[maemo-community] Should we restart the Unicode voting?

[From: Dave Neary]

Hi,

We can send out a new email, clear the votes, change the text - this is
all easy to do. I think we will confuse those who've already voted.

Mea culpa for the email sent out and the election mishaps - it was done
very quickly, as I was going out the door (late) for a meeting, and I
passed everything to Ferenc, who was doing an election for the first
time. And I didn't mention to him that we usually test the election
ourselves before sending email to members.

For the text, I'll admit that beyond the comment that it was a request
from the hardware guys, I didn't get all the context for the election &
agree that the result is quite unclear. Part of the confusion came from
calling this "the unicode election" when in fact all but 2 of the
characters are normal ANSI.

It's possible to maintain existing votes, or wipe the slate & ask people
to vote again. I'm easy either way. Which is preferable?

Cheers,
Dave.

quim.gil at nokia.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Yesterday an email from "Dave Neary" was sent to all maemo.org users
> asking them to vote. The text was unclear, most people didn't get who
> is Dave and how did he get ttheir emails, the context was missing,
> some of the characters were not displayed properly and there were
> problems in the voting interface itself. I got some emails of
> confused users, Dave got many more and a Talk thread was started with
> more confused users (can't access Talk right now, it's in the
> Community forum).
> 
> Maybe we can tell this was a false start? I take my part of the blame
> for assuming that some text would be drafted and agreed before being
> sent. Probably it should have been me the one doing it. I assumed
> Dave would take the pieces from the short discussion we had here. My
> apologies.
> 
> Still, people are not getting the point of the survey, which is sad
> since on the other hand I'm sure this is the type of Nokia-community
> collaboration the average maemo.org is looking forward.
> 
> So here we go with a proposal for a fresh start, urgently today:
> 
> SUBJECT Survey: what characters matter in a mobile keyboard?
> 
> BODY
> 
> Dear $NAME,
> 
> You are receiving this email as a maemo.org registered user. It's an
> invitation to take part in a survey organized by the Maemo community
> after a proposal from the Maemo Devices team at Nokia.
> 
> The question is about keyboards in mobile devices. What characters to
> put, what characters to sacrifice? You know it's a hot topic and
> maybe yourself have thought sometimes: why do they put X which I
> don't used, while Y is missing?
> 
> So the Maemo team is doing the usual research, but they are also
> interested in getting some direct feedback from maemo.org users. Do
> you want to have your say?
> 
> Question:
> 
> What characters would you prefer to have in the hardware keyboard?
> Set your preference starting from the most preferred.
> 
> $ % & ( ) < = > \  _ | ~ £ €
> 
> Voting will run from Dec 1st until Dec 15th 2009, 23:59 UTC.
> 
> To vote, please go to http://maemo.org/vote/ and follow the
> instructions there.
> 
> When instructed to do so, enter the following details:
> 
> E-mail: Vote token:
> 
> The election has 4 steps - first, you must identify yourself using
> the voting token above. Then select your preferred candidates in
> order of preference. A third step will show you your choice, and ask
> you to confirm or return to the previous step. Finally, after
> confirming your choice, a unique identifier will be given to you
> which will allow you to verify after the election that your vote was
> counted correctly. To ensure anonymity, no link will be kept between
> this token and your identifiers, so please keep this token safe. Once
> you have voted, you will not be able to vote again.
> 
> Thank you for your vote! The results will be published around
> December 16th at http://maemo.org/news
> 
> Regards,
> 
> The Maemo Community Council
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original message -----
>> Dear Quim,
>> 
>> We are running an election to see which of the following characters
>>  are most important to you on Maemo: $ % & ( ) < = > \ _ | ~ £ €
>> 
>> 
>> Voting will run from Dec 1st until Dec 15th 2009, 23:59 UTC.
>> 
>> To vote, please go to http://maemo.org/vote/ and follow the 
>> instructions there.
>> 
>> When instructed to do so, enter the following details:
>> 
>> E-mail: quim.gil at nokia.com Vote token: ZkN243H9fo
>> 
>> The election has 4 steps - first, you must identify yourself using
>> the voting token above. Then select your preferred candidates in
>> order of preference. A third step will show you your choice, and
>> ask you to confirm or return to the previous step. Finally, after
>> confirming your choice, a unique identifier will be given to you
>> which will allow you to verify after the election that your vote
>> was counted correctly. To ensure anonymity, no link will be kept
>> between this token and your identifiers, so please keep this token
>> safe. Once you have voted, you will not be able to vote again.
>> 
>> Thank you for your vote!
>> 
>> Regards, Dave Neary, on behalf of the Maemo community.
>> 
>> 

-- 
maemo.org docsmaster
Email: dneary at maemo.org
Jabber: bolsh at jabber.org