[maemo-community] council at maemo.org, Re: Eligible voters [urgent] (was Re: Elections - vote soon!)

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 1:48 PM, Frantisek Dufka <dufkaf at seznam.cz> wrote:
> Dave Neary wrote:
>> I don't mean to be a pest about this... but the discussion about what
>> the various proposals for the referenda would be moved off-list and was
>> discussed by the council at one stage

Not really "discussed". Just one or two emails to say "is this our
position?" to present a unified front.

>> so feedback was difficult for people outside of the council &
>> myself during that time.

I ignored this, as - frankly - it was a little unfair of Dave. The
council suggesting something (the *exact* thing which had been
requested earlier in that thread) is not to shoot down discussion, but
better guide it to a conclusion.

> Which reminds me - do you (members of council) remember discussion about
> council at maemo.org address and what it will be used for?

Indeed.

> People were agains creating this alias for this very reason that
> discussion which should be in community at maemo.org moves to
> council at maemo.org.

And, let me assure you, in this case (although it's a grey area) there
was no real discussion.

> Maybe there should be written rules? Like
>
> 1. stuff which Nokia wants to keep secret for limited time (coordination
> of upcoming releases/services/changes related to maemo.org)
>
> 2. nothing else?

A good idea.

> Can some member of current council describe from past experience how
> much traffic went to council at maemo.org and what was the rationale behind
> preferring it over community at maemo.org?

The posts to council at maemo.org have been pretty much on four topics:

  1) Debmaster hiring. This is pretty much the only significant purpose
     the alias has served.

  2) The alpha SDK is coming - hopefully on March 2nd. Be aware. This
     was received about 6 days before the release.

  3) A few questions to Quim about releases/drivers which may have been
     more openly answered in a more private setting. No information which
     is currently unknown in the public domain was received.

  4) A convenience for council members to email each other ("what are you
     doing on Thursday night of the summit?" "thanks for the experience of
     the last 6 months") instead of having to dig out email addresses.

> Or what about real council at maemo.org mailing list with public archive if
> you feel community@ is too wide?

Public archive would be a no-no, especially for stuff like hiring for
roles (which hopefully will only *increase* in future).

Part of me wishes we'd set it up as a mailing list which we could open
the archives up to on something along the lines of the
thirty-year-rule. However, that's still not practical with sensitive
material like debmaster hires.

A private mailing list with archives which could be passed from one
council to another may also be inappropriate if a future council
included people who had stood for the debmaster role.

Given what it's been used for, I'd say the current approach is
probably best. You'll just have to trust the judgment of your
representatives to keep stuff open, and nag at them to do so through
threads like these.

There will always be occasions where the council members feel they
have to discuss something privately, and at least having the council@
alias makes it easy for the members to feel guilty and/or re-think
whether it's appropriate to go to that place.

Cheers,

Andrew

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