Fedora Board election results

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 1:17 PM, inode0 <inode0@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 1:15 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Which is why you ask the community, at large, "Why didn't you vote?"
>
> Here are two reasons.
>
> I find the whole self-nomination process distasteful. While I
> understand this is normal in some cultures it is very alien to other
> cultures. It seems obvious to me that there are competent and willing
> members who will not self-nominate and I don't understand why Fedora
> insists they be excluded from the process. I would prefer there be a
> way for community members to nominate quality people they know and
> those nominated in this way could accept or decline such a nomination.
> Others could nominate themselves if they wish to.
>

I can agree with this also. Where I was raised, a person who nominated
themselves was the worst person to run something.

> Range voting is another aspect of the process I find discouraging in
> general. Suppose I know 3 of 10 candidates personally (at least I've
> had direct interactions with a small subset of the candidates). The
> other 7 candidates I perhaps know some by reputation and don't know
> some at all. By what rational process am I supposed to assign votes to
> the entire slate of candidates? Honestly I feel like what my vote ends
> up being is fairly random data and is as likely to distort the
> process to the detriment of some candidate I don't know and don't want
> to penalize as it is to elect the candidates I might prefer.
>

I can agree with that also. Yes I have read the logical explanation,
and my math friends say that it is valid.. but it just doesn't feel
right. I would prefer a simple vote for 8 (or none of the above) in
the first round, and 4 (or none of the above) in the second. Probably
a lot less fair, but easier for my poor socially impaired brain to
deal with.

> So my choice to not vote was not made out of contentment with current
> leadership, not made out of apathy, not made out of being happy with
> the entire slate of candidates, but rather it was not made out of
> frustration with the voting process.
>
> John
>
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--
Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"

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On Tue, 2008-06-24 at 21:39 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> 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?

I distill that down to:

"Candidates need to provide more concrete examples of their past work"

and

"Candidates should already be doing (or trying to do) what they are
talking about in their platform statements."

Both I think are very good points.

> 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?

I'm not going to bite on the Red Hat topic.

> 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.

At least you voted! The newly elected members and candidates for the
next election would do well to listen to what you've said here and try
to correct it.

josh

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On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 11:17 AM, inode0 <inode0@gmail.com> wrote:
> I find the whole self-nomination process distasteful. While I
> understand this is normal in some cultures it is very alien to other
> cultures. It seems obvious to me that there are competent and willing
> members who will not self-nominate and I don't understand why Fedora
> insists they be excluded from the process. I would prefer there be a
> way for community members to nominate quality people they know and
> those nominated in this way could accept or decline such a nomination.
> Others could nominate themselves if they wish to.

Did you have someone specific in mind that didn't self-nominate? Did
you ask them to run?
There is absolutely nothing stopping you or anyone else asking or
daring someone, in public or in private, to run. I honestly do not
see the point of formal process of nominating other people, with a
formal process of accepting or declining that sort of nomination. All
that does is slow the process down even further. If you had someone
in mind that you wanted to see run next time... just make a big fuss
about that person. Tell all of us who it is and why you want them to
run via the planet or this list. There is no reason to formalize it.
That person will either add their name and info to the candidate list
or will tell you to stop embarrassing them. There is absolutely
nothing stopping anyone from encouraging someone else to step forward
for elections, but we aren't going to demand that candidates be found
that way.

Next time, if you want certain people to run, then get out in front
and make a public suggestion. If nominating someone else leads to
stronger candidates, and stronger support for those candidates...
prove it by making it happen. Next time publicly suggest someone and
convince them to run for the election. And once they are in the
candidate pool, publicly endorse them. There is absolutely nothing
stopping you or anyone else from throwing a name in the ring for
consideration. If they accept, then its no different than the a
self-nominating process we have now. All that person has to do is add
their name and bio to the list. There's absolutely no reason that such
biographical information could not include an endorsement section.

I would like to point out that the candidates which did get public
endorsements from other community members on the planet were the ones
who were not elected.

