On 9/15/05, Richard M. Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It sounds like increasing the size of the board by 3 people could > achieve both of the goals that Dave was talking about: to get more > things done, and to have more contested seats **(provided enough people > decide to run so as to make a real contest).** [Emphasis mine]
This last is the true problem. I know that in each of the past two years there have been at least two candidates each year (and more last year) who placed their name in nomination only because they felt it would be embarassing if there were fewer nominees than seats on the board, and/or because they felt the 'last' nominee would be a very poor representative on the board. I certainly found myself in this category last year. To put it another way, in the current system, we're *electing* people every year whose primary qualification is that they self-nominated and are not completely unknown. We've not had an election in two years where fewer than 1/2 of the candidates were elected, and in that year, 11 of 23 were selected. So instead of focusing on picking the most qualified, we're focusing on disqualifying the handful of least qualified. That's a terrible way of picking a quality board that can work well together and get things done. If we picked a smaller number of candidates, we'd have actual competition based on criteria like time available, views on issues facing the board, etc., and I think that would be very healthy for the board. Luis _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
