I'm not sure about the election history of FAmSCo, maybe someone who has been around a while can explain how it used to work, but I'm guessing range voting has been used in the past two FAmSCo elections. Are ambassadors happy with this method of electing the ambassador leadership?
Aside from the voting method, are there other things related to the election or composition of FAmSCo that ambassadors think would improve either the process or the constitution of the steering committee?
John
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 9:13 PM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure about the election history of FAmSCo, maybe someone who has been around a while can explain how it used to work, but I'm guessing range voting has been used in the past two FAmSCo elections. Are ambassadors happy with this method of electing the ambassador leadership?
Aside from the voting method, are there other things related to the election or composition of FAmSCo that ambassadors think would improve either the process or the constitution of the steering committee?
John
John,
I am not used to range voting, but I have nothing against that method.
I do have some suggestion regarding the election process. I was commented about during the election process but I dropped the issue because I felt that I was disrupting the process. I did wanted "to change rules at the middle of the game." Now that elections are over I suggest to amend rules before next run.
I suggest that the candidate statements should be closed on the same date of volunteering for the seat. If some one does not want to write a statement is okey to leave it blank.
Other suggestion is to stablish an order for the list of candidates. I don't care if it is ordered by time of volunteering or if it is alphabetically. But I find a bit rude that some one added himself at the top, when every body was adding themselves at the bottom. I know that there was not rule for that.
Those are just suggestion on my part.
Best regards
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 9:09 PM, Neville A. Cross nacross@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 9:13 PM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure about the election history of FAmSCo, maybe someone who has been around a while can explain how it used to work, but I'm guessing range voting has been used in the past two FAmSCo elections. Are ambassadors happy with this method of electing the ambassador leadership?
Aside from the voting method, are there other things related to the election or composition of FAmSCo that ambassadors think would improve either the process or the constitution of the steering committee?
John
John,
I am not used to range voting, but I have nothing against that method.
I do have some suggestion regarding the election process. I was commented about during the election process but I dropped the issue because I felt that I was disrupting the process. I did wanted "to change rules at the middle of the game." Now that elections are over I suggest to amend rules before next run.
I suggest that the candidate statements should be closed on the same date of volunteering for the seat. If some one does not want to write a statement is okey to leave it blank.
Other suggestion is to stablish an order for the list of candidates. I don't care if it is ordered by time of volunteering or if it is alphabetically. But I find a bit rude that some one added himself at the top, when every body was adding themselves at the bottom. I know that there was not rule for that.
Those are just suggestion on my part.
Best regards
-- Neville
Hey all,
I'm a big fan of voting and it's definitely seemed to improve over the past few elections especially with better awareness and such, but I am a bit confused by range voting. It seems to me that range voting is nice, but it somehow makes it hard to decide how to vote. I tend to vote high for those I know and believe are good choices for FAmSCo or other committees, but I'm not sure if I should vote zero for those I know nothing about, or if I should vote some other value.
In my opinion, a variant of range voting should limit how many votes are available. For instance, if six (6) candidates were available, I should be able to only use the 1-6 values once, or not at all, but I could use zero (0) as many times as I like.
To me, it seems that it would be cool if I could vote for or against (more like digg style voting), but that could cause others heartache.
my $.02
Cheers,
Clint
I'm OK with the range voting and. like Clint, getting the hang of it takes a little bit of attention. It's difficult to rank someone that you don't know or don't quite agree with it (although giving them "0" is a little extreme -- unless I completely disagree with him/her and don't want him/her anywhere near an elected body). However, assuming that the candidate prepares a statement and participates in town halls -- something that would add to, moreso than subtract from, their voting "score" in my book -- I think we can get a better feel for who's on the ballot.
Neville brings up a good point, though, about the order of nomination: I think nominees should be listed in order of nomination during the nomination period rather than by letting the nominee choose the order.
One of the things we should look into, too, is getting voting numbers up. Apparently only 100 or so ballots were cast in FAmSCo. At the risk of sounding like an electoral fundamentalist (or an Australian, where they are required by law to vote), perhaps we should require Ambassadors to vote in at least once every two years, or less (?), to keep their standing. Just a thought.
Larry Cafiero
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 8:41 PM, Clint Savage herlo1@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 9:09 PM, Neville A. Cross nacross@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 9:13 PM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure about the election history of FAmSCo, maybe someone who has been around a while can explain how it used to work, but I'm guessing range voting has been used in the past two FAmSCo elections. Are ambassadors happy with this method of electing the ambassador leadership?
