual habits/nationality. Democracy needs more than our vote to work properly. It also needs that we all toggle our brains to the ON position, instead of being no more than socket-puppets for marketing specialists and their magic flags.