Okay campers, I'm here to try to jump start a discussion on what we
can do to encourage people to participate in the upcoming Fedora
election season.

Lets see what we can do to encourage people to participate in the
upcoming elections which will be held in Dec or Jan ( depending on F10
schedule changes) This time around we are having multiple elections
at the same time. Doing it this way allows us to make a concerted push
to increase the community awareness of all the elections/votes. For
reference see:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-September/msg00080.html

So what sort of things can we do? And when should we start doing them?

As a start is there a general need to raise the awareness of the
election and voting process we are using?
Can we generate general interest material covering topics like:
Why vote? How do you qualify for voting? What's this range voting stuff?

And where do we want to put material in an effort to increase awareness?

I've been persuaded into thinking we should try to start doing
whatever it is we want to do about a month before the elections, to
increase candidate as well as voter turn out.

There's probably more elaborate things to do as well. Below are my
more detailed thoughts on ideas I've heard or I've been actively
thinking about myself. Yes, I know its long...but this time I gave
you fair warning. If you have other ideas on what to do, feel free to
jump in to the thread.


Community Q/A:
This is the one thing I've been thinking about a lot myself. I think
we can try to encourage people to ask questions they want the
candidates to answer as a way to frame the election and give all the
candidates a better idea of what the voting community cares about.

It's sort of a two part problem. One we just need to get people out
there to ask questions. I think this comes down to communicating why
each election matters. Can we do that as a marketing campaign? Can we
"sell" the election process?

And second, we need a way to organize those questions and resulting
candidate answers so they are easily found. I've been talking to
people specifically about how to organize some sort of community to
candidate q/a. Nigel seems to have taken the bait and has a plan on
how to integrate community questions AND nominations into the voting
app for all elections.

Try to ignore my overly complicated suggestion, and take a look at
Nigel's response on this ticket:
https://fedorahosted.org/elections/ticket/20#comment:1

He says he may be able to have this in place by early November. If
this becomes available he also suggests we could open up q/a and
nominations 3 to 4 weeks before the elections. If this functionality
becomes available this could be a focus for a "get out the vote"
campaign.

Nominations:
This was talked about a lot in the post-Board election fab discussion,
and it was generally agreed that encouraging people to nominate others
would help increase the candidate pool, because some people are not
inclined to self-nominate. How do we go about encouraging people to
nominate other people? I don't know exactly beyond blogging about it
again.

Nigel is way ahead of me on this and is already thinking about trying
to support nominations in the voting app to reduce the administrative
overhead. See: https://fedorahosted.org/elections/ticket/23


IRC Debate:
Another idea floating around is organizing a candidate debate for each
election. I can't take credit for this idea. It should be doable. My
main concerning is how to generate the questions/topics for a debate
format. This loops to my personal focus on trying to find a way
generate questions from the community for candidates to answer. If
you've got an idea on how to run a candidate debate for any of the
elections, feel free to chime in.

Meet the Candidate Videos:
If candidates wanted to make introductory videos can we organize a
space for candidates videos that makes it easier for people to find?

Okay that's it from me. Thoughts?

-jef

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2008/10/1 Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta@gmail.com>:
> So what sort of things can we do? And when should we start doing them?

> As a start is there a general need to raise the awareness of the
> election and voting process we are using?
> Can we generate general interest material covering topics like:
> Why vote? How do you qualify for voting? What's this range voting stuff?

Personally I'm sure we have to give a clear answer on "Why vote?"
question. I'm saying it because we are a big community and we need to
motivate people taking action. To do that I suggest to use widely read
means, like announce list and so on.

> Community Q/A:

> It's sort of a two part problem. One we just need to get people out
> there to ask questions. I think this comes down to communicating why
> each election matters. Can we do that as a marketing campaign? Can we
> "sell" the election process?
>
> And second, we need a way to organize those questions and resulting
> candidate answers so they are easily found. I've been talking to
> people specifically about how to organize some sort of community to
> candidate q/a. Nigel seems to have taken the bait and has a plan on
> how to integrate community questions AND nominations into the voting
> app for all elections.

The idea is great, but all the candidates have to accept this one.

> Nominations:
> This was talked about a lot in the post-Board election fab discussion,
> and it was generally agreed that encouraging people to nominate others
> would help increase the candidate pool, because some people are not
> inclined to self-nominate. How do we go about encouraging people to
> nominate other people? I don't know exactly beyond blogging about it
> again.

Yes, it could help having more people in the election.

Personally I propose to give the time (a week?) to the people who want
to invite other ones to join the electoral process, maybe we could do
this trough our lists/blogs/etc. Then each person, after seeing
people backing him, will take the responsibility to add himself in the
Wiki with all the other candidates. I think it's the most logical
process we could have.