Aside from the voting method, are there other things related to the election or composition of FAmSCo that ambassadors think would improve either the process or the constitution of the steering committee?
John
John,
I am not used to range voting, but I have nothing against that method.
I do have some suggestion regarding the election process. I was commented about during the election process but I dropped the issue because I felt that I was disrupting the process. I did wanted "to change rules at the middle of the game." Now that elections are over I suggest to amend rules before next run.
I suggest that the candidate statements should be closed on the same date of volunteering for the seat. If some one does not want to write a statement is okey to leave it blank.
Other suggestion is to stablish an order for the list of candidates. I don't care if it is ordered by time of volunteering or if it is alphabetically. But I find a bit rude that some one added himself at the top, when every body was adding themselves at the bottom. I know that there was not rule for that.
Those are just suggestion on my part.
Best regards
-- Neville
Hey all,
I'm a big fan of voting and it's definitely seemed to improve over the past few elections especially with better awareness and such, but I am a bit confused by range voting. It seems to me that range voting is nice, but it somehow makes it hard to decide how to vote. I tend to vote high for those I know and believe are good choices for FAmSCo or other committees, but I'm not sure if I should vote zero for those I know nothing about, or if I should vote some other value.
In my opinion, a variant of range voting should limit how many votes are available. For instance, if six (6) candidates were available, I should be able to only use the 1-6 values once, or not at all, but I could use zero (0) as many times as I like.
To me, it seems that it would be cool if I could vote for or against (more like digg style voting), but that could cause others heartache.
my $.02
Cheers,
Clint
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
2009/12/21 Larry Cafiero larry.cafiero@gmail.com:
Apparently only 100 or so ballots were cast in FAmSCo. At the risk of sounding like an electoral fundamentalist (or an Australian, where they are required by law to vote), perhaps we should require Ambassadors to vote in at least once every two years, or less (?), to keep their standing. Just a thought.
Less than 18%! So, if everyone here is a volunteer, there's plenty of time for voting (?), voting is so easy... Why we've less than 18% of voteS? (130/729) In fact, for the FESCo election there was 216, almost the double! Maybe everyone is good enough for the committee, so there is no need to vote...
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Carlos (casep) Sepulveda casep@fedoraproject.org wrote:
2009/12/21 Larry Cafiero larry.cafiero@gmail.com:
Apparently only 100 or so ballots were cast in FAmSCo. At the risk of sounding like an electoral fundamentalist (or an Australian, where they are required by law to vote), perhaps we should require Ambassadors to vote in at least once every two years, or less (?), to keep their standing. Just a thought.
Less than 18%! So, if everyone here is a volunteer, there's plenty of time for voting (?), voting is so easy... Why we've less than 18% of voteS? (130/729) In fact, for the FESCo election there was 216, almost the double! Maybe everyone is good enough for the committee, so there is no need to vote...
We aren't comparing apples to apples there and the fact is that the voter participation in the FAmSCo election is far higher than in any other Fedora election now. Since FESCo allows anyone in FAS plus one additional group to vote its pool of voters dwarfs the ambassador pool.
I'm sure some people think all the candidates would do a fine job and didn't participate for that reason, although casting a vote of confidence in that case would be nice (give each candidate the maximum votes allowed). Others don't care about governance for whatever reason (just don't care, feel disengaged and/or unaffected by it, don't understand what FAmSCo does and why it matters, etc.). Others fall into a group of potential voters who don't feel personally well equipped to vote, they don't feel they know the candidates or the role of FAmSCo well enough to vote in a responsible way. I felt myself to be in this last class not long ago.
I'm keen on increasing voter participation in a limited way. If we can do things to make voters who are uncomfortable now confident they can vote in a responsible way I'm all for that. If we can do things to engage those who don't care now for a variety of reasons I'm all for making them care.
All in all, I don't really think the turn out this election for FAmSCo was all that bad.
I'll add that we might think some about encouraging more participation in the candidate pool too. Only having a handful of non-committee members willing to sit on FAmSCo bothers me more than a 17% or 18% voter turn out.
John
This may seem academic, however, would it be possible to do a two column body for the voting page next year so that one can read the candidates blurb while voting? I realize we can open up an extra tab/window, but this would be nice for a newbie (such as myself) who's trying to make a reasonable, albeit brief, judgement.
thanks,
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 1:12 PM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Carlos (casep) Sepulveda casep@fedoraproject.org wrote:
2009/12/21 Larry Cafiero larry.cafiero@gmail.com:
Apparently only 100 or so ballots were cast in FAmSCo. At the risk of sounding like an electoral fundamentalist (or an Australian, where they are required by law to vote), perhaps we should require Ambassadors to vote in at least once every two years, or less (?), to keep their standing. Just a thought.
