Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Tony Breeds]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 02:16:42PM +0200, Flavio Percoco wrote:
> Top-posting as I'll try to summarize/re-start/reword/whatever the right word 
> is,
> this thread:
> 
> It seems to me that the problem we're trying to solve here is how we can help
> voters to make more thoughtful choices (note that I'm not saying they 
> currently
> don't. I'm not judging the voters but, as others, I'm pointing fingers at the
> process we've in place). A couple of points have been made around this:
> 
> - We'd like the electorate to be able to ask questions to the candiates
> - The time availble doesn't seem to be enough for this
> - The ML is great but it might not be the right format for this, especially 
> with
>  the amount of emails going through openstack-dev
> 
> Some (rough) ideas:
> 
> - We could have a common place where we collect the threads that ask questions
>  to the candidates. Ideally, this thread would be kept updated by the members
>  of the community asking these questions. If I start a new thread, I get the
>  link and put it in this "common place" The common place could be a wiki page
>  or anything linkable from the voting URL.
> - Link in the voting URL the place where the information about the questions
>  being asked to the candidates are being aggregated.

That's pretty doable and we could easily trial it.

> - Send the ballots every day, if possible.

I don't think we can send them everyday, twice might be doable.  I'd be happy
to to talk to Andrew (The CIVS maintainer/owner) about this.

FWIW I think it's very doable to insert a week between the nomination close and
the election open for the discussion.

Yours Tony.


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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Neil Jerram]

On Wed, Oct 5, 2016 at 4:09 PM Sean Dague  wrote:

> On 10/03/2016 12:46 PM, Edward Leafe wrote:
>
> 
>
> > We are fortunate in that all of the candidates are exceptionally
> well-qualified, and those elected have put in excellent service while on
> the TC. But one thing I'm afraid of is that we tend to get into a situation
> where groupthink [0] is very likely. There are many excellent candidates
> running in every election, but it is rare for someone who hasn't been a PTL
> of a large project, and thus very visible, has been selected. Is this
> really the best approach?
>
> >
>
> > I wrote a blog post about implicit bias [1], and in that post used the
> example of blind auditions for musical orchestras radically changing the
> selection results. Before the introduction of blind auditions, men
> overwhelmingly comprised orchestras, but once the people judging the
> auditions had no clue as to whether the musician was male or female, women
> began to be selected much more in proportion to their numbers in the
> audition pools. So I'd like to propose something for the next election:
> have candidates self-nominate as in the past, but instead of writing a big
> candidacy letter, just state their interest in serving. After the
> nominations close, the election officials will assign each candidate a
> non-identifying label, such as a random number, and those officials will be
> the only ones who know which candidate is associated with which number. The
> nomination period can be much, much shorter, and then followed by a week of
> campaigning (the part that's really missing in the current process).
> Candidates will post their thoughts and positions, and respond to questions
> from people, and this is how the voters will know who best represents what
> they want to see in their TC.
>
>
>
> The comparison to orchestra auditions was brought up a couple of cycles
>
> ago as well. But I think it's a bad comparison.
>
>
>
> In the listed example the job being asked of people was performing their
>
> instrument, and it turns out that lots of things not having to do with
>
> performing their instrument were biasing the results. It was possible to
>
> remove the irrelevant parts.
>
>
>
> What is the job being asked of a TC member? To put the best interests of
>
> OpenStack at heart. To be effective in working with a diverse set of
>
> folks in our community to get things done. To find areas of friction and
>
> remove them. To help set an overall direction for the project that the
>
> community accepts and moves forward with.
>
>
>
> Writing a good candidacy email isn't really a good representation of
>
> those abilities. It's the measure of writing a good candidacy email, in
>
> english.
>
>
>
> I hope that when voters vote in the election they are taking the
>
> reputations of the individuals into account. That they look at the work
>
> they did across all of OpenStack, the hundreds / thousands of individual
>
> actions in the community that the person made. How they got to consensus
>
> on items. What efforts they were able to get folks to rally around and
>
> move forward. Where they get stuck, and how they dig out of being stuck.
>
> When they ask for help. When they admit they are out of their element.
>
> How they help new folks in our community. How they work with long timers.
>
>
>
> That aggregate reputation is much more indicative of their
>
> successfulness as a member of the TC to help OpenStack than the
>
> candidate email. It's easy to dismiss it as a popularity contest, but I
>
> don't think it is. This is about evaluating the plausible promise that
>
> individuals put forward. Not just the ideas they have, but how likely
>
> they are to be able to bring them to fruition.
>


I completely agree.  When I vote, it is based on a combined perception of
the candidate email - which often _is_ a useful redux of that person's
approach and views on points of current importance - and all of their
previous contributions and interactions that I am aware of; and that's
seems exactly right to me for a TC position.

 Neil
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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Flavio Percoco]

Top-posting as I'll try to summarize/re-start/reword/whatever the right word is,
this thread:

It seems to me that the problem we're trying to solve here is how we can help
voters to make more thoughtful choices (note that I'm not saying they currently
don't. I'm not judging the voters but, as others, I'm pointing fingers at the
process we've in place). A couple of points have been made around this:

- We'd like the electorate to be able to ask questions to the candiates
- The time availble doesn't seem to be enough for this
- The ML is great but it might not be the right format for this, especially with
 the amount of emails going through openstack-dev

Some (rough) ideas:

- We could have a common place where we collect the threads that ask questions
 to the candidates. Ideally, this thread would be kept updated by the members
 of the community asking these questions. If I start a new thread, I get the
 link and put it in this "common place" The common place could be a wiki page
 or anything linkable from the voting URL.
- Link in the voting URL the place where the information about the questions
 being asked to the candidates are being aggregated.
- Send the ballots every day, if possible.

I don't think the above will solve all the problems that have been mentioned in
this thread. For example, it certainly doesn't solve the problem of there not
being enough time for all the candidates to reply to these questions and/or the
electorate to come up with a list of questions and/or read through the answers.

I'd like to avoid coming up with a prepared set of questions as I believe the
best discussions are triggered by candidacies, moment and a broader set of minds
working together. I don't really have a strong opinion on having an extra week
in between but I trust Anita's feedback on the burden this will add to the
election's officers. It'd also add more stress to the candidates, fwiw.

The rough ideas above are just small steps that could help organizing the
discussion and making them easier to find by our electorate. I hope the list of
issues does summarize the concerns expressed in this thread.

Flavio

On 03/10/16 11:46 -0500, Edward Leafe wrote:

So the period of self-nominations for the Technical Committee seats has ended, 
and the voting has begun. I've been a very close observer of this process for 
several cycles, and I have some ideas I'd like to share. Full disclosure: I am 
a current candidate for the TC, and have been a candidate several times in the 
past, all of which were unsuccessful.

When deciding to run, candidates write a long, thoughtful essay on their 
reasons for wanting to serve on the TC, and those essays are typically the last 
you hear from them until the election. It has been rare for anyone to ask 
follow-up questions, or to challenge the candidates to explain their positions 
more definitively. I have spoken with many people at the Summits, which always 
closely followed the TC election (warning: unscientific samples ahead!), and 
what their selection process mostly boils down to is: they pick the names they 
are most familiar with. Many people don't read those long candidacy posts, and 
nearly all couldn't remember a single point that any of the candidates had put 
forth.

We are fortunate in that all of the candidates are exceptionally 
well-qualified, and those elected have put in excellent service while on the 
TC. But one thing I'm afraid of is that we tend to get into a situation where 
groupthink [0] is very likely. There are many excellent candidates running in 
every election, but it is rare for someone who hasn't been a PTL of a large 
project, and thus very visible, has been selected. Is this really the best 
approach?

I wrote a blog post about implicit bias [1], and in that post used the example 
of blind auditions for musical orchestras radically changing the selection 
results. Before the introduction of blind auditions, men overwhelmingly 
comprised orchestras, but once the people judging the auditions had no clue as 
to whether the musician was male or female, women began to be selected much 
more in proportion to their numbers in the audition pools. So I'd like to 
propose something for the next election: have candidates self-nominate as in 
the past, but instead of writing a big candidacy letter, just state their 
interest in serving. After the nominations close, the election officials will 
assign each candidate a non-identifying label, such as a random number, and 
those officials will be the only ones who know which candidate is associated 
with which number. The nomination period can be much, much shorter, and then 
followed by a week of campaigning (the part that's really missing in the cu!
rrent pro
cess). Candidates will post their thoughts and positions, and respond to 
questions from people, and this is how the voters will know who best represents 
what they want to see in their TC.

The current candidacy essay would now be posted in the campaign 

Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Thierry Carrez]

Ed Leafe wrote:
> Why do we need a week to nominate? Open it up a month before the election, 
> and close it a week before. Or open it for two days, and close it a week 
> before. I don’t understand why, other than procrastination, we need such a 
> long period. If you’re serious about serving, throw you hat into the ring.

At every PTL election there are people missing the call, and the noise
on the mailing-list for a full week helps them get the message. I agree
it's slightly less of a problem with the TC election -- although I bet
that some people decide to run after seeing the current mix of proposed
candidates (the "heck, if they can do it, I probably can too" reflex).
Since we use Condorcet, the more candidates the better...

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Adam Lawson]

My personal opinion, speaking as a non-candidate, is that it's very likely
true name recognition plays a role. In fact if I was to vote I would do so
and probably vote for Monty or Doug cause I like how they operate and I'm
familiar with them. And if I don't like someone, I won't vote for them.
Selection decisions are influenced by human nature and as such we might
want to at least consider whether name recognition is important or not
versus the actual positions candidates hold or the experience they bring to
the table.