>
> Range voting is another aspect of the process I find discouraging in
> general. Suppose I know 3 of 10 candidates personally (at least I've
> had direct interactions with a small subset of the candidates). The
> other 7 candidates I perhaps know some by reputation and don't know
> some at all. By what rational process am I supposed to assign votes to
> the entire slate of candidates?

Humans are irrational, and thus any voting scheme is going to have
personal bias. If you want to just vote for 3 people, and then vote 0
for all the rest... that's your decision and would be equivalent to
more common forms of ballet voting when multiple seats are open in a
body. The votes still count.

> Honestly I feel like what my vote ends
> up being is fairly random data and is as likely to distort the
> process to the detriment of some candidate I don't know and don't want
> to penalize as it is to elect the candidates I might prefer.

Every time you vote in a way that indicates a preference, you penalize
a candidate. More traditional voting schemes are all about penalizing
as many candidates as possible. Range voting gives you the ability to
penalize with far greater precision, or with no precision at all.
If you choose to vote for everyone equally, then you are making a
statement that you prefer all candidates equal while still voting.
That says something different than not voting at all.

>
> So my choice to not vote was not made out of contentment with current
> leadership, not made out of apathy, not made out of being happy with
> the entire slate of candidates, but rather it was not made out of
> frustration with the voting process.

I do not understand the frustration. Range voting gives individual
voters more flexibility than traditional one vote - one seat voting.
Would you really prefer that you and everyone else got place one vote
for each open seat? You had the ability to vote that way if you
wanted to inside the range voting setup. Would you force the same
preference on how to rank candidates on everyone else?

-jef

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On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 11:39 AM, Michael Schwendt <bugs.michael@gmx.net> wrote:
> 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?

Just to be clear. Are you saying that my political activity has gone
unnoticed?

Would an organized debate (and I use that term as loosely as possible)
between candidates help you decide how to spend your votes?

-jef

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On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, Michael Schwendt wrote:

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 don't want to hijack the thread, but if you compare the investments
made into Fedora and the commitment to the community of Red Hat in 2005
and Red Hat in 2008, what questions do you have about Red Hat being
serious about Fedora?


Our daily operational budget has been multiplied about five or six fold
(community architecture + fedora infrastructure budget) compared to when
I started as the FPL.


Furthermore, the number of full-time employees working directly on
Fedora has increased significantly over the past 2-3 years, with
basically every single hire coming from the Fedora community, and
expanded roles being created from within Red Hat (like Spot's new job,
for example, as Fedora Engineering Manager).


Maybe it doesn't look like it from the outside, but Fedora has gotten a
huge amount of investment, comparatively, over the past few years, and
that investment continues.


What else would you like to see from Red Hat to prove that it takes
Fedora and community seriously? I'm not trolling, I really want to
konw, so that I can work on making it happen.


--Max

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On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:

I can agree with this also. Where I was raised, a person who nominated
themselves was the worst person to run something.


I don't suppose there's any reason why people couldn't nominate someone.
Just add them to the Nominations page and send an email to f-a-b saying
"I just nominated John Doe for the Fedora Board. If he doesn't want the
nomination, he should remove himself. He he does want it, he should add
to the nomination page as he sees fit."


--Max

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On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Max Spevack <mspevack@redhat.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>
>> 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 don't want to hijack the thread, but if you compare the investments made
> into Fedora and the commitment to the community of Red Hat in 2005 and Red
> Hat in 2008, what questions do you have about Red Hat being serious about
> Fedora?
>
> Our daily operational budget has been multiplied about five or six fold
> (community architecture + fedora infrastructure budget) compared to when I
> started as the FPL.
>
> Furthermore, the number of full-time employees working directly on Fedora
> has increased significantly over the past 2-3 years, with basically every
> single hire coming from the Fedora community, and expanded roles being
> created from within Red Hat (like Spot's new job, for example, as Fedora
> Engineering Manager).
>
> Maybe it doesn't look like it from the outside, but Fedora has gotten a huge
> amount of investment, comparatively, over the past few years, and that
> investment continues.
>
> What else would you like to see from Red Hat to prove that it takes Fedora
> and community seriously? I'm not trolling, I really want to konw, so that I
> can work on making it happen.
>

