http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2

Anyone has any insight or discussion on this? The elections end on October 6, 2011.

Apart from the usual teenaged trolls and nut-cases voting for each other? Not really......

(although now, they choose only trolls who speak multiple languages, so they can wave
the list around and scream "See?? Wikipedia is international!!" And PS, Cekli829 was
one of the worst clowns on the Azeri and Turkish WPs. He keeps trying to become
a steward, and people keep remembering. I suspect this is his second or third account.)

Nah, the reason for that policy is rampant anti-American (and also anti-English-Wikipedia) attitudes within the Meta community. Stewards have no tangible connection with the Foundation and the Foundation largely ignores their existence.

And yet, they conduct the elections in English.....

The statistics seem to be agreeing with the anti-English sentiment:

http://toolserver.org/~stewardbots/elections.php

The candidate who most worries me is Quadell. He's an unthinking cabal camp follower and there must be many people with serious doubts about how good a stewart he might be. How many will bother to vote, indeed how many even know about the election, is always the problem.

This Quadell?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?titl...ion&action=edit

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWik..._description.js

The language for the introductory text is selectable via JavaScript.

The language for the candidates' self-descriptions is also selectable:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?titl...cmq&action=edit