I heard (can't recall who it was) someone say they like names being
attached to positions because they lean towards voting for people who
they've seen or know can get the work done. Interestingly, work as a PTL is
*much* different than the work as a TC member. One question I've often
asked myself is about the role of the TC itself is what *should* these
dudes and dudettes be focusing on? If it's governance, getting out code is
miles apart from working through and making evangelizing decisions.
Experience and approach should, I feel, take utmost precedence over
community popularity. it should if we want a stronger TC anyway.

Strangely, I'll bet some of the top names voted in would continue to be
voted in without a name being attached because they are good at what they
do and don't need to rely on name recognition to draw votes.

I support the blind voting idea personally. Just my two cents.

//adam




*Adam Lawson*

Principal Architect, CEO
Office: +1-916-794-5706

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 11:45 AM, Anita Kuno  wrote:

> On 2016-10-11 02:35 PM, Thiago da Silva wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 10/11/2016 01:21 PM, Anita Kuno wrote:
>>
>>> On 2016-10-11 12:57 PM, Thiago da Silva wrote:
>>>


 On 10/11/2016 12:00 PM, Ed Leafe wrote:

> On Oct 11, 2016, at 10:37 AM, Anita Kuno  wrote:
>
> Just in case folks care, now is the best time to discuss our election
>> process and suggest options or changes for the next round of elections. 
>> I'm
>> not adverse to discussing it I just think the best time for doing so is
>> from the time the last election is over up to milestone one. Then we have
>> lots of time for ideas and debate and any suggestions, if accepted, have
>> time to be implemented and communicated so the process is fair for all,
>> candidates and electorate.
>>
> Agreed.
>
> During the election is a wonderful time for posing questions to
>> candidates in order to clarify their position or stance such that the
>> electorate can make an informed choice.
>>
> To me, that’s the crux: “during the election”. When exactly should
> that be? Candidates can (and do) declare up to the very last minute of the
> nomination window, and ballots go out immediately after that, and voting
> starts. There really needs to be a period when a) we know who all the
> candidates are, and b) voting has not yet begun. I would like to see that
> period be created so that the kind of question/answer/clarify process you
> mention can happen.
>
 +1
 Just to add on to that, it would also be nice to have a better place
 for the questions/answers to be stored.

>>>
>>> Have you a suggestion for where you would like to see them?
>>>
>>> Also regardless of what is formally set up, anyone can ask questions via
>>> the mailing list, that option has been used every election that I have
>>> witnessed, I don't see that changing. I don't think it is reasonable to ask
>>> officials to curate mailing list posts. I think what we are discussing is
>>> something in addition to mailing list discussions. I don't think anything
>>> ever would (or should) replace what comes up on the mailing list.
>>>
>> Anita,
>>
>> Agree that the mailing list is irreplaceable, a lot of of the discussion
>> would continue to happen here. I also don't think asking anyone to curate
>> the answers is scalable.
>>
>
> Great, we agree.
>
>
>> A *suggestion* would be to come up with a set of questions prior to
>> nomination so that candidates could answer in their self-nomination. Of
>> course, how we would come up with those questions is then another issue.
>> Maybe the questions could even be proposed to the election repo[0],
>> starting with an initial set of questions that are then added on by others
>> in the community ??? I'm trying to come up with a way to repeat what you
>> provided in the '14 election without the burden...
>>
>> Thiago
>>
>> [0] - https://github.com/openstack/election/tree/master/candidates
>> /ocata/TC
>>
>
> I think the format would be up to whomever administrates it since they
> would have to do the work, accept the stress and pressure and be answerable
> to the community for the choices they make. That is what worked best for me.
>
> Thanks Thiago,
> Anita.
>
>
>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Anita.
>>>
>>> During last week there was a ton of great discussion, but when it came

Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Anita Kuno]

On 2016-10-11 02:07 PM, Clay Gerrard wrote:

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 10:52 AM, Anita Kuno  wrote:


On 2016-10-11 01:40 PM, Ed Leafe wrote:


On Oct 11, 2016, at 12:17 PM, Anita Kuno  wrote:

There really needs to be a period when a) we know who all the candidates

are, and b) voting has not yet begun.


Why?

The voting period is open for a period of several days, voters have the
ability to vote at any time during that voting period.


   Because many people vote as soon as they receive their ballot.


That is their choice.



Anita,

I agree, that voters may choose to refrain from voting.  I don't hear
anyone saying "people *can not* make time for thoughtful reflection on the
candidates" - but suggestion that perhaps they *did not*?  Is there anyway
we could get numbers about how many voters waited until the end of week
like I did?


No, there is no report from the service that outputs timestamps of when 
votes were submitted.


Now, if the supervisor of the election choose to monitor the status page 
of the poll whilst the poll was happening that person could track how 
many votes were submitted at the time the status page was rendered, 
however it wouldn't be possible to independently verify this information 
and I personally feel asking an election official to add this to their 
duties (what happens if they got pulled onto a more important task?) 
isn't something I would feel comfortable with. Administering elections 
is already stressful enough.




If most voters did wait until later in the week, I think we can reject the
premise as false and accept that the week while voting is open *is* the
time in the process that most of the electorate uses for reflection on the
candidates.

If many *did* vote early in the week before some policy/platform points
were discussed one might even assume these voters have some remorse -
perhaps they will behave differently next time?  Not known.


Agreed, this is not known. What also is unknown is the number of people 
that voted early, followed the discussions and didn't feel any remorse 
in their voting choices.




OTOH, if we actively broadcast a period of time with the expressed purpose
of facilitating this discussion I think it sends a message that we as a
community expect this discussion to happen and have an impact on the
results of the election.  Is there a *downside* to a 3 week election period
as proposed by Ed, Chris and others?


Yes, there is a downside. As I have said several times already in this 
thread, expanding the duration of the election from beginning to end 
increases the time commitment and stress for the election officials. The 
job already takes a lot of planning and a minimum of one month per 
release for the ptl and tc elections, for the nomination period and the 
voting.


Now if people want to explore other opportunities for how candidates are 
differentiated that is fine, so far we seem to be circling around 
different versions of what I had offered. I do think we can come up with 
other ideas. I also think that implementing other ideas can be done in 
the given time frame.


The option I offered was completed during the election timeframe, I 
didn't need to expand the election timeframe to offer additional 
communication about candidates.


Thank you,
Anita.



-Clay





   I know that I typically do so that it doesn’t get lost under the flood

of email.


I have found putting a star on the email when it comes it helps to ensure
I don't lose it, but everyone has a different email organizing workflow.

   This wouldn’t be so bad if you could later change your vote, but once it

is cast, it can’t be changed. What that means is that if a candidate I knew
little about says something that either interests me or turns me off, I can
*use* that information.


You still can now, you just have to choose to listen to candidates prior
to voting.

Monty suggested somewhere that we reissue the email ballots everyday
(since we had email issues this time, I have no idea if that would result
in us being kicked off the service we currently use or not). If the issue
is, I want to ensure I can find my ballot when I need it, I think we can
explore options that don't include requiring election officials to expand
their commitment for an additional week.



A voter can ask the panel of candidates any question they wish such that

they are satisfied prior to voting.


Of course; no one has said otherwise. But if someone else asks a question
that may not have occurred to me to ask, the answers given can still be
influential on my choices. Look at Gordon Chung’s question in this recent
cycle: I’m sure that there were lots of people who benefited from that
question and the many answers, not just Gordon.


I know I benefited from Gord's question, both as a candidate and as a
voter. Thank you, Gord.

Again, I feel the choice exists.



Additionally should the decision be made to go forward with some form of

the 

Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Anita Kuno]

On 2016-10-11 02:35 PM, Thiago da Silva wrote:



On 10/11/2016 01:21 PM, Anita Kuno wrote:

On 2016-10-11 12:57 PM, Thiago da Silva wrote:



On 10/11/2016 12:00 PM, Ed Leafe wrote:

On Oct 11, 2016, at 10:37 AM, Anita Kuno  wrote:

Just in case folks care, now is the best time to discuss our 
election process and suggest options or changes for the next round 
of elections. I'm not adverse to discussing it I just think the 
best time for doing so is from the time the last election is over 
up to milestone one. Then we have lots of time for ideas and 
debate and any suggestions, if accepted, have time to be 
implemented and communicated so the process is fair for all, 
candidates and electorate.

Agreed.

During the election is a wonderful time for posing questions to 
candidates in order to clarify their position or stance such that 
the electorate can make an informed choice.
To me, that’s the crux: “during the election”. When exactly should 
that be? Candidates can (and do) declare up to the very last minute 
of the nomination window, and ballots go out immediately after 
that, and voting starts. There really needs to be a period when a) 
we know who all the candidates are, and b) voting has not yet 
begun. I would like to see that period be created so that the kind 
of question/answer/clarify process you mention can happen.

+1
Just to add on to that, it would also be nice to have a better place 
for the questions/answers to be stored.


Have you a suggestion for where you would like to see them?

Also regardless of what is formally set up, anyone can ask questions 
via the mailing list, that option has been used every election that I 
have witnessed, I don't see that changing. I don't think it is 
reasonable to ask officials to curate mailing list posts. I think 
what we are discussing is something in addition to mailing list 
discussions. I don't think anything ever would (or should) replace 
what comes up on the mailing list.

Anita,

Agree that the mailing list is irreplaceable, a lot of of the 
discussion would continue to happen here. I also don't think asking 
anyone to curate the answers is scalable.