Less than 18%! So, if everyone here is a volunteer, there's plenty of time for voting (?), voting is so easy... Why we've less than 18% of voteS? (130/729) In fact, for the FESCo election there was 216, almost the double! Maybe everyone is good enough for the committee, so there is no need to vote...
We aren't comparing apples to apples there and the fact is that the voter participation in the FAmSCo election is far higher than in any other Fedora election now. Since FESCo allows anyone in FAS plus one additional group to vote its pool of voters dwarfs the ambassador pool.
I'm sure some people think all the candidates would do a fine job and didn't participate for that reason, although casting a vote of confidence in that case would be nice (give each candidate the maximum votes allowed). Others don't care about governance for whatever reason (just don't care, feel disengaged and/or unaffected by it, don't understand what FAmSCo does and why it matters, etc.). Others fall into a group of potential voters who don't feel personally well equipped to vote, they don't feel they know the candidates or the role of FAmSCo well enough to vote in a responsible way. I felt myself to be in this last class not long ago.
I'm keen on increasing voter participation in a limited way. If we can do things to make voters who are uncomfortable now confident they can vote in a responsible way I'm all for that. If we can do things to engage those who don't care now for a variety of reasons I'm all for making them care.
All in all, I don't really think the turn out this election for FAmSCo was all that bad.
I'll add that we might think some about encouraging more participation in the candidate pool too. Only having a handful of non-committee members willing to sit on FAmSCo bothers me more than a 17% or 18% voter turn out.
John
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
On Mon, 2009-12-21 at 14:06 -0500, Rob Freudenberg wrote:
This may seem academic, however, would it be possible to do a two column body for the voting page next year so that one can read the candidates blurb while voting? I realize we can open up an extra tab/window, but this would be nice for a newbie (such as myself) who's trying to make a reasonable, albeit brief, judgement.
That is a *fantastic* idea. I think Toshio maintains the voting app?
~m
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 9:13 PM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
John,
I am not used to range voting, but I have nothing against that method.
I do have some suggestion regarding the election process. I was commented about during the election process but I dropped the issue because I felt that I was disrupting the process. I did wanted "to change rules at the middle of the game." Now that elections are over I suggest to amend rules before next run.
I suggest that the candidate statements should be closed on the same date of volunteering for the seat. If some one does not want to write a statement is okey to leave it blank.
Other suggestion is to stablish an order for the list of candidates. I don't care if it is ordered by time of volunteering or if it is alphabetically. But I find a bit rude that some one added himself at the top, when every body was adding themselves at the bottom. I know that there was not rule for that.
I think they changed the order with alphabetical after you pointed out last time. Alphabetical might a nice and simple solution.
IMHO I don't have any problem with range voting, I think is a bit better than 0/1 voting because if you don't know the candidate you can give him a vote based on what you read. With the range voting you have more choice based on your feeling.
For the low participation I would like to hear the voice of someone who didn't vote (don't be shy, please), my opinion is lazyness.
Cheers Luca
yes, I am satisfied with the range voting.
-Adam
On Sun, 20 Dec 2009, inode0 wrote:
I'm not sure about the election history of FAmSCo, maybe someone who has been around a while can explain how it used to work, but I'm guessing range voting has been used in the past two FAmSCo elections. Are ambassadors happy with this method of electing the ambassador leadership?
Aside from the voting method, are there other things related to the election or composition of FAmSCo that ambassadors think would improve either the process or the constitution of the steering committee?
I have no strong opinion about the manner in which the election is conducted, and looking over the rules, which are now a few years old, is a fair thing to do.
I'm a bit hesitant to ask FAMSCO itself to modify the rules by which it is elected. I wonder, John, if you'd be interested in putting together a new proposal that could in some way (to be figured out) be discussed and then potentially adopted.
Something like this, while worth looking at every now and then, also seems like the perfect trap for everyone to spend all their time debating the election rules rather than a similar amount of effort actually making progress on things that aren't sort of meta-project. I think that having a small group of people who are passionate do some thinking, and make some recommendations is the best way to go.
It would make me very sad indeed if one of the biggest topics in Ambassadors over the next little while is the manner by which FAMSCO is elected, because it would suggest to me that we're spending too much time on meta-project stuff and not enough on actual progress.