> IRC Debate:
> Another idea floating around is organizing a candidate debate for each
> election. I can't take credit for this idea. It should be doable. My
> main concerning is how to generate the questions/topics for a debate
> format. This loops to my personal focus on trying to find a way
> generate questions from the community for candidates to answer. If
> you've got an idea on how to run a candidate debate for any of the
> elections, feel free to chime in.

IRC Debates sounds great! Maybe, as you said, it would be usefull to
find the right way to hold a IRC Debate. Personally I think the only
thing to guarantee is that each candidate could have his/her time to
explain himself, with a max limit.

BTW, less rules, less problems

> Meet the Candidate Videos:
> If candidates wanted to make introductory videos can we organize a
> space for candidates videos that makes it easier for people to find?

I think if 100% of the candidates could make such video (potentially)
it's a reasonable idea, but as today I'm not sure everyone could have
a camera. We can take the decision to make something like EventBox: a
camera that is shipped around the world, but it surely will take a lot
of time.

Finally:

I agree to have a Q/A with people and candidate and an IRC debate (by
project). I approve if we give a week to people to invite someone to
nominate himself, and, if there is a way to give all the people that
chance, to produce some candidate videos.

Personally I'm sure we have to guarantee that everyone could have the
same rights: to do this all the initiatives that will be taken for
those elections will have to be designed to fit everyone.

Best regards

Francesco Ugolini

p.s. I think we have to use, like the past election, a wiki page where
all the candidates nominate themselves and give the reason why they
are doing that. That's one of the best way to understand why a person
will nominate him/herself.

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On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 5:06 PM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta@gmail.com> wrote:
> Okay campers, I'm here to try to jump start a discussion on what we
> can do to encourage people to participate in the upcoming Fedora
> election season.

Thank you jef for trying to tackle this.

> ...
>
> So what sort of things can we do? And when should we start doing them?
>
> As a start is there a general need to raise the awareness of the
> election and voting process we are using?
> Can we generate general interest material covering topics like:
> Why vote? How do you qualify for voting? What's this range voting stuff?

>From out in the field I hear several reasons people don't vote. One
common reason is that they are new to the project and don't feel they
know enough about who everyone is and what the various committees do
to feel competent to participate.

So one thing that I think would help new contributors get their
bearings, and not just with respect to elections, is something like an
organization chart that explains the structure of the Fedora project
generally. What are all these committees? What purpose do they serve?
What problems do the solve? Knowing that much will suggest a reason to
care to many people I think.

Being familiar with the structure of Fedora is something new
ambassadors have been discussing to facilitate them in their efforts
to help get new contributors aimed in an appropriate direction too, so
I think some way to help all of us who don't live entirely inside the
world of Fedora understand how the parts all fit together would be
wonderful.

> ...
>
> Community Q/A:
> This is the one thing I've been thinking about a lot myself. I think
> we can try to encourage people to ask questions they want the
> candidates to answer as a way to frame the election and give all the
> candidates a better idea of what the voting community cares about.

I like this idea. The key to it being effective is for those who are
asking questions to understand the role of the positions the
candidates are running for so they can ask relevant questions. While I
may be mostly out of the loop, I'm not totally out of the loop, and
I'm often told my questions aren't relevant to the Fedora Board when I
ask them. This may largely be correct as well, one problem I have is
that I don't always know where a question should be directed and since
the Fedora Board has an open forum it tends to get them by default.

> It's sort of a two part problem. One we just need to get people out
> there to ask questions. I think this comes down to communicating why
> each election matters. Can we do that as a marketing campaign? Can we
> "sell" the election process?

I couldn't agree more. We need to understand why the elections matter.
I also hear in the field that people don't vote because it doesn't
matter or at least their participation in them doesn't matter. There
is often a perception that when 12 people are running for 9 seats and
everyone seems capable of filling those seats why should I spend time
thinking about ranking them?

> ...
>
> Nominations:
> This was talked about a lot in the post-Board election fab discussion,
> and it was generally agreed that encouraging people to nominate others
> would help increase the candidate pool, because some people are not
> inclined to self-nominate. How do we go about encouraging people to
> nominate other people? I don't know exactly beyond blogging about it
> again.

People nominating others is one good way to get them involved. It has
the same preconditions for participating I think. They must know what
the role of the position is in order to make a sensible nomination.

> ...
>
> IRC Debate:
> Another idea floating around is organizing a candidate debate for each
> election. I can't take credit for this idea. It should be doable. My
> main concerning is how to generate the questions/topics for a debate
> format. This loops to my personal focus on trying to find a way
> generate questions from the community for candidates to answer. If
> you've got an idea on how to run a candidate debate for any of the
> elections, feel free to chime in.