Great, we agree.



A *suggestion* would be to come up with a set of questions prior to 
nomination so that candidates could answer in their self-nomination. 
Of course, how we would come up with those questions is then another 
issue. Maybe the questions could even be proposed to the election 
repo[0], starting with an initial set of questions that are then added 
on by others in the community ??? I'm trying to come up with a way to 
repeat what you provided in the '14 election without the burden...


Thiago

[0] - 
https://github.com/openstack/election/tree/master/candidates/ocata/TC


I think the format would be up to whomever administrates it since they 
would have to do the work, accept the stress and pressure and be 
answerable to the community for the choices they make. That is what 
worked best for me.


Thanks Thiago,
Anita.



Thanks,
Anita.

During last week there was a ton of great discussion, but when it 
came to voting time (towards end of the week) it was difficult/time 
consuming to find what each person had said.


-- Ed Leafe








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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Thiago da Silva]

On 10/11/2016 01:21 PM, Anita Kuno wrote:

On 2016-10-11 12:57 PM, Thiago da Silva wrote:



On 10/11/2016 12:00 PM, Ed Leafe wrote:

On Oct 11, 2016, at 10:37 AM, Anita Kuno  wrote:

Just in case folks care, now is the best time to discuss our 
election process and suggest options or changes for the next round 
of elections. I'm not adverse to discussing it I just think the 
best time for doing so is from the time the last election is over 
up to milestone one. Then we have lots of time for ideas and debate 
and any suggestions, if accepted, have time to be implemented and 
communicated so the process is fair for all, candidates and 
electorate.

Agreed.

During the election is a wonderful time for posing questions to 
candidates in order to clarify their position or stance such that 
the electorate can make an informed choice.
To me, that’s the crux: “during the election”. When exactly should 
that be? Candidates can (and do) declare up to the very last minute 
of the nomination window, and ballots go out immediately after that, 
and voting starts. There really needs to be a period when a) we know 
who all the candidates are, and b) voting has not yet begun. I would 
like to see that period be created so that the kind of 
question/answer/clarify process you mention can happen.

+1
Just to add on to that, it would also be nice to have a better place 
for the questions/answers to be stored.


Have you a suggestion for where you would like to see them?

Also regardless of what is formally set up, anyone can ask questions 
via the mailing list, that option has been used every election that I 
have witnessed, I don't see that changing. I don't think it is 
reasonable to ask officials to curate mailing list posts. I think what 
we are discussing is something in addition to mailing list 
discussions. I don't think anything ever would (or should) replace 
what comes up on the mailing list.

Anita,

Agree that the mailing list is irreplaceable, a lot of of the discussion 
would continue to happen here. I also don't think asking anyone to 
curate the answers is scalable.


A *suggestion* would be to come up with a set of questions prior to 
nomination so that candidates could answer in their self-nomination. Of 
course, how we would come up with those questions is then another issue. 
Maybe the questions could even be proposed to the election repo[0], 
starting with an initial set of questions that are then added on by 
others in the community ??? I'm trying to come up with a way to repeat 
what you provided in the '14 election without the burden...


Thiago

[0] - https://github.com/openstack/election/tree/master/candidates/ocata/TC


Thanks,
Anita.

During last week there was a ton of great discussion, but when it 
came to voting time (towards end of the week) it was difficult/time 
consuming to find what each person had said.


-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Clay Gerrard]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 10:52 AM, Anita Kuno  wrote:

> On 2016-10-11 01:40 PM, Ed Leafe wrote:
>
>> On Oct 11, 2016, at 12:17 PM, Anita Kuno  wrote:
>>
>> There really needs to be a period when a) we know who all the candidates
 are, and b) voting has not yet begun.

>>> Why?
>>>
>>> The voting period is open for a period of several days, voters have the
>>> ability to vote at any time during that voting period.
>>>
>>   Because many people vote as soon as they receive their ballot.
>>
>
> That is their choice.
>
>
Anita,

I agree, that voters may choose to refrain from voting.  I don't hear
anyone saying "people *can not* make time for thoughtful reflection on the
candidates" - but suggestion that perhaps they *did not*?  Is there anyway
we could get numbers about how many voters waited until the end of week
like I did?

If most voters did wait until later in the week, I think we can reject the
premise as false and accept that the week while voting is open *is* the
time in the process that most of the electorate uses for reflection on the
candidates.

If many *did* vote early in the week before some policy/platform points
were discussed one might even assume these voters have some remorse -
perhaps they will behave differently next time?  Not known.

OTOH, if we actively broadcast a period of time with the expressed purpose
of facilitating this discussion I think it sends a message that we as a
community expect this discussion to happen and have an impact on the
results of the election.  Is there a *downside* to a 3 week election period
as proposed by Ed, Chris and others?

-Clay




>   I know that I typically do so that it doesn’t get lost under the flood
>> of email.
>>
>
> I have found putting a star on the email when it comes it helps to ensure
> I don't lose it, but everyone has a different email organizing workflow.
>
>   This wouldn’t be so bad if you could later change your vote, but once it
>> is cast, it can’t be changed. What that means is that if a candidate I knew
>> little about says something that either interests me or turns me off, I can
>> *use* that information.
>>
>
> You still can now, you just have to choose to listen to candidates prior
> to voting.
>
> Monty suggested somewhere that we reissue the email ballots everyday
> (since we had email issues this time, I have no idea if that would result
> in us being kicked off the service we currently use or not). If the issue
> is, I want to ensure I can find my ballot when I need it, I think we can
> explore options that don't include requiring election officials to expand
> their commitment for an additional week.
>
>
>> A voter can ask the panel of candidates any question they wish such that
>>> they are satisfied prior to voting.
>>>
>> Of course; no one has said otherwise. But if someone else asks a question
>> that may not have occurred to me to ask, the answers given can still be
>> influential on my choices. Look at Gordon Chung’s question in this recent
>> cycle: I’m sure that there were lots of people who benefited from that
>> question and the many answers, not just Gordon.
>>
>
> I know I benefited from Gord's question, both as a candidate and as a
> voter. Thank you, Gord.
>
> Again, I feel the choice exists.
>
>
>> Additionally should the decision be made to go forward with some form of
>>> the candidate answers as I offered to the electorate in October 2014, those
>>> answers could be available as platforms are posted such that all responses
>>> are available as soon as the poll begins.
>>>
>> I think that this is a great idea, and would be willing to help in the
>> effort to make that happen again.
>>
>
> Thanks Ed, it felt satisfying to offer it when I did it. I hope others
> feel the same as you.
>
> Thanks,
> Anita.
>
>
>
>>
>> -- Ed Leafe
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 
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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Anita Kuno]

On 2016-10-11 01:43 PM, Ed Leafe wrote:

On Oct 11, 2016, at 12:26 PM, Anita Kuno  wrote:

Instead of two week process, make it three:

Again as I replied to Ed's post, I think we can find options that fit in the 
current timeframe.

Why do we need a week to nominate? Open it up a month before the election, and 
close it a week before. Or open it for two days, and close it a week before. I 
don’t understand why, other than procrastination, we need such a long period. 
If you’re serious about serving, throw you hat into the ring.


-- Ed Leafe

To be honest with you I also questioned why the nomination period had to 
be the length it did, until I was running elections. Turns out people's 
lives, vacation, travel, all those meetings, are such that they need it 
to be at least the length it is in order to run if they want to run. I 
had an instance where someone posted their nomination 10 minutes prior 
to the deadline. I pm'd them and asked, were you just being lazy or 
what? Turns out their work schedule that week was such that the only 
time they could take to compose their nomination and post it was just 
before the deadline. So now I understand firsthand about why it has to 
be at least that long of a period for nomination.


If you make the nomination period longer, you require a longer 
commitment from the election officials. Officiating an election is a 
commitment. The election is top priority at that time. Given the 
expectation around officiating I personally don't think it is fair to 
extend that expectation without it being an actual solution to an actual 
problem.


I don't know what issue we would be fixing by changing the nomination 
period.


Thanks,
Anita.

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Clay Gerrard]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 9:57 AM, Thiago da Silva  wrote:

>
> it would also be nice to have a better place for the questions/answers to
> be stored. During last week there was a ton of great discussion, but when
> it came to voting time (towards end of the week) it was difficult/time
> consuming to find what each person had said.
>
>
I *also* found the process of ranking difficult and time consuming for
candidates I was less familiar with - toward then end I was keeping a set
of notes with my interpretation of the short version of peoples attitudes
on my self selected set of platform/policy points that I cared about.

I think the only reasonable way to do this is ad-hoc; during the discussion
period (which I think we *really* should "leave some breathing room" in the
process to encourage that reflection and discussion) individuals in the
community that feel compelled to do so should try to share some
summarizations of the candidates.  I think ultimately it will be borderline
campaign propaganda (it's hard to reduce a lengthy nuanced response to a
complex subject into a pithy one-line summary) - but the hope or assumption
would be that our electorate is trying to make informed decisions and
someone putting in effort to sharing the results of their research is
trying to help with that goal.

-Clay
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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Anita Kuno]

On 2016-10-11 01:42 PM, Chris Dent wrote:

On Tue, 11 Oct 2016, Anita Kuno wrote:


* Getting rid of self nomination. Nominations come from the
  electorate at large. They can be refused of course.


What is the current problem with self nomination?


(I almost missed this since it was after your valediction)


Yeah sorry about that, bad formatting on my part. Glad you caught it.



I guess the least roundabout but perhaps insufficiently nuanced way
to put it is: Anyone who wants the job is probably not suited.

