[maemo-community] Election process referendum

[From: Graham Cobb]

On Tuesday 03 February 2009 08:31:33 Andrew Flegg wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 9:21 PM, Graham Cobb <g+770 at cobb.uk.net> wrote:
> > 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?
>
> The council represent the *community* - if someone has created a
> maemo.org account and rated some products, left some comments etc.
> then (at some point) they'll reach the karma threshold. If they've
> just created an account and *not* reached the threshold, they've
> participated very little in the community.

Well, there we must agree to disagree.  Karma does a reasonable job of 
measuring **contribution** to the community but nothing at all for 
**participation** in the community.  People who read ITT, people who follow 
mailing lists, people who read the Wiki, and, most importantly of all, people 
who download and use the community contributed software are not measured.  In 
my mind they are the members of the community.

When I contribute a piece of software to maemo, or reply to a query on ITT, I 
don't do it to benefit the other contributors to maemo -- they are generally 
capable of looking after themselves, don't need my help, and are a small 
clique.  I do it to benefit the maemo community users.  For my own vanity, 
and to justify my efforts to myself, I want that community of users to be as 
large as possible.  And that means they should be high up in the minds of the 
council -- not just the few hundred other contributers.

> If someone hasn't participated in the community, how can they make an
> informed decision on for whom to vote? It could just turn into a
> popularity contest (or potluck), rather than choosing candidates on
> their policies or plans.

They can make that decision on the actions the person has taken in their 
previous terms of office and how it has affected things they care about 
(maybe they found a way to encourage more developers to participate in ITT or 
got Nokia to make some improvements in handling repositories in the Appl 
Mgr).  They can read their manifestos which, presumably, will be sent to 
everyone with their voting forms.  By your logic, voting would be limited to 
peope on the maemo-community mailing list!

> Also, as Benson says, it helps reduce the possibility of fraud.

Oh, puhleez!  Can't we all agree to drop this canard?  No one is interested in 
stealing the Maemo community council election!  And, if it ever gets to the 
stage that someone is even interested in this the comunity will have already 
collapsed -- riven by internal division and probably lost Nokia as a sponsor.

The issue is not voting fraud, it is whether the council represents the whole 
community or just the much smaller number of contributors to the community.

Graham