Re: Reducing the board size
Hi, So, it's been over 10 days since the start of the thread, and I just wanted to make sure we hadn't forgotten about it. There were clearly mixed opinions on this. There were 6 or 7 people in favour of reducing the size, 6 or 7 people in favour of leaving it as is or not reducing it. There certainly seems to be enough difference of opinion on this to merit putting it to the foundation membership. I would like to propose, then, that the referendum take place in October (to allow the vote to happen before the next board elections). I would like to board to ratify this, and ask the election committee to put the wheels in motion at our next board meeting on Wednesday. Cheers, Dave. David Neary wrote: Hi all, There has been some discussion on reducing the board size on the board, and the one point which is clear is that this discussion should be in public. I'm in favour of reducing the board to 7 people. I would like to see us have a referendum on the issue next month. The board has huge problems being pro-active. Any issue which is slightly contentious has an opposition in a board of 11 people. It's inevitable. And when there is opposition, there are many voices, and when there are many voices, there is no resolution. With 7 people, this problem will be reduced (not removed, I'm not that naive). In addition, a fringe benefit is that people who will want to get elected will have to run. With 11 seats, no-one runs for election. There is essentially only competition for the last 3 seats. I would like to see board elections have an election campaign, with people saying what they want to do, why, and saying why they think other people's approach will not be effective. There are potential down-sides. If you look at the most effective board members over the years, they have typically not been among the 7 most popular. I myself would not have been elected this year. But there is no denying that the board structure as it is is fundamentally flawed. I think this is one step towards improving it. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lyon, France ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
Hi Dave, Today at 15:26, David Neary wrote: I would like to propose, then, that the referendum take place in October (to allow the vote to happen before the next board elections). I would like to board to ratify this, and ask the election committee to put the wheels in motion at our next board meeting on Wednesday. I don't think we've seen enough campaigning from those in favour of the change. I.e. it is my opinion that most of those who don't care, don't want board size to be reduced, or are unable to judge based on the available data (this includes myself), simply didn't take part in the discussion. As with many changes, I think the foundation membership would be confronted with a question unable to answer (including board elections, as has been pointed out previously, since we commonly vote based on technical merits). And this leads to low turn-out. At least, that's how I feel: I simply do not know if reducing the board size is going to help anything or not, and if it is, I am not seeing what exactly (yes, I've seen mentions about only couple of board members being active, I've seen arguments about simplifying decision making, etc. but I've also seen counter-arguments, and truth be told, none of them seemed strong enough). As it is, such a referendum would end up being NOT VOTING for me, because I don't feel strongly about it either way. And I hope I should feel strongly about it. Cheers, Danilo ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: RFC: anonymous voting system
On Sun, 2005-25-09 at 17:07 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote: + You'll need to trust people with access to the database/code since they can do a lot of bad things. = You already trust the membership elections committee and the gnome.org admins, don't you? :-) More seriously, this is again something that is not different from the current system. I would like to disagree. This is very different from the old system. In the old system everybody was able and encouraged to check their votes and see those of others so that little trust was needed. In that system also everybody was able to see who did not vote. Under the new system that privilege remains with only a few (whom we likely trust not to abuse it). Nevertheless, this is significantly different from the old system. A question: what happens if one tries to vote and the token has already been used (by somebody who intercepted the insecure mail). Andreas -- Andreas J. Guelzow Taliesin Software, Shelties, Pyr Sheps and Shetland Sheep signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