The Douglas Adams version of this is:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/douglasada125021.html

Please accept this with the humor with which you would expect given
that author, and also that I'm in this class of self nominated folk.

I think, however, that given the massive commitment required and the
need to balance the role with employment constraints and all the
economic constraints associated with working on OpenStack being work
means that self-nomimation is probably the only realistic way to go. I
mention it more as a way jumping off point for further thinking than
a concrete proposal.

Oh okay, well thanks for clarifying.

I'll let others jump off this one with you, I don't think I'll join in. 
Thanks for the offer though.


Thanks Chris,
Anita.

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Anita Kuno]

On 2016-10-11 01:40 PM, Ed Leafe wrote:

On Oct 11, 2016, at 12:17 PM, Anita Kuno  wrote:


There really needs to be a period when a) we know who all the candidates are, 
and b) voting has not yet begun.

Why?

The voting period is open for a period of several days, voters have the ability 
to vote at any time during that voting period.
  
Because many people vote as soon as they receive their ballot.


That is their choice.


  I know that I typically do so that it doesn’t get lost under the flood of 
email.


I have found putting a star on the email when it comes it helps to 
ensure I don't lose it, but everyone has a different email organizing 
workflow.



  This wouldn’t be so bad if you could later change your vote, but once it is 
cast, it can’t be changed. What that means is that if a candidate I knew little 
about says something that either interests me or turns me off, I can *use* that 
information.


You still can now, you just have to choose to listen to candidates prior 
to voting.


Monty suggested somewhere that we reissue the email ballots everyday 
(since we had email issues this time, I have no idea if that would 
result in us being kicked off the service we currently use or not). If 
the issue is, I want to ensure I can find my ballot when I need it, I 
think we can explore options that don't include requiring election 
officials to expand their commitment for an additional week.





A voter can ask the panel of candidates any question they wish such that they 
are satisfied prior to voting.

Of course; no one has said otherwise. But if someone else asks a question that 
may not have occurred to me to ask, the answers given can still be influential 
on my choices. Look at Gordon Chung’s question in this recent cycle: I’m sure 
that there were lots of people who benefited from that question and the many 
answers, not just Gordon.


I know I benefited from Gord's question, both as a candidate and as a 
voter. Thank you, Gord.


Again, I feel the choice exists.




Additionally should the decision be made to go forward with some form of the 
candidate answers as I offered to the electorate in October 2014, those answers 
could be available as platforms are posted such that all responses are 
available as soon as the poll begins.

I think that this is a great idea, and would be willing to help in the effort 
to make that happen again.


Thanks Ed, it felt satisfying to offer it when I did it. I hope others 
feel the same as you.


Thanks,
Anita.




-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Ed Leafe]

On Oct 11, 2016, at 12:31 PM, Anita Kuno  wrote:

> I think one would get a much better sense asking people if they voted when 
> they see them at summit or other live events and ask them why not if they say 
> no.

As I said in an earlier email, I have done such unscientific polling at recent 
summits. It was the answers I got to these questions that made me start 
thinking about how to improve the process.

-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Ed Leafe]

On Oct 11, 2016, at 12:26 PM, Anita Kuno  wrote:
> 
>> Instead of two week process, make it three:
> 
> Again as I replied to Ed's post, I think we can find options that fit in the 
> current timeframe.

Why do we need a week to nominate? Open it up a month before the election, and 
close it a week before. Or open it for two days, and close it a week before. I 
don’t understand why, other than procrastination, we need such a long period. 
If you’re serious about serving, throw you hat into the ring.


-- Ed Leafe

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Chris Dent]

On Tue, 11 Oct 2016, Anita Kuno wrote:


* Getting rid of self nomination. Nominations come from the
  electorate at large. They can be refused of course.


What is the current problem with self nomination?


(I almost missed this since it was after your valediction)

I guess the least roundabout but perhaps insufficiently nuanced way
to put it is: Anyone who wants the job is probably not suited.

The Douglas Adams version of this is:
   http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/douglasada125021.html

Please accept this with the humor with which you would expect given
that author, and also that I'm in this class of self nominated folk.

I think, however, that given the massive commitment required and the
need to balance the role with employment constraints and all the
economic constraints associated with working on OpenStack being work
means that self-nomimation is probably the only realistic way to go. I
mention it more as a way jumping off point for further thinking than
a concrete proposal.

--
Chris Dent   ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ)https://anticdent.org/
freenode: cdent tw: @anticdent__
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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Ed Leafe]

On Oct 11, 2016, at 12:17 PM, Anita Kuno  wrote:

>> There really needs to be a period when a) we know who all the candidates 
>> are, and b) voting has not yet begun.
> 
> Why?
> 
> The voting period is open for a period of several days, voters have the 
> ability to vote at any time during that voting period.
 
Because many people vote as soon as they receive their ballot. I know that I 
typically do so that it doesn’t get lost under the flood of email. This 
wouldn’t be so bad if you could later change your vote, but once it is cast, it 
can’t be changed. What that means is that if a candidate I knew little about 
says something that either interests me or turns me off, I can *use* that 
information.

> A voter can ask the panel of candidates any question they wish such that they 
> are satisfied prior to voting.

Of course; no one has said otherwise. But if someone else asks a question that 
may not have occurred to me to ask, the answers given can still be influential 
on my choices. Look at Gordon Chung’s question in this recent cycle: I’m sure 
that there were lots of people who benefited from that question and the many 
answers, not just Gordon.

> Additionally should the decision be made to go forward with some form of the 
> candidate answers as I offered to the electorate in October 2014, those 
> answers could be available as platforms are posted such that all responses 
> are available as soon as the poll begins.

I think that this is a great idea, and would be willing to help in the effort 
to make that happen again.


-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Anita Kuno]

On 2016-10-11 12:55 PM, Ruby Loo wrote:

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 12:08 PM, Chris Dent  wrote:


Based on the turnout numbers and a bit of unscientific number
crunching on the voting results it seems that the electorate was
rather more engaged this time around. That's _great_.

As others have said I imagine some significant part of that was
because of more than one mailing of the ballots to help everyone
remember. I think there were probably other factors too:


  Would it be useful to have a not-so-scientific poll, to find out from
folks why they voted and why they didn't vote in previous elections?
Assuming folks respond to the poll :)

--ruby
The likelihood that someone who choose not to do something is going to 
tell you why they choose not to do something via a poll is going to be 
fairly small would be my guess.


I think one would get a much better sense asking people if they voted 
when they see them at summit or other live events and ask them why not 
if they say no. (Given you have first of all qualified the questions as 
allowable for conversation, with the person you are talking to. Voting 
is anonymous on purpose. Also you would have to be clear in your heart 
that you aren't interested in _who_ they voted for, as that information 
is immaterial to them choosing to vote or not, in my opinion.)


Thanks,
Anita.

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Anita Kuno]

On 2016-10-11 12:08 PM, Chris Dent wrote:


Based on the turnout numbers and a bit of unscientific number
crunching on the voting results it seems that the electorate was
rather more engaged this time around. That's _great_.

As others have said I imagine some significant part of that was
because of more than one mailing of the ballots to help everyone
remember. I think there were probably other factors too:

* There was a large pool of candidates this time around from several
  different places on the OpenStack map. That makes for some happy:
  it wasn't the same old thing.

* The questioning and other discussion that happened last week was
  engaging and interesting and made the process something more than
  "I've heard of this person before".

Therefore I think next time around we should have that week of
discussion before the week of voting. Its impact may be greater
when people have time to reflect on the discussion before voting.

Instead of two week process, make it three:


Again as I replied to Ed's post, I think we can find options that fit in 
the current timeframe.


http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2016-October/105449.html

Thank you,
Anita.



1. nominations
2. discussion
3. voting

I don't think we need to make the second week super formal. I hope
we can rely on at least some people to step up with interesting
questions.

Aside from that, more radical things we may want to consider
include:

* Getting rid of self nomination. Nominations come from the
  electorate at large. They can be refused of course.


What is the current problem with self nomination?



* Term limits, either absolute or consecutive. The principles[1]
  enshrine regular handover of power but since that's not always
  been demonstrated, perhaps it needs to be formalized?

* [your idea here please]


[1] 
http://governance.openstack.org/reference/principles.html#changes-in-leadership-are-good




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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Anita Kuno]

On 2016-10-11 12:57 PM, Thiago da Silva wrote:



On 10/11/2016 12:00 PM, Ed Leafe wrote:

On Oct 11, 2016, at 10:37 AM, Anita Kuno  wrote:

Just in case folks care, now is the best time to discuss our 
election process and suggest options or changes for the next round 
of elections. I'm not adverse to discussing it I just think the best 
time for doing so is from the time the last election is over up to 
milestone one. Then we have lots of time for ideas and debate and 
any suggestions, if accepted, have time to be implemented and 
communicated so the process is fair for all, candidates and electorate.

Agreed.

During the election is a wonderful time for posing questions to 
candidates in order to clarify their position or stance such that 
the electorate can make an informed choice.
To me, that’s the crux: “during the election”. When exactly should 
that be? Candidates can (and do) declare up to the very last minute 
of the nomination window, and ballots go out immediately after that, 
and voting starts. There really needs to be a period when a) we know 
who all the candidates are, and b) voting has not yet begun. I would 
like to see that period be created so that the kind of 
question/answer/clarify process you mention can happen.

+1
Just to add on to that, it would also be nice to have a better place 
for the questions/answers to be stored.


Have you a suggestion for where you would like to see them?