Personally, I don't think Red Hat needs to publish anything but I own
stock in the company so am probably biased. I would like to support
Open Book Management.. even though Fedora is not a separate
company/organization/etc treat it as such. Publish on the quarter how
much was spent on salaries, hosting, equiptment, health care, etc etc.
Treat everyone who has signed the CLA as stockholders/employees for
this separate organization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-book_management
http://www.inc.com/guides/hr/23178.html

--
Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"

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On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 12:03 PM, Max Spevack <mspevack@redhat.com> wrote:
> I don't suppose there's any reason why people couldn't nominate someone.
> Just add them to the Nominations page and send an email to f-a-b saying "I
> just nominated John Doe for the Fedora Board. If he doesn't want the
> nomination, he should remove himself. He he does want it, he should add to
> the nomination page as he sees fit."


NO.. it should require absolutely no effort at all for someone to
decline. If you don't want to be on the ballot you should not have to
edit the wiki page and remove yourself or else we are going to run the
risk of having people in the candidate list who have no god damn idea
what is going on. Being a part the slate of candidates must require an
affirmed acceptance from the candidate. The candidate must be
ultimately accountable for what is said on the nomination page.

I would much rather see personal endorsements from other community
members added to a profile of each candidate. Isn't that what
nominating someone else really is? A personal endorsement of that
person. So we add an endorsement section so individuals can endorse
candidates as they see fit and other users can use those personal
endorsements to rank the candidates value.

-jef

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On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 2:55 PM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 11:17 AM, inode0 <inode0@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I find the whole self-nomination process distasteful. While I
>> understand this is normal in some cultures it is very alien to other
>> cultures. It seems obvious to me that there are competent and willing
>> members who will not self-nominate and I don't understand why Fedora
>> insists they be excluded from the process. I would prefer there be a
>> way for community members to nominate quality people they know and
>> those nominated in this way could accept or decline such a nomination.
>> Others could nominate themselves if they wish to.
>
> Did you have someone specific in mind that didn't self-nominate? Did
> you ask them to run?

I didn't need to as he nominated himself. Whether I did or didn't
doesn't affect the point I am making that there are high quality
people who will *not* self-nominate. There are people who simply find
doing so repugnant.

> There is absolutely nothing stopping you or anyone else asking or
> daring someone, in public or in private, to run. I honestly do not
> see the point of formal process of nominating other people, with a
> formal process of accepting or declining that sort of nomination. All
> that does is slow the process down even further. If you had someone
> in mind that you wanted to see run next time... just make a big fuss
> about that person. Tell all of us who it is and why you want them to
> run via the planet or this list. There is no reason to formalize it.
> That person will either add their name and info to the candidate list
> or will tell you to stop embarrassing them. There is absolutely
> nothing stopping anyone from encouraging someone else to step forward
> for elections, but we aren't going to demand that candidates be found
> that way.
>
> Next time, if you want certain people to run, then get out in front
> and make a public suggestion. If nominating someone else leads to
> stronger candidates, and stronger support for those candidates...
> prove it by making it happen. Next time publicly suggest someone and
> convince them to run for the election. And once they are in the
> candidate pool, publicly endorse them. There is absolutely nothing
> stopping you or anyone else from throwing a name in the ring for
> consideration. If they accept, then its no different than the a
> self-nominating process we have now. All that person has to do is add
> their name and bio to the list. There's absolutely no reason that such
> biographical information could not include an endorsement section.
>
> I would like to point out that the candidates which did get public
> endorsements from other community members on the planet were the ones
> who were not elected.

And the point of this is what exactly?

