2008/1/16 Karsten 'quaid' Wade <kwade(a)redhat.com>:
This has been pointed out to me in the past -- every culture handles
the
idea of self promotion differently. For some cultures, stepping forward
from the crowd to promote yourself as a leader is very hard. For other
cultures, it is common to promote yourself as a leader.
The kind of voting/democracy that we use in Fedora is derived from a
Western history and culture. We need to keep that in mind. What we
require of people in order to get into a position of leadership may not
be appropriate in their culture.
No easy solutions, unfortunately ...
As a newish member of the ambassador group I resisted comment on this
when the elections were held. But now that it is on the table I will
say that the western country I come from seriously frowned on this for
elections when the government was formed. The idea that people of high
character would engage in such self-promotion was not the prevailing
wisdom of the day. Things evolved into that mechanism over time but
I'm not at all sure it is an example of evolution at its best.
I'm one westerner who would be very happy if there at least existed a
mechanism by which the community could nominate worthy contributors
who might be too uncomfortable about engaging in self-promotion. It
seems to me that the worst thing that could happen is that a person
nominated by others could graciously decline and walk away having been
flattered by a community that just expressed its appreciation of their
efforts and its confidence in them.
John