Also regardless of what is formally set up, anyone can ask questions via 
the mailing list, that option has been used every election that I have 
witnessed, I don't see that changing. I don't think it is reasonable to 
ask officials to curate mailing list posts. I think what we are 
discussing is something in addition to mailing list discussions. I don't 
think anything ever would (or should) replace what comes up on the 
mailing list.


Thanks,
Anita.

During last week there was a ton of great discussion, but when it came 
to voting time (towards end of the week) it was difficult/time 
consuming to find what each person had said.


-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Anita Kuno]

On 2016-10-11 12:00 PM, Ed Leafe wrote:

On Oct 11, 2016, at 10:37 AM, Anita Kuno  wrote:


Just in case folks care, now is the best time to discuss our election process 
and suggest options or changes for the next round of elections. I'm not adverse 
to discussing it I just think the best time for doing so is from the time the 
last election is over up to milestone one. Then we have lots of time for ideas 
and debate and any suggestions, if accepted, have time to be implemented and 
communicated so the process is fair for all, candidates and electorate.

Agreed.


During the election is a wonderful time for posing questions to candidates in 
order to clarify their position or stance such that the electorate can make an 
informed choice.

To me, that’s the crux: “during the election”. When exactly should that be? 
Candidates can (and do) declare up to the very last minute of the nomination 
window, and ballots go out immediately after that, and voting starts. There 
really needs to be a period when a) we know who all the candidates are, and b) 
voting has not yet begun.


Why?

The voting period is open for a period of several days, voters have the 
ability to vote at any time during that voting period. A voter can ask 
the panel of candidates any question they wish such that they are 
satisfied prior to voting. Additionally should the decision be made to 
go forward with some form of the candidate answers as I offered to the 
electorate in October 2014, those answers could be available as 
platforms are posted such that all responses are available as soon as 
the poll begins.


I think there are many options that are available to enable the 
electorate to make an informed choice that doesn't require the expansion 
of the length of time of the entire voting season. Currently voting for 
both ptl and tc elections are a month in duration, which is an extremely 
stressful time for election officials. I think we can come up with 
options that don't include increasing the time commitment election 
officials already spend on elections.




  I would like to see that period be created so that the kind of 
question/answer/clarify process you mention can happen.


I think we can create the process and still use the current timeframe. I 
didn't need to expand the time for elections in October 2014.


Thank you,
Anita.





-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Thiago da Silva]

On 10/11/2016 12:00 PM, Ed Leafe wrote:

On Oct 11, 2016, at 10:37 AM, Anita Kuno  wrote:


Just in case folks care, now is the best time to discuss our election process 
and suggest options or changes for the next round of elections. I'm not adverse 
to discussing it I just think the best time for doing so is from the time the 
last election is over up to milestone one. Then we have lots of time for ideas 
and debate and any suggestions, if accepted, have time to be implemented and 
communicated so the process is fair for all, candidates and electorate.

Agreed.


During the election is a wonderful time for posing questions to candidates in 
order to clarify their position or stance such that the electorate can make an 
informed choice.

To me, that’s the crux: “during the election”. When exactly should that be? 
Candidates can (and do) declare up to the very last minute of the nomination 
window, and ballots go out immediately after that, and voting starts. There 
really needs to be a period when a) we know who all the candidates are, and b) 
voting has not yet begun. I would like to see that period be created so that 
the kind of question/answer/clarify process you mention can happen.

+1
Just to add on to that, it would also be nice to have a better place for 
the questions/answers to be stored. During last week there was a ton of 
great discussion, but when it came to voting time (towards end of the 
week) it was difficult/time consuming to find what each person had said.


-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Ruby Loo]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 12:08 PM, Chris Dent  wrote:

>
> Based on the turnout numbers and a bit of unscientific number
> crunching on the voting results it seems that the electorate was
> rather more engaged this time around. That's _great_.
>
> As others have said I imagine some significant part of that was
> because of more than one mailing of the ballots to help everyone
> remember. I think there were probably other factors too:
>

 Would it be useful to have a not-so-scientific poll, to find out from
folks why they voted and why they didn't vote in previous elections?
Assuming folks respond to the poll :)

--ruby
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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Chris Dent]

Based on the turnout numbers and a bit of unscientific number
crunching on the voting results it seems that the electorate was
rather more engaged this time around. That's _great_.

As others have said I imagine some significant part of that was
because of more than one mailing of the ballots to help everyone
remember. I think there were probably other factors too:

* There was a large pool of candidates this time around from several
  different places on the OpenStack map. That makes for some happy:
  it wasn't the same old thing.

* The questioning and other discussion that happened last week was
  engaging and interesting and made the process something more than
  "I've heard of this person before".

Therefore I think next time around we should have that week of
discussion before the week of voting. Its impact may be greater
when people have time to reflect on the discussion before voting.

Instead of two week process, make it three:

1. nominations
2. discussion
3. voting

I don't think we need to make the second week super formal. I hope
we can rely on at least some people to step up with interesting
questions.

Aside from that, more radical things we may want to consider
include:

* Getting rid of self nomination. Nominations come from the
  electorate at large. They can be refused of course.

* Term limits, either absolute or consecutive. The principles[1]
  enshrine regular handover of power but since that's not always
  been demonstrated, perhaps it needs to be formalized?

* [your idea here please]


[1] 
http://governance.openstack.org/reference/principles.html#changes-in-leadership-are-good

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Ed Leafe]

On Oct 11, 2016, at 10:37 AM, Anita Kuno  wrote:

> Just in case folks care, now is the best time to discuss our election process 
> and suggest options or changes for the next round of elections. I'm not 
> adverse to discussing it I just think the best time for doing so is from the 
> time the last election is over up to milestone one. Then we have lots of time 
> for ideas and debate and any suggestions, if accepted, have time to be 
> implemented and communicated so the process is fair for all, candidates and 
> electorate.

Agreed.

> During the election is a wonderful time for posing questions to candidates in 
> order to clarify their position or stance such that the electorate can make 
> an informed choice.

To me, that’s the crux: “during the election”. When exactly should that be? 
Candidates can (and do) declare up to the very last minute of the nomination 
window, and ballots go out immediately after that, and voting starts. There 
really needs to be a period when a) we know who all the candidates are, and b) 
voting has not yet begun. I would like to see that period be created so that 
the kind of question/answer/clarify process you mention can happen.


-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Anita Kuno]

On 2016-10-04 04:53 PM, Anita Kuno wrote:

On 16-10-04 12:54 PM, Thierry Carrez wrote:

Doug Hellmann wrote:

John Davidge wrote:

Thierry, I'm surprised by your open hostility towards candidates.
Accusing
people of 'pretending' to care about things that they've taken the
time to

This is an excellent example of needing to know the speaker, as
well as their words, and why anonymous elections for leaders
are a bad idea generally and favor native English speakers over
other members of our community.

In this case, I know that Thierry is French and, while his English
is better than I could ever hope my French to be, he sometimes makes
"interesting" word choices, especially where the French and English
words are close in spelling or pronunciation, if not quite so close in
meaning.

In French, "prétendre" has a connotation of "profess" or simply
"say", which is very different from the more negative connotation
of "pretend" in English where common use implies some false intent.
Knowing Thierry and his past contributions well enough to trust his
good intentions, I was able to look past the awkward phrasing to
ask what message he was trying to convey.

Yeah, sorry for the poor choice of words, I didn't mean that candidates
are trying to deceive anyone. I only meant that in my experience, past
members of the TC were overly optimistic in their campaign emails about
how much they thought they would be able to achieve. So looking at the
past track record is important.


A poll in the weeks leading to the self-nomination period could
be used to identify the issues people are most concerned about, and
candidates could be encouraged to address those issues directly in 
their
self-nominations. This would reduce the reliance on a potentially 
messy

question and answer period by pre-empting the greatest concerns.

If my memory serves well, I think Anita (anteaya) drove such a
structured discussion in a past election (identify key issues and ask
candidates to address those questions in their candidacy email). Maybe
she can give us a summary of how well that went.




I had hoped to stay out of this discussion since I consider it poor 
form to discuss the way a race is run whilst the race is being run, 
however here we are.


tl;dr the idea seems sound, my method doesn't scale, other tooling 
needs to be considered if this is something folks want in future


Indeed when I was an election official in the past one of the items 
that both myself and my co-election official identified was the 
difficulty the electorate was having identifying the differences 
between the candidates (some of whom they did not know, since we were 
and have scaled so much in such a short period of time). We felt that 
it was important to do the best we could to give the electorate an 
opportunity (so hard to find a window of time to consume information 
and contemplate it anymore) to compare candidates in a neutral and 
equal way.


The wikipage for the TC election for 2014 has the information: 
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/TC_Elections_October_2014
I also would suggest looking at the history of edits to the page to 
get a sense of the work involved in offering this information in this 
way.


I came up with the questions myself: 
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/TC_Elections_October_2014#TC_Election_Questions 
Tristan signed off on them but he didn't have as much knowledge of the 
community as I did at the time so I composed them. We debated on 
asking the mailing list for input but since I knew I would be doing 
the lions share of the work on this one I didn't want to have to 
filter through questions and then appear to either pick favourites or 
snub someone should I select or not select their offered question. I 
felt I had enough pressure on myself already taking this on, I didn't 
want to dig myself a deeper hole.


