On Oct 30, 2014, at 10:41 AM, Zane Bitter <zbit...@redhat.com> wrote:
> On 30/10/14 06:22, Eoghan Glynn wrote: >> >>>>>>>>> IIRC, there is no method for removing foundation members. So there >>>>>>>>> are likely a number of people listed who have moved on to other >>>>>>>>> activities and are no longer involved with OpenStack. I'd actually >>>>>>>>> be quite interested to see the turnout numbers with voters who >>>>>>>>> missed the last two elections prior to this one filtered out. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Well, the base electorate for the TC are active contributors with >>>>>>>> patches landed to official projects within the past year, so these >>>>>>>> are devs getting their code merged but not interested in voting. >>>>>>>> This is somewhat different from (though potentially related to) the >>>>>>>> "dead weight" foundation membership on the rolls for board >>>>>>>> elections. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Also, foundation members who have not voted in two board elections >>>>>>>> are being removed from the membership now, from what I understand >>>>>>>> (we just needed to get to the point where we had two years worth of >>>>>>>> board elections in the first place). >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Thanks, I lost my mind here and confused the board with the TC. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> So then my next question is, of those who did not vote, how many are >>>>>>> from under-represented companies? A higher percentage there might point >>>>>>> to disenfranchisement. >>>>>> >>>>>> Different but related question (might be hard to calculate though): >>>>>> >>>>>> If we remove people who have only ever landed one patch from the >>>>>> electorate, what do the turnout numbers look like? 2? 5? >>>>>> >>>>>> Do we have the ability to dig in slightly and find a natural definition >>>>>> or characterization amongst our currently voting electorate that might >>>>>> help us understand who the people are who do vote and what it is about >>>>>> those people who might be or feel different or more enfranchised? I've >>>>>> personally been thinking that the one-patch rule is, while tractable, >>>>>> potentially strange for turnout - especially when one-patch also gets >>>>>> you a free summit pass... but I have no data to say what actually >>>>>> defined "active" in active technical contributor. >>>>> >>>>> Again, the ballots are anonymized so we've no way of doing that analysis. >>>>> >>>>> The best we could IIUC would be to analyze the electoral roll, >>>>> bucketizing >>>>> by number of patches landed, to see if there's a significant long-tail of >>>>> potential voters with very few patches. >>>> >>>> Just looking at stackalytices numbers for Juno: Out of 1556 committers, >>>> 1071 have committed more than one patch and 485 only a single patch. >>>> That's a third! >>> >>> Here's the trend over the past four cycles, with a moving average in the >>> last column, as the eligible voters are derived from the preceding two >>> cycles: >>> >>> Release | Committers | Single-patch | 2-cycle MA >>> ------------------------------------------------ >>> Juno | 1556 | 485 (31.2%) | 29.8% >>> Icehouse| 1273 | 362 (28.4%) | 28.0% >>> Havana | 1005 | 278 (27.6%) | 28.8% >>> Folsom | 401 | 120 (29.9%) | 27.9% >> >> Correction, I skipped a cycle in that table: >> >> Release | Committers | Single-patch | 2-cycle MA >> ------------------------------------------------ >> Juno | 1556 | 485 (31.2%) | 29.8% >> Icehouse| 1273 | 362 (28.4%) | 28.0% >> Havana | 1005 | 278 (27.6%) | 28.0% >> Grizzly | 630 | 179 (28.4%) | 29.2% >> Folsom | 401 | 120 (29.9%) | 27.9% >> >> Doesn't alter the trend though, still quite flat with some jitter and >> a small uptick. > > The low (and dropping) level of turnout is worrying, particularly in light of > that analysis showing the proportion of drive-by contributors is relatively > static, but it is always going to be hard to discern the motives of people > who didn't vote from the single bit of data we have on them. > > There is, however, another metric that we can pull from the actual voting > data: the number of candidates actually ranked by each voter: > > Candidates > ranked Frequency > > 0 8 2% > 1 17 3% > 2 24 5% > 3 20 4% > 4 31 6% > 5 36 7% > 6 68 13% > 7 39 8% > 8 17 3% > 9 9 2% > 10 21 4% > 11 - - > 12 216 43% > > (Note that it isn't possible to rank exactly n-1 candidates.) > > So even amongst the group of people who were engaged enough to vote, fewer > than half ranked all of the candidates. A couple of hypotheses spring to mind: > > 1) People don't understand the voting system. > > Under Condorcet, there is no such thing as tactical voting by an individual. > So to the extent that these figures might reflect deliberate 'tactical' > voting, it means people don't understand Condorcet. The size of the spike at > 6 (the number of positions available - the same spike appeared at 7 in the > previous election) strongly suggests that lack of understanding of the voting > system is at least part of the story. The good news is that this problem is > eminently addressable. > > 2) People aren't familiar with the candidates > > This is the one that worries me - it looks a lot like most voters are > choosing not to rank many of the candidates because they don't feel they know > enough about them to have an opinion. It seems to me that the TC has failed > to engage the community enough on the issues of the day to move beyond > elections as a simple name-recognition contest. (Kind of like how I imagine > it is when you have to vote for your local dog-catcher here in the US. I have > to imagine because they don't let me vote.) It gets worse, because the less > the TC tries to engage the community on the issues and the less it attempts > to actually lead (as opposed to just considering checklists and voting to ask > for more time to consider checklists), the more entrenched the current > revolving-door membership becomes. So every election serves to reinforce the > TC members' perception that everything is going great, and also to reinforce > the perception of those whose views are not represented that the TC is an > echo chamber from which their views are more or less structurally excluded. > That's a much harder problem to address. Another option: 3) People consider the lower choices on their list to be equivalent. I personally tend to vote in tiers (these 3 are top choices, these 3 are secondary choices, these 6 are third choices) and I don’t differentiate individuals in the bottom tier so it ends up unranked. Vish > > cheers, > Zane. > >> >> Cheers, >> Eoghan >> >>> So the proportion of single-patch committers is creeping up slowly, but >>> not at a rate that would account for the decline in voter turnout. >>> >>> And since we've no way of knowing if voting patterns among the single-patch >>> committers differs in any way from the norm, these data don't tell us much. >>> >>> If we're serious about improving participation rates, then I think we >>> should consider factors what would tend to drive interest levels and >>> excitement around election time. My own suspicion is that open races >>> where the outcome is in doubt are more likely to garner attention from >>> voters, than contests that feel like a foregone conclusion. That would >>> suggest un-staggering the terms as a first step. >>> >>> Cheers, >>> Eoghan >> >> _______________________________________________ >> OpenStack-dev mailing list >> OpenStack-dev@lists.openstack.org >> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev >> > > > _______________________________________________ > OpenStack-dev mailing list > OpenStack-dev@lists.openstack.org > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
signature.asc
Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail
_______________________________________________ OpenStack-dev mailing list OpenStack-dev@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
