Board term limits

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 5:52 AM, Paul W. Frields <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:
> During the discussion following the Board election, the subject of term
> limits was raised.  Generally those who commented on term limits thought
> they were a good idea, including several Board members.  I've written up
> a proposal to amend the Board's succession plan with term limits, in the
> hopes that these limits would encourage continual but gentle change in
> the Board's elected membership over time.
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pfrields/Proposal_for_Board_Term_Limits
>
> Comments appreciated either here or in the discussion page for the
> proposal on the wiki.  I'll bring this before the Board for final
> discussion and a vote at our August 5th session, which will likely be a
> public IRC meeting.

This may well reflect my position as an entrenched incumbent ;) but a
little more explanation of what problem this solves would be good.
Incumbents may have a lot of valuable institutional memory, so making
them step away on a schedule might not be ideal. If you're concerned
about people overstaying their welcome and getting new blood on board,
it might be better to focus on how to get new blood involved and
increase the new blood's profile, and how to measure involvement of
incumbents (possibly privately) so that they get the message that they
are fading and ought to formalize that by fading out completely.

You mention Notting's wisdom in this sense, which reminds me that
getting rid of institutional knowledge is particularly problematic
given the elected/appointed split- if this actually applies only to
elected members, you're automatically putting the elected members at
an institutional memory disadvantage relative to the appointed
members.

FWIW-
Luis