As you can see from the edits to the wikipage (I basically spent 4 
straight days adding answers and reordering existing answers on the 
wikipage - I had a bowl of names in my home and every time a new 
response came in I shook the names and selected them out of the bowl 
to create an order and then did it again for the next question - it 
was time consuming but I felt it was worth it in terms of serving the 
community's interests) I reordered the responses often to ensure that 
preference in response order was moved around. I value the opportunity 
for people to make their own decision very highly and didn't want my 
choices in terms of how the information was presented to play a role 
in how they perceived the information. So I shuffled the answers a lot.


Now in the post mortem of the election tooling discussion in the infra 
meeting we did discuss options for tooling to ensure the responses are 
shuffled when rendered in subsequent elections (I think that may have 
been the time I also presented the idea of moving to a git repo, I 
can't remember) but it wasn't picked up on and I decided in fairness 
to let others take a 

Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[John Griffith]

On Wed, Oct 5, 2016 at 9:08 AM, Sean Dague  wrote:

> On 10/03/2016 12:46 PM, Edward Leafe wrote:
> 
> > We are fortunate in that all of the candidates are exceptionally
> well-qualified, and those elected have put in excellent service while on
> the TC. But one thing I'm afraid of is that we tend to get into a situation
> where groupthink [0] is very likely. There are many excellent candidates
> running in every election, but it is rare for someone who hasn't been a PTL
> of a large project, and thus very visible, has been selected. Is this
> really the best approach?
> >
> > I wrote a blog post about implicit bias [1], and in that post used the
> example of blind auditions for musical orchestras radically changing the
> selection results. Before the introduction of blind auditions, men
> overwhelmingly comprised orchestras, but once the people judging the
> auditions had no clue as to whether the musician was male or female, women
> began to be selected much more in proportion to their numbers in the
> audition pools. So I'd like to propose something for the next election:
> have candidates self-nominate as in the past, but instead of writing a big
> candidacy letter, just state their interest in serving. After the
> nominations close, the election officials will assign each candidate a
> non-identifying label, such as a random number, and those officials will be
> the only ones who know which candidate is associated with which number. The
> nomination period can be much, much shorter, and then followed by a week of
> campaigning (the part that's really missing in the current process).
> Candidates will post their thoughts and positions, and respond to questions
> from people, and this is how the voters will know who best represents what
> they want to see in their TC.
>
> The comparison to orchestra auditions was brought up a couple of cycles
> ago as well. But I think it's a bad comparison.
>
> In the listed example the job being asked of people was performing their
> instrument, and it turns out that lots of things not having to do with
> performing their instrument were biasing the results. It was possible to
> remove the irrelevant parts.
>
> What is the job being asked of a TC member? To put the best interests of
> OpenStack at heart. To be effective in working with a diverse set of
> folks in our community to get things done. To find areas of friction and
> remove them. To help set an overall direction for the project that the
> community accepts and moves forward with.
>
> Writing a good candidacy email isn't really a good representation of
> those abilities. It's the measure of writing a good candidacy email, in
> english.
>
> I hope that when voters vote in the election they are taking the
> reputations of the individuals into account. That they look at the work
> they did across all of OpenStack, the hundreds / thousands of individual
> actions in the community that the person made. How they got to consensus
> on items. What efforts they were able to get folks to rally around and
> move forward. Where they get stuck, and how they dig out of being stuck.
> When they ask for help. When they admit they are out of their element.
> How they help new folks in our community. How they work with long timers.
>
> That aggregate reputation is much more indicative of their
> successfulness as a member of the TC to help OpenStack than the
> candidate email. It's easy to dismiss it as a popularity contest, but I
> don't think it is. This is about evaluating the plausible promise that
> individuals put forward. Not just the ideas they have, but how likely
> they are to be able to bring them to fruition.
>
> -Sean
>
> --
> Sean Dague
> http://dague.net
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​Well said Sean!​
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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Sean Dague]

On 10/03/2016 12:46 PM, Edward Leafe wrote:

> We are fortunate in that all of the candidates are exceptionally 
> well-qualified, and those elected have put in excellent service while on the 
> TC. But one thing I'm afraid of is that we tend to get into a situation where 
> groupthink [0] is very likely. There are many excellent candidates running in 
> every election, but it is rare for someone who hasn't been a PTL of a large 
> project, and thus very visible, has been selected. Is this really the best 
> approach?
> 
> I wrote a blog post about implicit bias [1], and in that post used the 
> example of blind auditions for musical orchestras radically changing the 
> selection results. Before the introduction of blind auditions, men 
> overwhelmingly comprised orchestras, but once the people judging the 
> auditions had no clue as to whether the musician was male or female, women 
> began to be selected much more in proportion to their numbers in the audition 
> pools. So I'd like to propose something for the next election: have 
> candidates self-nominate as in the past, but instead of writing a big 
> candidacy letter, just state their interest in serving. After the nominations 
> close, the election officials will assign each candidate a non-identifying 
> label, such as a random number, and those officials will be the only ones who 
> know which candidate is associated with which number. The nomination period 
> can be much, much shorter, and then followed by a week of campaigning (the 
> part that's really missing in the current p
 rocess). Candidates will post their thoughts and positions, and respond to 
questions from people, and this is how the voters will know who best represents 
what they want to see in their TC.

The comparison to orchestra auditions was brought up a couple of cycles
ago as well. But I think it's a bad comparison.

In the listed example the job being asked of people was performing their
instrument, and it turns out that lots of things not having to do with
performing their instrument were biasing the results. It was possible to
remove the irrelevant parts.

What is the job being asked of a TC member? To put the best interests of
OpenStack at heart. To be effective in working with a diverse set of
folks in our community to get things done. To find areas of friction and
remove them. To help set an overall direction for the project that the
community accepts and moves forward with.

Writing a good candidacy email isn't really a good representation of
those abilities. It's the measure of writing a good candidacy email, in
english.

I hope that when voters vote in the election they are taking the
reputations of the individuals into account. That they look at the work
they did across all of OpenStack, the hundreds / thousands of individual
actions in the community that the person made. How they got to consensus
on items. What efforts they were able to get folks to rally around and
move forward. Where they get stuck, and how they dig out of being stuck.
When they ask for help. When they admit they are out of their element.
How they help new folks in our community. How they work with long timers.

That aggregate reputation is much more indicative of their
successfulness as a member of the TC to help OpenStack than the
candidate email. It's easy to dismiss it as a popularity contest, but I
don't think it is. This is about evaluating the plausible promise that
individuals put forward. Not just the ideas they have, but how likely
they are to be able to bring them to fruition.

-Sean

-- 
Sean Dague
http://dague.net
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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Doug Hellmann]

Excerpts from Ed Leafe's message of 2016-10-04 16:38:50 -0500:
> On Oct 4, 2016, at 4:21 PM, Doug Hellmann  wrote:
> 
> >> 1) Allow time between the nominations and the voting. Half of the 
> >> candidates don’t announce until the last day or two, and that doesn’t 
> >> leave very much time to get to know them.
> > 
> > It seems like a reasonable idea, but why limit the period where we
> > discuss these "big issues" to a week or so every 6 months?
> 
> Well, we can (and should) certainly discuss issues as they arise. But the 
> nature of electing a representative is periodic, so that you can get back to 
> your job, and let those who are elected do the actual work. If the 
> conversations aren’t happening when the people who are voting are most likely 
> to be paying attention, then it’s just a small group talking amongst 
> themselves. And those elected may not represent the voters as well as they 
> might.

It's definitely a tough thing to balance. I can understand that not
everyone has the same amount of time (or interest) to spend on the
issues, of course.  So far the TC has avoided rushing any given
decision to give space for discussion and input from as many sources
as possible.  I'm not opposed to a focused period of time for
discussions around elections, but I guess I hope for folks to be a
little more engaged throughout the cycle.

Doug

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Ed Leafe]

On Oct 4, 2016, at 4:21 PM, Doug Hellmann  wrote:

>> 1) Allow time between the nominations and the voting. Half of the candidates 
>> don’t announce until the last day or two, and that doesn’t leave very much 
>> time to get to know them.
> 
> It seems like a reasonable idea, but why limit the period where we
> discuss these "big issues" to a week or so every 6 months?

Well, we can (and should) certainly discuss issues as they arise. But the 
nature of electing a representative is periodic, so that you can get back to 
your job, and let those who are elected do the actual work. If the 
conversations aren’t happening when the people who are voting are most likely 
to be paying attention, then it’s just a small group talking amongst 
themselves. And those elected may not represent the voters as well as they 
might.


-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Chris Dent]

On Tue, 4 Oct 2016, Doug Hellmann wrote:


It seems like a reasonable idea, but why limit the period where we
discuss these "big issues" to a week or so every 6 months?


Exactly this. If TC elections are the catalyst for having the kinds
of discussions that we've had this week then we should either have
TC elections every week or come up with some other catalysts.

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Doug Hellmann]

Excerpts from Ed Leafe's message of 2016-10-04 14:31:45 -0500:
> On Oct 4, 2016, at 11:54 AM, Thierry Carrez  wrote:
> 
> >> In French, "prétendre" has a connotation of "profess" or simply
> >> "say", which is very different from the more negative connotation
> >> of "pretend" in English where common use implies some false intent.
> >> Knowing Thierry and his past contributions well enough to trust his
> >> good intentions, I was able to look past the awkward phrasing to
> >> ask what message he was trying to convey.
> > 
> > Yeah, sorry for the poor choice of words, I didn't mean that candidates
> > are trying to deceive anyone. I only meant that in my experience, past
> > members of the TC were overly optimistic in their campaign emails about
> > how much they thought they would be able to achieve. So looking at the
> > past track record is important.
> 
> A great example of knowing the person. It sounded harsh to me when I read it, 
> too, but knowing Thierry so well, I understood the intent. Had that been an 
> anonymous comment, I wouldn’t have made that mental adjustment.
> 
> So maybe anonymous isn’t the way to go. But we really do need to do several 
> things:
> 
> 1) Allow time between the nominations and the voting. Half of the candidates 
> don’t announce until the last day or two, and that doesn’t leave very much 
> time to get to know them.

