Planning Post F10 Elections

[Paul W. Frields]

On Wed, 2008-09-24 at 13:22 -0500, Matt Domsch wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 01:17:17AM +1200, Nigel Jones wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> > 
> > With the last slip of the Fedora 10 release I've noticed we are getting
> > dangerously close to Christmas to hold the usual round of post election
> > votes, from what I can tell the following are on the cards:
> > 
> > * FAmSCo (Ambassadors)
> > * Fedora Board
> > * Fedora 11 Release Name
> > * FESCo (Engineering)
> > * FLSCo (Translation)
> > 
> > It's all technically a matter of timing, there is technically no reason
> > why all (or majority) of those votes can't be held at the exact same
> > time, it might be considered beneficial to hold FAmSCo, FESCo, and FLSCo
> > elections at the same time for instance.
> 
> I like the idea of multiple elections at the same time.  In my
> experience, such increases voter turnout (there's more to gain/lose at
> one time), while decreasing voter burnout ("another election?  didn't
> I just do that last week?").

+1 on this.

> > It'd appear problems could arise in cases where someone may wish to
> > stand for both *SCo and Board simultaneously and only accept one
> > nomination.
> > 
> > Now, I'd assume that this situation would be fairly rare, and in these
> > cases we could have the situation where a candidate says "If I get both
> > nominations, I'll only accept the one for X", my question is, is this
> > acceptable to _you_.
> 
> To me, yes.

I'd prefer that people not look at multiple elections as a way to hedge
bets.  Not that anyone has ever given me that impression of course!  But
I'd much rather keep the election as simple and light on regulation as
possible, so I'm not about to suggest any additional rules based on my
personal feelings.

> > >From an administration POV, it'd be best if that's the case there is at
> > least a day or so between the *SCo and Board elections (time for
> > announcements etc to be made), on the other hand, if the above is
> > suitable, they could all be held on the same time period.
> 
> I'd say do it all at once.

I like the idea of all the elections in a single balloting process; get
it all over at one time, and have a decently sized time period for the
whole thing, 10-14 days.

> > >From a schedule POV here it is at the moment.
> > 
> > Based on Jesse's e-mail to fedora-devel-announce
> > (https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00015.html) if the slip is approved by FESCo, Fedora 10 will be released on 25 November.
> > 
> > This means the next logical dates to hold an election would be between
> > 30th November (Sunday) and 17th December (Wednesday - 8 days before
> > Christmas).  This is just over 2 weeks, assuming that F10 doesn't slip
> > again.  The other option is holding them over the New Year, however,
> > remember that people in the Southern Hemisphere typically have a large
> > Summer holiday period up until Feb.
> 
> If the release dates hold (and I hope they do), allowing the election
> to run including the weekend of FUDCon would be useful too - let
> people undecided but in attendance be able to talk to people
> face-to-face.

This is a great idea.  And keep in mind that this doesn't disadvantage
people who aren't at FUDCon -- they can always get attendees to act as
proxies for their probing questions.

> Avoiding the holidays as much as possible is "a good thing".  To many
> distractions from our favorite passtime to remember to actually vote.

:-)

-- 
Paul W. Frields
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
  http://paul.frields.org/   -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
  irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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