[fedora-commops] Issue #103 `Improving Fedora Elections Process: Improving Voter Participation`

[Pagure]

cprofitt reported a new issue against the project: `fedora-commops` that you are
following:
``
These ideas were taken from ticket #90; the focus of this ticket is improving voter
participation

---- ideas from #90 ----

 * Teaser article in magazine article
 * Badge for voting (potential privacy issues - see ticket
https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-badges/ticket/45
 * AMA on Reddit (candidate more interactive w/ community)
 * Use social media to make people with FAS accounts aware of the election
 * Automatically gather data about candidate activities over the last # months
   - ensure that the data is fair
``

To reply, visit the link below or just reply to this email
https://pagure.io/fedora-commops/issue/103

[Justin W. Flory]

jflory7 added a new comment to an issue you are following:
``
**Discussed in [2017-02-07
meeting](https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/teams/commops/commops.2017-02-...

# Continuing what is successful

In the meeting, we revisited what has been successful in this past cycle but also in the
last few election cycles. Again, as in #102, it is important that we _maintain_ the
following:

* [Community Blog posts](https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/category/elections/) for
candidate interviews leading up to the election
* Posts on the announce mailing list at the start of the voting period, but also close to
the end
* Using social media to promote the election window being open

### Better understanding with metrics

One thing that would be helpful here is if we could better understand our efforts with
metrics on voting participation. I'm not sure what would be helpful in constructing a
report to look at this, but maybe @bee2502 could provide some insight to this or give
pointers for what we could start collecting.

# New ideas for growing?

Other ideas we discussed to continue growing and have a larger impact are broken down into
this sub-categories. It would help to have @jkurik provide input on some of these ideas
too. :smiley: 

### Fedora Magazine announcement

Even though the election interviews, which used to be on the Magazine, were the lowest
performing posts, it may be helpful to write one, single article for the Magazine
announcing the election process starting to help raise awareness in the general public.
This would be supplemented by social media posts. But ideally, this would help reach out
to the group of voters who are eligible, but maybe not active enough to keep up with news
about the election without enough advance notice.

### Voting badge

This isn't a new idea, but this could be worthy to try pursuing for an Election cycle
sometime soon. Badge artwork is already available in [this
ticket](https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-badges/ticket/45), and there was general consensus
in the later comments about the best way to anonymize and protect the confidentiality of
voters by doing it in a similar style to Nuancier. A [ticket in the Elections
app](https://pagure.io/elections/issue/45) also puts in an RFE to add this type of
functionality.

As small of a thing as it is, I feel like this would go a tremendous way in improving
voter participation. Hopefully, along with other communication steps outlined in this
ticket, people would be following along with the process and be more engaged with the
process as a whole, as compared to someone putting in random votes just for a badge (which
I don't think is going to be all that common).

### Nominee AMAs on Reddit / other platforms

The more fun and dynamic idea is one that @rhea and I had discussed a bit in person about
holding "Ask Me Anything!" (AMA) sessions on the [/r/Fedora
subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/), where we are both moderators. This could be
a fun and engaging way for nominees and voters to engage with each other and also to
bolster quality discussion about what a candidate hopes to accomplish if elected, as well
as share this message with the voting community.

The issue we need to discuss on this is if a candidate is unwilling to use Reddit. It
could be a major disadvantage if a candidate chooses to not participate in this, but maybe
it should be encouraged as an optional but helpful activity. Alternatively, we could make
do a Twitter AMA hour, similar to how Outreachy has theirs, but I wonder how effective
this might be (and how easy it would be to refer back to later, as compared to a
forum-style thread on Reddit). But we should be ready to anticipate a candidate not
willing to participate in this.

Would be curious to know thoughts of others!
``

To reply, visit the link below or just reply to this email
https://pagure.io/fedora-commops/issue/103

[Charles Profitt]

cprofitt added a new comment to an issue you are following:
``
Fedora Magazine Article:
Potentially the 'Election' article could be condensed in to one large How Do You
Fedora style article introducing each candidate from a 'personal' and 'how
they use Fedora' side instead of the platform side of things which can still go on
CommBlog.
``

To reply, visit the link below or just reply to this email
https://pagure.io/fedora-commops/issue/103

[Charles Profitt]

cprofitt added a new comment to an issue you are following:
``
@jflory7 yes, that is the thought. Though I was thinking on the Magazine. The individual
posts would still be on CommBlog.
``

To reply, visit the link below or just reply to this email
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[Brian Exelbierd (bex)]

bex added a new comment to an issue you are following:
``
I realize that hubs is coming and may cause some of this to be rethought, but I am feeling
like in the short-term we could consider opportunities to make the commblog more of a
"contributor landing page."  This would include the idea of running a sidebar
during election periods listing the offices and candidates with links to their interviews.
 This would increase the visibility of the campaigning.

I also like the idea of a roll up Fedora Magazine article.

(unrelated: the sidebar can be used for other cool stuff (tm) when elections are not in
progress.  A similar side bar on magazine could show tweets or Instagram photos - way off
topic I know)
``

To reply, visit the link below or just reply to this email
https://pagure.io/fedora-commops/issue/103

[Justin W. Flory]

jflory7 added a new comment to an issue you are following:
``
@bex Could you file an RFE for this in the [Community Blog
theme](https://pagure.io/communityblog-theme) repo? Ryan Lerch is best person to keep in
the loop on this. :smiley: 
``

To reply, visit the link below or just reply to this email
https://pagure.io/fedora-commops/issue/103