It seems like a reasonable idea, but why limit the period where we
discuss these "big issues" to a week or so every 6 months?

> 2) I like the idea of identifying the issues that the people of OpenStack 
> care about, and having every candidate give their answers. One thing I worry 
> about, though, is the time zone difference. Candidate A publishes their 
> answers early, and gets a lot of reaction. Candidate Z, in a later timezone, 
> publishes their answers after the discussions have played out already. Let’s 
> release the answers all at once.

I think I understand the goal of doing that, but it doesn't lend
itself very well to having a conversation about the topics and I
tend to think a conversation is more enlightening than a position
paper.

I quite like Gordon's approach to this problem. He had a question,
and he asked it on the ML. I would have liked it if it was asked
earlier, but I'm extremely happy that it was asked at all so I'm
not going to complain about the timing.

> 3) We need to find a way to at least *reduce* the effect of incumbency. Not 
> that I have any particular incumbent in mind, of course, but any group of 
> people gets set in their ways unless the membership changes regularly.
> 
> And let me reiterate: I’m a candidate for the TC, and not an incumbent. So of 
> course this seems a bit self-serving, especially to an outsider who might not 
> know me very well. But I’m sure that Thierry and Doug and others, who have 
> known me for many years, understand my intent: to keep improving OpenStack.

Definitely. I appreciate your willingness to explore options, even if I
don't necessarily agree with the proposals.

Doug

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[John Griffith]

On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 1:31 PM, Ed Leafe  wrote:

> On Oct 4, 2016, at 11:54 AM, Thierry Carrez  wrote:
>
> >> In French, "prétendre" has a connotation of "profess" or simply
> >> "say", which is very different from the more negative connotation
> >> of "pretend" in English where common use implies some false intent.
> >> Knowing Thierry and his past contributions well enough to trust his
> >> good intentions, I was able to look past the awkward phrasing to
> >> ask what message he was trying to convey.
> >
> > Yeah, sorry for the poor choice of words, I didn't mean that candidates
> > are trying to deceive anyone. I only meant that in my experience, past
> > members of the TC were overly optimistic in their campaign emails about
> > how much they thought they would be able to achieve. So looking at the
> > past track record is important.
>
> A great example of knowing the person. It sounded harsh to me when I read
> it, too, but knowing Thierry so well, I understood the intent. Had that
> been an anonymous comment, I wouldn’t have made that mental adjustment.
>
> So maybe anonymous isn’t the way to go. But we really do need to do
> several things:
>
> 1) Allow time between the nominations and the voting. Half of the
> candidates don’t announce until the last day or two, and that doesn’t leave
> very much time to get to know them.
>
> 2) I like the idea of identifying the issues that the people of OpenStack
> care about, and having every candidate give their answers. One thing I
> worry about, though, is the time zone difference. Candidate A publishes
> their answers early, and gets a lot of reaction. Candidate Z, in a later
> timezone, publishes their answers after the discussions have played out
> already. Let’s release the answers all at once.
>
> 3) We need to find a way to at least *reduce* the effect of incumbency.
> Not that I have any particular incumbent in mind, of course, but any group
> of people gets set in their ways unless the membership changes regularly.
>
> And let me reiterate: I’m a candidate for the TC, and not an incumbent. So
> of course this seems a bit self-serving, especially to an outsider who
> might not know me very well. But I’m sure that Thierry and Doug and others,
> who have known me for many years, understand my intent: to keep improving
> OpenStack.
>
>
> -- Ed Leafe
>
>
>
>
>
>
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​Just to be "that person", that choice of words in no way seemed harsh or
offensive to me at all.  It's a fact, people can write an email professing
anything they want.  They can even do so without even really having an
understanding of what they may or may not actually be able to do within the
confines of the community and the boundaries that we have to work in out of
necessity and reality.  So nobody wants to offend anyone or say anything
construed as negative or pessimistic... ok; but personally I think that if
your vote is based solely on a candidate's email (stump speech)​ with no
background on who they actually are, what level of involvement, commitment
or capability they possess I think you have a recipe for disaster.  I don't
think that people realize that being a TC member is actually a lot of hard
and not so fun work.

Additionally along those lines, I personally would not be involved or
participate in an election where I was presented with just a candidate's
proposal and responses to email all shielded under anonymity.

Finally, given that Thierry is perhaps the most pragmatic, level headed and
welcoming person that I've encountered in my five years of participating in
OpenStack, I fear that must appear to be a complete Ogre if his statements
were interpreted as harsh or distrusting of people.

Thanks,
John
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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Anita Kuno]

On 16-10-04 12:54 PM, Thierry Carrez wrote:

Doug Hellmann wrote:

John Davidge wrote:

Thierry, I'm surprised by your open hostility towards candidates.
Accusing
people of 'pretending' to care about things that they've taken the
time to

This is an excellent example of needing to know the speaker, as
well as their words, and why anonymous elections for leaders
are a bad idea generally and favor native English speakers over
other members of our community.

In this case, I know that Thierry is French and, while his English
is better than I could ever hope my French to be, he sometimes makes
"interesting" word choices, especially where the French and English
words are close in spelling or pronunciation, if not quite so close in
meaning.

In French, "prétendre" has a connotation of "profess" or simply
"say", which is very different from the more negative connotation
of "pretend" in English where common use implies some false intent.
Knowing Thierry and his past contributions well enough to trust his
good intentions, I was able to look past the awkward phrasing to
ask what message he was trying to convey.

Yeah, sorry for the poor choice of words, I didn't mean that candidates
are trying to deceive anyone. I only meant that in my experience, past
members of the TC were overly optimistic in their campaign emails about
how much they thought they would be able to achieve. So looking at the
past track record is important.


A poll in the weeks leading to the self-nomination period could
be used to identify the issues people are most concerned about, and
candidates could be encouraged to address those issues directly in their
self-nominations. This would reduce the reliance on a potentially messy
question and answer period by pre-empting the greatest concerns.

If my memory serves well, I think Anita (anteaya) drove such a
structured discussion in a past election (identify key issues and ask
candidates to address those questions in their candidacy email). Maybe
she can give us a summary of how well that went.




I had hoped to stay out of this discussion since I consider it poor form 
to discuss the way a race is run whilst the race is being run, however 
here we are.


tl;dr the idea seems sound, my method doesn't scale, other tooling needs 
to be considered if this is something folks want in future


Indeed when I was an election official in the past one of the items that 
both myself and my co-election official identified was the difficulty 
the electorate was having identifying the differences between the 
candidates (some of whom they did not know, since we were and have 
scaled so much in such a short period of time). We felt that it was 
important to do the best we could to give the electorate an opportunity 
(so hard to find a window of time to consume information and contemplate 
it anymore) to compare candidates in a neutral and equal way.


The wikipage for the TC election for 2014 has the information: 
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/TC_Elections_October_2014
I also would suggest looking at the history of edits to the page to get 
a sense of the work involved in offering this information in this way.


I came up with the questions myself: 
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/TC_Elections_October_2014#TC_Election_Questions 
Tristan signed off on them but he didn't have as much knowledge of the 
community as I did at the time so I composed them. We debated on asking 
the mailing list for input but since I knew I would be doing the lions 
share of the work on this one I didn't want to have to filter through 
questions and then appear to either pick favourites or snub someone 
should I select or not select their offered question. I felt I had 
enough pressure on myself already taking this on, I didn't want to dig 
myself a deeper hole.


As you can see from the edits to the wikipage (I basically spent 4 
straight days adding answers and reordering existing answers on the 
wikipage - I had a bowl of names in my home and every time a new 
response came in I shook the names and selected them out of the bowl to 
create an order and then did it again for the next question - it was 
time consuming but I felt it was worth it in terms of serving the 
community's interests) I reordered the responses often to ensure that 
preference in response order was moved around. I value the opportunity 
for people to make their own decision very highly and didn't want my 
choices in terms of how the information was presented to play a role in 
how they perceived the information. So I shuffled the answers a lot.


Now in the post mortem of the election tooling discussion in the infra 
meeting we did discuss options for tooling to ensure the responses are 
shuffled when rendered in subsequent elections (I think that may have 
been the time I also presented the idea of moving to a git repo, I can't 
remember) but it wasn't picked up on and I decided in fairness to let 
others take a turn running elections and didn't pursue it.


I 

Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Ed Leafe]

On Oct 4, 2016, at 11:54 AM, Thierry Carrez  wrote:

>> In French, "prétendre" has a connotation of "profess" or simply
>> "say", which is very different from the more negative connotation
>> of "pretend" in English where common use implies some false intent.
>> Knowing Thierry and his past contributions well enough to trust his
>> good intentions, I was able to look past the awkward phrasing to
>> ask what message he was trying to convey.
> 
> Yeah, sorry for the poor choice of words, I didn't mean that candidates
> are trying to deceive anyone. I only meant that in my experience, past
> members of the TC were overly optimistic in their campaign emails about
> how much they thought they would be able to achieve. So looking at the
> past track record is important.

