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/msg0008...
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
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.
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
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
---------- "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin
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
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...
----------
Mathieu Bridon (bochecha) French Fedora Ambassador
---------- "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin
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
On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 09:49:08AM -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
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.
I bet the Fedora News crew would jump at the chance to devote a special issue to this coverage, if someone but asks politely and describes the need concisely.
2008/10/1 Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.com:
I bet the Fedora News crew would jump at the chance to devote a special issue to this coverage, if someone but asks politely and describes the need concisely.
well those conditions definitely disqualify me.
-jef
On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 08:16:27PM -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
2008/10/1 Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.com:
I bet the Fedora News crew would jump at the chance to devote a special issue to this coverage, if someone but asks politely and describes the need concisely.
well those conditions definitely disqualify me.
Heh.
Oisin, Pascal, Max, et al.: Would you be interested in running a special issue of Fedora Weekly News -- or simply devoting a regularly scheduled issue -- to reporting on IRC chat interviews/Q&A with community members running for elections?
It seems like everyone, including the Board, is in favor of a general election where FESCo, the Board, etc. will run their elections concurrently sometime with 30 days after release of Fedora 10. To give the community a better idea of where nominees stand, the Marketing group will have a method for gathering questions and posing them to the nominees. If FWN were to report those answers they could potentially reach a lot more people, thus resulting in a more informed electorate.
Are you interested in this idea? If you're not already, you may want to join the fedora-marketing-list to follow and help with the discussion: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
Paul W. Frields wrote:
Oisin, Pascal, Max, et al.: Would you be interested in running a special issue of Fedora Weekly News -- or simply devoting a regularly scheduled issue -- to reporting on IRC chat interviews/Q&A with community members running for elections?
It seems like everyone, including the Board, is in favor of a general election where FESCo, the Board, etc. will run their elections concurrently sometime with 30 days after release of Fedora 10. To give the community a better idea of where nominees stand, the Marketing group will have a method for gathering questions and posing them to the nominees. If FWN were to report those answers they could potentially reach a lot more people, thus resulting in a more informed electorate.
This seems like a great idea to me, and a nice way for FWN to help spread the word on getting more community involvement in the election!
One suggestion might be to include these as they come in, in regular FWN issues, and then put together a special issue of all of these together, along with any other additional content y'all feel would be useful, closer to the election, perhaps at the beginning of the voting period. Other suggestions most welcome!
- pascal
On Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:55:10 -0400, "Pascal Calarco" pcalarco@nd.edu said:
Paul W. Frields wrote:
Oisin, Pascal, Max, et al.: Would you be interested in running a special issue of Fedora Weekly News -- or simply devoting a regularly scheduled issue -- to reporting on IRC chat interviews/Q&A with community members running for elections?
It seems like everyone, including the Board, is in favor of a general election where FESCo, the Board, etc. will run their elections concurrently sometime with 30 days after release of Fedora 10. To give the community a better idea of where nominees stand, the Marketing group will have a method for gathering questions and posing them to the nominees. If FWN were to report those answers they could potentially reach a lot more people, thus resulting in a more informed electorate.
This seems like a great idea to me, and a nice way for FWN to help spread the word on getting more community involvement in the election!
One suggestion might be to include these as they come in, in regular FWN issues, and then put together a special issue of all of these together, along with any other additional content y'all feel would be useful, closer to the election, perhaps at the beginning of the voting period. Other suggestions most welcome!
I'm a bit late in replying to this, but I'm completely in favor of what Pascal suggests above. Probably we'll have to be pro-active in prompting candidates to respond to a template of some sort. Something along the lines of:
1. What are the biggest problems with the Fedora Project which you seek to address and how?
2. What is your relevant experience?
3. Are there other changes which you envision?
4. Are there areas or issues which you intend to completely avoid?
5. Any other?
It would be interesting to offer candidates the opportunity to comment on each others' platforms or mandates but this requires that we get this processing going soon. As I look over the above it sounds a bit controlling and I can imagine that some candidates would prefer not to be constrained by any template, but it might be easier to compare ideas if they follow some sort of formatting conventions.
Best wishes,
Hi, I can not seem to log into Fedora Forum! I tried to contact the Administrator, nothing worked! Paul, can you e-mail me the answers to the questions I e-mailed earlier the day after Fedora 10 is released, it's so appreciated!
Thanks!
Markus McLaughlin a k a linuxglobe linuxglobe.wordpress.com Hudson, MA, USA
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
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
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
On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 09:06:50AM -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 8:58 AM, Jonathan Roberts
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.
In that case there are other, more insidious problems to solve. We are going to this length to solve the issue many have raised -- that they don't know why they should vote for any particular candidate. If we give community members a way to discover that and they don't make use of it, we have to step back and ask ourselves very different questions.
On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 6:06 PM, Jeff Spaleta jspaleta@gmail.com wrote:
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/msg0008...
I think that this is one of the best things that we can do - increasing voter turnout by not nickel-and-diming their time to death. Especially if we hold the ever-popular release naming election at the same time. But that means we need to come up with suggestions and vet them through legal quickly.
So what sort of things can we do? And when should we start doing them?
We should start doing stuff ASAP - not necessarily the entire "get out the vote" campaign, but there are preparatory things that I'm sure could be easily done now.
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 think that the qualification methods depend on the particular election. For some, it's CLA+1, for some you have to be a member of a particular group, etc. An explanation of range voting would be very worthwhile, including what to do if you don't know what to do :)
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?
Sure, we can do it in every mailing list, announce list, blog, billboard, TV ad, carrier pigeon, orbital laser, robotic telescope, etc that we have control over :)
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 voting app is going to grow into being able to do this soonish. As a contingency plan if it's not available for F11 (I don't think that will be a problem), we could use the Wiki for it I think. But this being in the voting app proper is key I think, since it eliminates a lot of the administrative heartache that currently goes into the elections process.
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.
I think that this is a wonderful idea - again, as has already been said in this thread, I think that a format similar to Board meetings might work. However, I'd like to take it a step further, and have Fedora Talk debate. However, the factors that prevent us from doing the public board meeting like this also prevent us from doing a debate this way. Without claiming any sort of originality on what the factors are, here they are for the folks that weren't on IRC when Paul and I talked about it:
1) No method for GStreamer stream of the audio for folks to just listen 2) No method of archiving the call 3) No method of making it accessible to the hearing impaired.
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?
A wiki page that points to videos hosted on fedorapeople (or elsewhere)? Or a similar spot in the replacement for the nomination wiki page in the election app?
On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 12:59 PM, Jon Stanley jonstanley@gmail.com wrote:
The voting app is going to grow into being able to do this soonish. As a contingency plan if it's not available for F11 (I don't think that will be a problem), we could use the Wiki for it I think. But this being in the voting app proper is key I think, since it eliminates a lot of the administrative heartache that currently goes into the elections process.
Okay lets agree on a timeline for when we have to think about going with a wiki based plan B for candidate Q/A. I know Nigel is superhuman, but things happen, and if the functionality for the voting doesn't make it in time I don't want to have this block on pushing him to get it done. And I don't want to drive people to two different locations, if I can avoid it.
If the the voting app doesn't have the Q/A functionality by Nov. 7 should we just go ahead and tell people to use the wiki for Q/A?
it would help if we could firm up the actual election date, but the actual timeframe (Dec vs Jan) seems to depend on whether F10 slips too much or not.
-jef
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