[maemo-community] Election process referendum

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Graham Cobb <g+770 at cobb.uk.net> wrote:
> On Tuesday 03 February 2009 08:31:33 Andrew Flegg wrote:
>
> 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.

Absolutely, they are members of the community. But they're not
participating in my definition of the word.

To be blunt, is their first act of participation being a vote likely
be useful in deciding a "good" outcome for the election? Now, there's
an interesting question, is their first act of participation likely to
lead to additional ones? I dunno.

We're talking here about passive members of the community, who have
created an account and then not done any of the following to any
noticeable extent:

  * Posted to ITT
  * Edited a wiki document
  * Rated software downloads
  * Helped rank /news/
  * Posted to a mailing list
  * Commented on a bug

The council should, indeed, represent these members of the community
(after all, to some extent they have a maemo.org account), but should
this silently majority have the ability to change the outcome of the
election for those who *do* actively contribute on a daily basis?

Debian Project Leader elections aren't open to anyone who's ever
commented on a Debian bug; it's limited to the contributors who are
expected to have the ability to make an informed choice through their
constant, and active, participation in the community, and are aware of
the issues which affect it.

Let's set up a strawman: karma requirements for candidates &
electorate are scrapped. Someone stands saying "I want NOKIA to make
MAEMO like an IPhone and I think it should have a full PIM and office
suite shipped with it". This is likely to be a popular platform - but
anyone who participates in Maemo in reality knows that a) it's not
something the Council have any real influence in; b) it's not
something that Nokia are likely to change in response to the community
electing this candidate. Should this candidate be able to stand?
Should the majority of the maemo.org members with less than 25 karma
be allowed to elect him?

[snipping the other points, I don't really disagree and they're not
the nub of the matter, IMHO]

Cheers,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/
Maemo Community Council member