Fedora Board election results

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:15:53 -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:

> On Tue, 2008-06-24 at 12:04 -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> > >> > IMHO, a voter's employer just doesn't matter.
> > >> >
> > >>
> > >> It does if people outside of RH feel they are not going to be
> > >> recognized or represented and thus give up on the system.
> > >
> > > Voting is one of the ways to have them feel recognized and represented.
> > > If they didn't bother to vote, they gave up that mechanism for
> > > representation voluntarily.
> > 
> > 
> > That argument is logically valid but humans are not logical. If people
> > feel that voting is not going to make a difference they will have no
> > incentive to continue with the process. 
> 
> Which is why you ask the community, at large, "Why didn't you vote?"

I almost decided not to vote this time, because in the list of eight
nominees I didn't see any real community representatives. I was and I
still am under the impression that for at least half of the nominees the
election would become a popularity contest (as in "I know him from various
places" not limited to IRC, blogs, social networking sites) -- in other
words a fun event, a virtual pad on the back with only a minority of the
CLA signers participating in the election, anyway. The Fedora Project has
grown out of proportions. Almost all essential communication channels are
flooded, including the Wiki, which still feels like a maze, or the planet,
where people post English headlines with non-English message bodies. It's
hard to impossible to stay informed about the various sub projects and
special interest groups. Vital communication is moved to IRC. I spent
quite some time on the following Wiki page,
    https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/Elections/Nominations
reading the "Goals" and "Future Plans" again and again, many of which are
either weak or unconvincing. Especially if you cannot map a person's name
to political activity on relevant mailing-lists. It's like "okay, I've
seen that name before, but I don't remember any valuable political
contributions that sounded promising and would justify voting for that
person [again]". Is the person competent? How do I know if I've not seen
any activity before? Further, Red Hat fills several board seats
anyway. Fedora is Red Hat's baby. Red Hat still has to prove how serious
they take the Fedora community. I thought about the previous board
members. Did they perform well? Where are the testing instruments to
decide whether a particular member performed well? As a voter, what can I
do to vote _against_ somebody? Other than to give zero points and, from
the few nominees, vote for somebody else who will then disappoint me?

In the end I voted, but used only a small fraction of my voting points.
A bit like participation and boycott at the same time.