Whether a debate or an open forum where we can just get to know the
thinking of the candidates would be nice. I'm not sure a debate format
is well suited to most of these elections as they aren't driven so
much by particular issues as they are by something more akin to
character issues. Maybe I would change my mind on this given a better
understanding of the roles of the positions myself. Taking the Fedora
Board as an example, what would such a debate be about? If we are
better guided by personal qualities, like this candidate has a nice
disposition and can effectively deal with conflict resolution I don't
see much to debate. But an open forum where we can see the
dispositions of the candidates would still be useful.

> Meet the Candidate Videos:
> If candidates wanted to make introductory videos can we organize a
> space for candidates videos that makes it easier for people to find?

Anything that allows contributors to get to know the people running is
a good thing. It is just impossible to vote for or against a name on a
piece of paper who you don't really know anything about beyond that
name.

John

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>> As a start is there a general need to raise the awareness of the
>> election and voting process we are using?
>> Can we generate general interest material covering topics like:
>> Why vote? How do you qualify for voting? What's this range voting stuff?
>
>>From out in the field I hear several reasons people don't vote. One
> common reason is that they are new to the project and don't feel they
> know enough about who everyone is and what the various committees do
> to feel competent to participate.

That's exactly the reason why I didn't vote for the first election I was
allowed to : the latest Fedora Board election.

> So one thing that I think would help new contributors get their
> bearings, and not just with respect to elections, is something like an
> organization chart that explains the structure of the Fedora project
> generally. What are all these committees? What purpose do they serve?
> What problems do the solve? Knowing that much will suggest a reason to
> care to many people I think.

That would not really have helped me (and people in my case). My issue was
that I knew absolutely nothing about the candidates. How could I vote for
one or another ?

The answer came from Yaakov Neemoy after some beers: if I don't know who
to vote for, I should just give the same score to everyone. That will have
the exact same result, except it will show that I care enough about Fedora
to actually take the time to do it.

This possibility, as evident as it might seem, was totally unclear to me,
and I don't think I'm the only one. It might be worth adding that in the
voting page I guess.

Regards,


----------

Mathieu Bridon (bochecha)
French Fedora Ambassador

----------
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safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin

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On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 7:52 AM, Mathieu Bridon (bochecha) > That would
not really have helped me (and people in my case). My issue was
> that I knew absolutely nothing about the candidates. How could I vote for
> one or another ?


If given an opportunity and encouraged to ask questions of all the
candidates.. would you take it? Would you write a question? Would you
read the answer to other people's questions?

-jef

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> So what sort of things can we do? And when should we start doing them?

1) Everything you've suggested below, 2) we should start asap, some
things are going to be more long range and some more targeted to the
time frame around the elections.
>
> As a start is there a general need to raise the awareness of the
> election and voting process we are using?
> Can we generate general interest material covering topics like:
> Why vote? How do you qualify for voting? What's this range voting stuff?

Yes. I'd suggest this is something we should tackle *now*. I'll even
volunteer to write something tomorrow and bring it to the mktg meeting
tomorrow for feedback.

>
> And where do we want to put material in an effort to increase awareness?

Heh, my suggestion for this would be news.fp.o if it existed! The only
reason I mention it now is that I think it ties in a little with the
recent discussions about the opening of RHM - this is one set of
material that would definitely belong on a Fedora specific site. In
fact, election promotion in general would be perfect material for
news.fp.o

In lieu of that, however, I'd suggest we ask websites for a static
page for this content. It's stuff that will be perennially useful, so
we might as well make it look presentable and easily accessible.

>
> Community Q/A:
> This is the one thing I've been thinking about a lot myself. I think
> we can try to encourage people to ask questions they want the
> candidates to answer as a way to frame the election and give all the
> candidates a better idea of what the voting community cares about.
>
> It's sort of a two part problem. One we just need to get people out
> there to ask questions. I think this comes down to communicating why
> each election matters. Can we do that as a marketing campaign? Can we
> "sell" the election process?

This is something that I think would be perfect to start preparing
about a month before the election. If we advertise for questions in
the usual project spaces (as well as the non-usual - perhaps fedora
forums etc?), giving a deadline for when questions will be accepted
and another deadline for when candidates' answers will be published,
it will help drive a sense of anticipation (maybe a slightly strong
word!) but provide a measure of certainty too.

>
> And second, we need a way to organize those questions and resulting
> candidate answers so they are easily found. I've been talking to
> people specifically about how to organize some sort of community to
> candidate q/a. Nigel seems to have taken the bait and has a plan on
> how to integrate community questions AND nominations into the voting
> app for all elections.

Would be a cool idea so that people could review when they're voting.
As well as that, I'd suggest we could use the normal system I've used
in the past for interviews: a wiki page with bold for questions and
normal for answers, tagged with names at the beginning of each line.
We could publish questions/answers over a few days/weeks to drum up
further interest.