Have I managed to straddle the fence appropriately? :)
--Max
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 8:29 PM, Max Spevack mspevack@redhat.com wrote:
On Sun, 20 Dec 2009, inode0 wrote:
I'm not sure about the election history of FAmSCo, maybe someone who has been around a while can explain how it used to work, but I'm guessing range voting has been used in the past two FAmSCo elections. Are ambassadors happy with this method of electing the ambassador leadership?
Aside from the voting method, are there other things related to the election or composition of FAmSCo that ambassadors think would improve either the process or the constitution of the steering committee?
I have no strong opinion about the manner in which the election is conducted, and looking over the rules, which are now a few years old, is a fair thing to do.
I'm a bit hesitant to ask FAMSCO itself to modify the rules by which it is elected. I wonder, John, if you'd be interested in putting together a new proposal that could in some way (to be figured out) be discussed and then potentially adopted.
Well, I can understand that for major changes but I see no reason to consider making any major changes at this time. I really just wanted to know if ambassadors were generally satisfied and at this point I think they are. I did not expect a lot of feedback, but working to incrementally improve our election process I think is worthwhile.
From earlier discussions with Francesco I think the FAmSCo election
rules as defined on the wiki just need some small adjustments to be in harmony with the way all the Fedora elections are now organized in terms of the timing of things. Perhaps we can address some of the more cosmetic suggestions made in this thread as well. These are all very minor things. I can write up a new proposed wiki page but I think making these changes is something FAmSCo can approve or not for future elections without any big fuss.
John
On Wed, 23 Dec 2009, inode0 wrote:
Perhaps we can address some of the more cosmetic suggestions made in this thread as well. These are all very minor things. I can write up a new proposed wiki page but I think making these changes is something FAmSCo can approve or not for future elections without any big fuss.
This seems like a good idea to me. Let's get a proposal up, have some conversation, and eventually come to something that FAMSCO can +1 but that will be able to satisfy two sets of people:
(1) The people who don't have any issue with the current FAMSCO elections -- we want to make sure that we don't create new problems.
(2) The people who have suggestions about how we can improve things -- we want to make sure that we are addressing concerns.
I also think that once we +1 something, we should also agree that we won't revisit the issue for 2 elections, so that we can make the reforms needed, and then move on to other things.
Thanks for your work, John.
--Max
On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Max Spevack mspevack@redhat.com wrote:
On Wed, 23 Dec 2009, inode0 wrote:
Perhaps we can address some of the more cosmetic suggestions made in this thread as well. These are all very minor things. I can write up a new proposed wiki page but I think making these changes is something FAmSCo can approve or not for future elections without any big fuss.
This seems like a good idea to me. Let's get a proposal up, have some conversation, and eventually come to something that FAMSCO can +1 but that will be able to satisfy two sets of people:
(1) The people who don't have any issue with the current FAMSCO elections -- we want to make sure that we don't create new problems.
(2) The people who have suggestions about how we can improve things -- we want to make sure that we are addressing concerns.
I also think that once we +1 something, we should also agree that we won't revisit the issue for 2 elections, so that we can make the reforms needed, and then move on to other things.
My proposed changes are reflected here now.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/SteeringCommittee/Election/Rules
Really the changes I've suggested are very very minor. I want the discussion of matters of timing to be less specific so that scheduling the general elections can be done smoothly without worrying about the specific details of X has to he 2 days before Y for the FAmSCo election and so on. I propose that we keep nominations on the wiki in the order they were made and I reworded a couple of things without changing any substance.
If there are any questions please feel free to ask.
John
On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 9:34 PM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
My proposed changes are reflected here now.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/SteeringCommittee/Election/Rules
Really the changes I've suggested are very very minor. I want the discussion of matters of timing to be less specific so that scheduling the general elections can be done smoothly without worrying about the specific details of X has to he 2 days before Y for the FAmSCo election and so on. I propose that we keep nominations on the wiki in the order they were made and I reworded a couple of things without changing any substance.
If there are any questions please feel free to ask.
John
I took the time to read the page, I found one thing that I may add.
I copied this paragraph from wiki: "Candidates must self-nominate before the close of the announced nomination period by appending their information into the wiki (Fedora account, email and irc nick, statement of past contributions and what they hope to accomplish while a member of FAmSCo) after any existing nominations."
I may add at the end: "Edition to the self nomination details will be close at the same time that nomination period ends"
This is to avoid some one to wrote only his or her name just before closing, and later wrote a statement.
This is just my opinion. I can understand that this may sound trivial to others and therefore not taken into account.
ambassadors@lists.fedoraproject.org