Elections
Board elections are the process by which Block & Quill Ltd board members are nominated, voted on, and appointed. Elections will be held once a year in quarter four, with the appointments taking place within seven days after the results have been announced.
The member elections process is modelled on the Weird Gloop elections process, which, in turn, is based on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election process prior to 2021.
Board responsibilities
Please read the page about the board for a list of current board members and a description of the board and its responsibilities.
Election overview
Currently, five seats are appointed by election.
Elected members serve terms of one year. Members can re-nominate themselves after their term ends, if they wish – there are no term limits. At the board's discretion, Block & Quill Ltd may increase or decrease the number of elected members, and the board reserves the right to appoint up to two outside members that are not subject to elections.
Emergency elections will not be held unless more than two members step down or are unable to serve at their post, and elections are more than four months away. Ultimately the decision for whether an emergency election is required will be made by the remaining members. Some elected members may serve much longer terms in order to not have to continually re-authorise bank account access and other administrative duties. This will be done with community consensus.
Candidates
To be eligible to be elected, a user must fulfill the following requirements:
- not blocked on any Minecraft wiki currently;
- cannot be a member of the election committee, a paid contractor or employee of Block & Quill Ltd;
- must be 'of sufficiently sound character', e.g.:
- must not have committed a serious crime or any crime involving dishonesty or deception;
- must not have been removed from a position at a non-profit organization or other company due to mismanagement or misconduct;
- background checks may be performed to check this.
- must be at least 18 years old and of legal age in their home country and/or country of residence;
- a reliable way to be contacted, i.e. a personal email address;
- must be comfortable with having their real name and address in the private company register.
In addition, the following is highly recommended:
- unlikely to have any conflict of interest;
- English knowledge at a conversational level (at least CEFR B1);
- interest and involvement in the Minecraft Wiki project as a whole, not just a specific language or subdomain wiki.
Nomination
Candidates must nominate themselves. Besides your username on the Minecraft wiki, a candidate needs to submit the following information (a limit of 200 words per point) before the deadline, by sending it to elections
blockandquill
org:
- a short introduction about yourself;
- a short statement about your reasons for running as board member;
- a brief summary about your work on the Minecraft wikis (including before the fork, if applicable);
- a brief summary about other work: relevant experience, such as other volunteering, work in other communities or similar.
Your submission will be acknowledged. Please contact us if you do not receive a response.
The submitted information will be made public on the election candidate pages. Wiki community members will be able to ask questions to the candidate there.
Voting
To be eligible for voting in an election, a user must fulfill the following requirements:
- not blocked on any Minecraft wiki for the duration of the voting phase;
- not a bot account; and
- across all Minecraft wikis, have made at least 50 edits total and 10 edits in the three month period preceding the beginning of voting.
For the purposes of voter eligibility and for legal reasons, only wikis managed by Block & Quill are considered "Minecraft wikis".
Voters may only vote once, regardless of how many accounts they have. Current and former Block & Quill Ltd members and contractors are also allowed to vote, as are election committee members, provided they meet the requirements as laid out above. Blocked users cannot vote.
Voting is conducted via the SecurePoll extension on the Meta Wiki. This extension allows a user to vote at any time from open to close of the election, and to change their vote by re-completing the ballot at any point within the same timeframe.
Voting for candidates uses a ranked-choice method (specifically, the Schulze method). All candidates will be listed, and voters can enter numerical rankings for those candidates. The elected candidates will be the five candidates with the highest aggregate preference, according to the Schulze method. If the number of nominees is equal to or fewer than the number of seats available, voting by approval will be conducted instead, with candidates, who receive more than 50% of the votes, being elected. This is in accordance with resolution 2024.3.
A statistical summary of votes will be made public at the end of the election.
Timeline
The election process starts every year on the last Saturday in September.
- The election page is posted on the Meta wiki (this wiki).
- For a two-week period, candidates will be able to submit their nominations. The public list of candidates' usernames will be updated as submissions are made.
- After this nomination phase, candidate submissions will be published in full.
- If there are few candidates, the nomination phase can be extended by the election committee (see also resolution 2024.3).
- For a two-week period, voters will be able to submit questions to the candidates. Candidates should answer these questions during this time.
- After the question phase, voting will open for a two-week period.
- Votes will subsequently be checked, and the results will be announced a few days later.