Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates/2004 Election

This page has information about the immanent AMA (Association of Members' Advocates) Coordinator Election, some of the material below has been copied from the Wikipedia talk:Association of Members' Advocates. If you wish to nominate yourself or someone you know please consider that option. The AMA welcomes the input of all. To date nominations have not been seconded and it appears that the seconding of nominations is not necessary. It is not clear if the period for nominations has been closed yet, and an exact deadline for the voting has not yet been determined.

AMA Coordinator

• Opening: Association of Members' Advocates, Coordinator
• Qualifications required: No particular experience necessary, but you should probably join the AMA if you want to be the coordinator
• Job description: Connect users who request general advocate assistance with individual advocates who can represent them, co-ordinates policy discussion and maintains meta page
• Salary: Ha!
• Other perks in lieu of salary (such as power, authority, position of importance): Fancy title
• Term of service: Currently undetermined
• Duties would consist primarily of having AMA Requests for Assistance on your watchlist. When requests come in, you would then need to find a suitable advocate who is willing to work with that client, and put the two in contact with each other.

— by User:Michael Snow

What is clear to me is that we need a co-ordinator, and that their 1st duty should probably be to provide leadership/proposals in regards to members comments and the process of becomming a member. I clearly prefer a stricter structure, and others clearly prefer a near unmitigated freedom (even going so far as to edit other members comments). One thing I think we can all agree on is a need for clarity, and I feel a co-ordinator will help us in pursuit of such a goal. Sam Spade 02:56, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

AMA Coordinator Nominations

• • User:Alex756
  • User:Perl
  • User:Anthere

Candidate User:Alex756

Statement by Alex756

Having initially conceived of the AMA (formerly the OMA) I see the rôle a coordinator is to keep in contact with the members. While much of the actual service that this association accomplishes is outside the actually activities of the association (i.e. the actually advocacy is not conducted by the assocation) a coordinator can be useful to help Wikipedians find and communicate with AMA members. It is important that we develop some kind of training for Advocates, this was my idea about beginning to write the Guide to Advocacy, but we could also have a correspondence course that could be written and then the coordinator could review the answers of the member (this would occur off wiki) and help them develop their advocacy skills. As well there will be times when those who use Advocates have problems and have complaints, a coordinator can help to develop (with the consensus of the members) a policy to deal with these issues. It is important for any coordinator to keep communicating with the members (on their talk pages or via email) and to get their input and encourage them to participate in the association's developing dialogue regarding advocacy issues on Wikipedia.

If anyone wants to ask me specific questions I will answer them here:

Questions to Alex756

It has been suggested that advocates need to be trained. I beg to ask if you could indicate if you have any experience or expertise in the area of law. -- Emsworth 20:31, Mar 21, 2004 (UTC)

I am interested in how we will handle policy issues, such as surveys/evaluations of members proformance, factual accuracy of members statements, and other policies

I would like to see coordinated. Sam Spade 20:39, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Voting Procedural Issues

While voting as not yet started, below is a list of members as of the creation date of this page. No procedure has been adopted for the voting. The members may decide on a secret ballot or an open ballot. That needs to be determined. A secret ballot will require someone who is not a member to conduct the ballot through some confidential or anonymous means. An open ballot can be conducted here.

Alex756
Anthere
Denni
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
Lord Emsworth
Metasquares
Michael Snow
Pakaran
Perl
Sam Spade
Secretlondon
Sj
Spikey
ugen64
Zestauferov