One of the benefits of a more open nomination process is that it is
rewarding to be nominated by someone else for a position of
leadership. It tells you that your work is appreciated and that
someone thinks enough of you and your abilities to recommend you for a
role you may never have considered. Whether you run or not, whether
you win or lose in the end isn't the only result that counts. The
public acknowledgment of your contribution also counts.

>> Range voting is another aspect of the process I find discouraging in
>> general. Suppose I know 3 of 10 candidates personally (at least I've
>> had direct interactions with a small subset of the candidates). The
>> other 7 candidates I perhaps know some by reputation and don't know
>> some at all. By what rational process am I supposed to assign votes to
>> the entire slate of candidates?
>
> Humans are irrational, and thus any voting scheme is going to have
> personal bias. If you want to just vote for 3 people, and then vote 0
> for all the rest... that's your decision and would be equivalent to
> more common forms of ballet voting when multiple seats are open in a
> body. The votes still count.

Sure I can vote that way but it is *not* equivalent to more common
forms unless everyone votes that same way. Whether I give someone I
know little or nothing about 0 votes while someone else irrationally
gives them 5 votes makes a difference in the result. I'm penalizing
candidates more than others are and there is no rational basis for
doing so.

>> Honestly I feel like what my vote ends
>> up being is fairly random data and is as likely to distort the
>> process to the detriment of some candidate I don't know and don't want
>> to penalize as it is to elect the candidates I might prefer.
>
> Every time you vote in a way that indicates a preference, you penalize
> a candidate. More traditional voting schemes are all about penalizing
> as many candidates as possible. Range voting gives you the ability to
> penalize with far greater precision, or with no precision at all.
> If you choose to vote for everyone equally, then you are making a
> statement that you prefer all candidates equal while still voting.
> That says something different than not voting at all.

There is no point in penalizing with far greater precision when you
mostly don't know the people you are penalizing.

Range voting may well be a wonderful intellectual exercise but if is
too onerous for enough people to feel they are casting fair and
reasoned votes then it isn't one that will be successful in the end.

>> So my choice to not vote was not made out of contentment with current
>> leadership, not made out of apathy, not made out of being happy with
>> the entire slate of candidates, but rather it was not made out of
>> frustration with the voting process.
>
> I do not understand the frustration. Range voting gives individual
> voters more flexibility than traditional one vote - one seat voting.
> Would you really prefer that you and everyone else got place one vote
> for each open seat? You had the ability to vote that way if you
> wanted to inside the range voting setup. Would you force the same
> preference on how to rank candidates on everyone else?

Had the election been one vote per open seat I would have voted as
there were enough candidates that I know and have confidence in to
have cast positive votes for them.

No, I would not force anyone else to do anything. If the fedora
community prefers range voting the fedora community can continue using
it. I was asked why I didn't vote and I'm just trying to let the board
know why.

John

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On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 3:16 PM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 12:03 PM, Max Spevack <mspevack@redhat.com> wrote:
>> I don't suppose there's any reason why people couldn't nominate someone.
>> Just add them to the Nominations page and send an email to f-a-b saying "I
>> just nominated John Doe for the Fedora Board. If he doesn't want the
>> nomination, he should remove himself. He he does want it, he should add to
>> the nomination page as he sees fit."
>
>
> NO.. it should require absolutely no effort at all for someone to
> decline. If you don't want to be on the ballot you should not have to
> edit the wiki page and remove yourself or else we are going to run the
> risk of having people in the candidate list who have no god damn idea
> what is going on. Being a part the slate of candidates must require an
> affirmed acceptance from the candidate. The candidate must be
> ultimately accountable for what is said on the nomination page.

I agree that a person nominated should not have to do anything. What
about a community nominations page where community members could
nominate people they would like to see on the ballot and give reasons
why. It could have two checkboxes for "I accept" and "I decline" for
the nominated person to use to acknowledge the nomination. Clicking "I
accept" would lead to the now candidate filling out what candidates
fill out in the self-nomination process. Doing nothing or checking the
"I decline" box leaves the nominated member off the ballot.

John

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