FESCo critique (was: Re: [Bug 178162] Review Request: libgeotiff)

Michael Schwendt bugs.michael at gmx.net
Tue Oct 31 11:40:28 UTC 2006


On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 10:17:54 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

> > Do remember that with
> > the last FESCo "election" primarily we just filled vacant seats in a very
> > half-hearted and controversial way.
> 
> I'm looking forward for the next election and your detailed suggestions
> what do to better.

This sounds as if you cannot think of any improvements yourself and as if
you just want somebody else to do the work.

Food for thought: Self-nominees who had less than 50% of the possible
number of votes were able to enter FESCo. So, even if the majority of
contributors did not vote for them, they were able to join FESCo. It was
impossible to vote "against" somebody by not voting for him.

> > Before the next election a lot must
> > happen. The FE developer community needs means to measure whether they are
> > happy with the elected representatives. That is not possible when FESCo's
> > decision-finding process is not documented, when some FESCo members either
> > abstain from voting often or always [or because they are absent from a
> > high number of public meetings], and when this leads to sort of anonymous
> > FESCo decisions (where only with high effort or luck you find nothing more
> > than a few +1/-1 votes in meeting-minutes).
> 
> As I said: If you think something needs to change propose a scheme.

And you will reject it if you think it creates work and if nobody is
willing to do that work.

For many decisions, FESCo's +1/-1 style votings are not even needed.
They just add overhead.

But when FESCo is really needed to decide on something, I'd like the
official decision to be documented clearly more like this

  Summary of the proposal: [...]
  Pro: 10/13
  Contra: 2/13 (thl, jwb)
  Absent: 1/13 (awjb)

plus a summary of how exactly thl and jwb disagreed.

And the whole thing announced via e-mail or on a separate "FESCo
Announcements" page. It is most interesting to learn what _community
representatives_ within FESCo think.

Because if any FESCo member disagrees too often with the community and
with FESCo or abstains from taking part in FESCo decisions, this would be
a sign that the community may want to vote differently the next time and
replace the person, because of interest conflicts. And for that to be
possible, there must be rules for the election.

What of

  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SteeringCommittee/Meetings

is still relevant? As a new contributor, how could I learn about past
FESCo decisions and the decision of the individual members?

> > At the topic of FESCo, just a few days ago I was surprised that I could
> > not find the FESCo members' mission statements anymore. It turned out the
> > page was deleted without any (or without an easy-to-find) replacement:
> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SteeringCommittee/Nominations?action=recall&rev=27
> 
> Thanks for complaining. But remember: It's a wiki. If you want something
>  written down there feel free to do it yourself.

Remember the recent conflict in the Wiki. Without talking about things, we
would be flipping forth and back changes to the pages and their structure. :)
And why would I dare and touch Wiki pages below the FESCo hierarchy?




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