> Nominations:
> This was talked about a lot in the post-Board election fab discussion,
> and it was generally agreed that encouraging people to nominate others
> would help increase the candidate pool, because some people are not
> inclined to self-nominate. How do we go about encouraging people to
> nominate other people? I don't know exactly beyond blogging about it
> again.

I guess we could include it in the election info material you've
suggested earlier, and make it clear that it's something we're
actively encouraging people to do. Again, I'm not certain here.

> IRC Debate:
> Another idea floating around is organizing a candidate debate for each
> election. I can't take credit for this idea. It should be doable. My
> main concerning is how to generate the questions/topics for a debate
> format. This loops to my personal focus on trying to find a way
> generate questions from the community for candidates to answer. If
> you've got an idea on how to run a candidate debate for any of the
> elections, feel free to chime in.

The panel/moderator/audience model would probably be a good one to
follow, something similar to the monthly board meetings? I nominate
Max to moderate as he does a pretty good job already!
>
> Meet the Candidate Videos:
> If candidates wanted to make introductory videos can we organize a
> space for candidates videos that makes it easier for people to find?

Fedora TV. Kushal, what do you think?

Jon

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On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 8:58 AM, Jonathan Roberts
> Would be a cool idea so that people could review when they're voting.
> As well as that, I'd suggest we could use the normal system I've used
> in the past for interviews: a wiki page with bold for questions and
> normal for answers, tagged with names at the beginning of each line.
> We could publish questions/answers over a few days/weeks to drum up
> further interest.

We could probably accomplish that by extracting questions and answers
from the voting application functionality that Nigel wants to put in
place and repackaging them in whatever formats make sense as part of a
get out the vote effort. We drive votes to the voting app to ask
questions, we drive candidates to the voting app to answer questions,
then we cull and re-broadcast via other mediums.

>> IRC Debate:
>> Another idea floating around is organizing a candidate debate for each
>> election. I can't take credit for this idea. It should be doable. My
>> main concerning is how to generate the questions/topics for a debate
>> format. This loops to my personal focus on trying to find a way
>> generate questions from the community for candidates to answer. If
>> you've got an idea on how to run a candidate debate for any of the
>> elections, feel free to chime in.
>
> The panel/moderator/audience model would probably be a good one to
> follow, something similar to the monthly board meetings? I nominate
> Max to moderate as he does a pretty good job already!

If we do it that way, I'm going to be a sneaky bastard and delibrately
pre-seed the audience with people to make sure there are at least a
few questions to ask. Or make sure the moderator has some to ask. My
fear is, a town hall, would be filled with crickets instead of
questions for the candidates.

-jef

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On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 7:18 AM, inode0 <inode0@gmail.com> wrote:
> So one thing that I think would help new contributors get their
> bearings, and not just with respect to elections, is something like an
> organization chart that explains the structure of the Fedora project
> generally. What are all these committees? What purpose do they serve?
> What problems do the solve? Knowing that much will suggest a reason to
> care to many people I think.

I could put a simple chart together. But I'm pretty sure that how I
see things working will not be considered the gospel truth by all the
groups involved. In fact, would a chart I wrote be any better than a
chart you wrote? No matter who writes it, individual groups will come
back and may need to rewrite their portion of it. Why don't you take
a crack at it, just drafting a chart that relates the groups in this
election to each other. I'll make sure each of the groups takes a
look at it and puts in feedback.
Just make sure the chart graphics uses some purple.

-jef

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> That would
> not really have helped me (and people in my case). My issue was
>> that I knew absolutely nothing about the candidates. How could I vote
>> for
>> one or another ?
>
>
> If given an opportunity and encouraged to ask questions of all the
> candidates.. would you take it? Would you write a question? Would you
> read the answer to other people's questions?

Absolutely !

In fact, I read each one's description, but hey, they were all of equal
quality to me, and I didn't have the background of each one to make a
better opinion.

A public "ask your candidate what you want to" session would be great too.
We could have each candidate, one after each other, answer questions from
potential voters on IRC. That might even be more effective than some
written questions submitted to each candidate as:

1. one question from someone often leads to another one from someone else
who might not have thought about asking it if it were not for the previous
one
2. when you don't see your question in the ones that were chosen to be
asked, you are always tempted to think that it was censored

Of course, those meetings should be recorded and logged somewhere so that
people who could not attend can read them (summarized maybe ?).

Anyway, as I said, I *wanted* to vote, but just didn't know who to vote
for. Yaakov only came too late with his idea...


----------

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French Fedora Ambassador

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On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Mathieu Bridon (bochecha)
> Of course, those meetings should be recorded and logged
> somewhere so that people who could not attend can read them
> (summarized maybe ?).

None of that is impossible. If we ran it like our current public Board
meetings like Jon has suggested, it would be logged and archived.
Someone with the gumption to do it could then do a summary based on
the chatlog.

-jef

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