[maemo-community] Election process referendum

[From: Benson Mitchell]

On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Graham Cobb
<g+770 at cobb.uk.net<g%2B770 at cobb.uk.net>
> wrote:

> On Monday 02 February 2009 20:12:29 Ryan Abel wrote:
> > On Feb 2, 2009, at 9:12 AM, Graham Cobb wrote:
> > > Maybe
> > > that is the way it should be: maybe the council **should** represent
> > > contributors rather than users, but we should at least get the
> > > opinion of the
> > > users on whether they care.
> >
> > Dave also hit the nail on the head here, but I'll elaborate a bit.
> >
> > The Council isn't in place as a consumer activism group. We're here
> > for the *community* and its members (i.e., contributors), which is
> > only a subset of all users (i.e., owners).
>
> When I said "users" I didn't mean tablet users, I meant Maemo.org users,
> who I
> consider to be just as much members of the community as the contributors.
> Are you suggesting the "community" in my local small town only consists of
> the shopkeepers?   There are well over a thousand (probably many more -- I
> got bored flicking through the pages in the user listing) people with Maemo
> accounts and fewer than 25 karma points.  Many more than have more than 25
> points.
>
> All these people have visited maemo.org and created accounts.  Why should
> the
> council only represent people who contribute to the Maemo community, not
> all
> those who are trying to use our downloads, our documentation, our
> community-contributed software, our forums, etc?
>
> I'm not saying that the council is doing a bad job of dealing with those
> people's concerns (the new site, the debmaster, all these things are
> helping
> those users) but why on earth don't they get a vote?
>
> I must admit, I completely fail to see why we do not give a vote to anyone
> who
> has a maemo.org account.  Can someone explain the rationale?

Because I like Starship Troopers?

Because you don't want me signing up 300 accounts and electing myself?

Because handing control to clueless people who have no stake in the outcome
is asking for problems down the road.

(Two of those are serious, the other one is only tangentially related. ;)

Also, all developers, bughounds, and other contributors _are_ users as well,
so I'm not seeing any concerns that leeches would have uniquely, so the loss
is not perhaps as serious as you're thinking.

Benson
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