A great example of knowing the person. It sounded harsh to me when I read it, 
too, but knowing Thierry so well, I understood the intent. Had that been an 
anonymous comment, I wouldn’t have made that mental adjustment.

So maybe anonymous isn’t the way to go. But we really do need to do several 
things:

1) Allow time between the nominations and the voting. Half of the candidates 
don’t announce until the last day or two, and that doesn’t leave very much time 
to get to know them.

2) I like the idea of identifying the issues that the people of OpenStack care 
about, and having every candidate give their answers. One thing I worry about, 
though, is the time zone difference. Candidate A publishes their answers early, 
and gets a lot of reaction. Candidate Z, in a later timezone, publishes their 
answers after the discussions have played out already. Let’s release the 
answers all at once.

3) We need to find a way to at least *reduce* the effect of incumbency. Not 
that I have any particular incumbent in mind, of course, but any group of 
people gets set in their ways unless the membership changes regularly.

And let me reiterate: I’m a candidate for the TC, and not an incumbent. So of 
course this seems a bit self-serving, especially to an outsider who might not 
know me very well. But I’m sure that Thierry and Doug and others, who have 
known me for many years, understand my intent: to keep improving OpenStack.


-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Thierry Carrez]

Doug Hellmann wrote:
> John Davidge wrote:
>> Thierry, I'm surprised by your open hostility towards candidates.
>> Accusing
>> people of 'pretending' to care about things that they've taken the
>> time to
> 
> This is an excellent example of needing to know the speaker, as
> well as their words, and why anonymous elections for leaders
> are a bad idea generally and favor native English speakers over
> other members of our community.
> 
> In this case, I know that Thierry is French and, while his English
> is better than I could ever hope my French to be, he sometimes makes
> "interesting" word choices, especially where the French and English
> words are close in spelling or pronunciation, if not quite so close in
> meaning.
> 
> In French, "prétendre" has a connotation of "profess" or simply
> "say", which is very different from the more negative connotation
> of "pretend" in English where common use implies some false intent.
> Knowing Thierry and his past contributions well enough to trust his
> good intentions, I was able to look past the awkward phrasing to
> ask what message he was trying to convey.

Yeah, sorry for the poor choice of words, I didn't mean that candidates
are trying to deceive anyone. I only meant that in my experience, past
members of the TC were overly optimistic in their campaign emails about
how much they thought they would be able to achieve. So looking at the
past track record is important.

>> A poll in the weeks leading to the self-nomination period could
>> be used to identify the issues people are most concerned about, and
>> candidates could be encouraged to address those issues directly in their
>> self-nominations. This would reduce the reliance on a potentially messy
>> question and answer period by pre-empting the greatest concerns.

If my memory serves well, I think Anita (anteaya) drove such a
structured discussion in a past election (identify key issues and ask
candidates to address those questions in their candidacy email). Maybe
she can give us a summary of how well that went.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Doug Hellmann]

Excerpts from John Davidge's message of 2016-10-04 14:44:00 +:
> Thierry Carrez wrote:
>
> >Edward Leafe wrote:
> >> [...]
> >> The current candidacy essay would now be posted in the campaign
> >> period,
> >>rather than at the time of nomination, and should exclude the sort
> >>of
> >>biographical information that is currently the most important piece
> >>for
> >>many people. [...]
> >
> >As other mentioned, this is unlikely to give good results -- the
> >track
> >record of the person is much more important than what they pretend to
> >care about in campaign emails (or their mastery of written English).
>

[...]

> Thierry, I'm surprised by your open hostility towards candidates.
> Accusing
> people of 'pretending' to care about things that they've taken the
> time to

This is an excellent example of needing to know the speaker, as
well as their words, and why anonymous elections for leaders
are a bad idea generally and favor native English speakers over
other members of our community.

In this case, I know that Thierry is French and, while his English
is better than I could ever hope my French to be, he sometimes makes
"interesting" word choices, especially where the French and English
words are close in spelling or pronunciation, if not quite so close in
meaning.

In French, "prétendre" has a connotation of "profess" or simply
"say", which is very different from the more negative connotation
of "pretend" in English where common use implies some false intent.
Knowing Thierry and his past contributions well enough to trust his
good intentions, I was able to look past the awkward phrasing to
ask what message he was trying to convey.

Removing the information about who is making a statement eliminates
that sort of context, and means that any history we have of working
together as individual humans can't be used to help our judgment when
we're communicating with each other.

Doug

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[John Davidge]

Thierry Carrez wrote:

>Edward Leafe wrote:
>> [...]
>> The current candidacy essay would now be posted in the campaign period,
>>rather than at the time of nomination, and should exclude the sort of
>>biographical information that is currently the most important piece for
>>many people. [...]
>
>As other mentioned, this is unlikely to give good results -- the track
>record of the person is much more important than what they pretend to
>care about in campaign emails (or their mastery of written English).

Is it, though? A person's track record might help to show how likely they
are to stick to their stated goals, but it's the goals themselves that are
actually going to shape the future of OpenStack. Ed quite rightly points
out that our current election system puts almost no focus on the agenda of
each candidate, in favor of how well their name is recognized by a wide
base of contributors. I do agree that name recognition in itself can be an
indication that the person has contributed and will continue to contribute
positively to the community, but it shouldn't be the primary metric.

On balance, I think that the community would benefit from an effort to
shift the focus more onto the issues than the individuals. The TC would
also benefit by receiving a greater mandate to accomplish the goals that
were voted for.

We'll need to acknowledge that the more well known names in the community
you would stand to lose a large advantage with the change Ed is proposing.
If we're going to seriously consider some level of electoral reform - and
I think we should - then it needs to be discussed and refined in the open,
and decided by community vote. The TC cannot be the ones to decide this,
as no matter how much we trust them, we cannot ignore the conflict of
interests it raises.

Thierry, I'm surprised by your open hostility towards candidates. Accusing
people of 'pretending' to care about things that they've taken the time to
write about is exactly the kind of bad-faith assumption that puts people
off from getting involved. This leads to self-censorship of dissent,
without which it is impossible to have any meaningful debate. I wish we
could disagree without resorting to personal attacks.

>In campaign emails, people always promise they have a lot of time on their
>hands, or they will change everything (or "be proactive"). But when the
>rubber hits the road, some vote one hour before the meeting, and some
>others don't show up at all. Campaign emails only bind those who believe
>in them. In my voting I prefer to consider the past availability and
>interest in those issues, the positions held on various threads and
>reviews, and the cooperative behavior (or absence thereof) exhibited in
>those discussions.

All valuable methods for weighing candidates against each other, which is
why I don't think dropping names completely is the right way to go. Again
though, let's not encourage the assumption that all candidates are lazy
con-artists until proven otherwise.

>Now, it's true that a lot of people vote on names, and don't take the
>time to dig into meeting logs and governance reviews. I'm not sure it's
>easy to fix though... you can't force people to spend time researching
>candidates.

And I don't think we have to. Something as simple as a few bullet points
about each candidate's intentions on the voting page would be a hugely
beneficial first step. If the current voting infrastructure doesn't
support that for whatever reason, then we should consider a different one.

>We could reduce the electorate to people more likely to have
>time to do that research (raise the bar in number of patches you have to
>contribute before you can vote) -- but that would require significant
>changes in the Foundation bylaws (where the "1 contributor = 1 vote"
>principle in carved in protected sections).

No, absolutely not. We went over this on the 'Write down OpenStack
principles' review[1]. The fact that the required research is so time
consuming is the problem. We should be making every effort to present the
relevant information at the time of voting. Of course this is easier said
than done, but if we don't help newer contributors feel like they're
making informed voting decisions, we're going to lose out on the
opportunity for our ever-changing demographics to inform our direction.

>Another path would be to facilitate that research. We could publish
>meeting presence metrics, but that would only encourage people to make
>random noise at meetings. We could ask incumbents to post a "here is
>what I did over the last year at the TC" as part of their platform
>email. Other ideas ?

I think a beneficial step would be to include the community earlier in the
process. A poll in the weeks leading to the self-nomination period could
be used to identify the issues people are most concerned about, and
candidates could be encouraged to address those issues directly in their
self-nominations. This would reduce the reliance on a potentially messy

Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Thierry Carrez]

Edward Leafe wrote:
> [...]
> The current candidacy essay would now be posted in the campaign period, 
> rather than at the time of nomination, and should exclude the sort of 
> biographical information that is currently the most important piece for many 
> people. [...]

As other mentioned, this is unlikely to give good results -- the track
record of the person is much more important than what they pretend to
care about in campaign emails (or their mastery of written English). In
campaign emails, people always promise they have a lot of time on their
hands, or they will change everything (or "be proactive"). But when the
rubber hits the road, some vote one hour before the meeting, and some
others don't show up at all. Campaign emails only bind those who believe
in them. In my voting I prefer to consider the past availability and
interest in those issues, the positions held on various threads and
reviews, and the cooperative behavior (or absence thereof) exhibited in
those discussions.

Now, it's true that a lot of people vote on names, and don't take the
time to dig into meeting logs and governance reviews. I'm not sure it's
easy to fix though... you can't force people to spend time researching
candidates. We could reduce the electorate to people more likely to have
time to do that research (raise the bar in number of patches you have to
contribute before you can vote) -- but that would require significant
changes in the Foundation bylaws (where the "1 contributor = 1 vote"
principle in carved in protected sections).

Another path would be to facilitate that research. We could publish
meeting presence metrics, but that would only encourage people to make
random noise at meetings. We could ask incumbents to post a "here is
what I did over the last year at the TC" as part of their platform
email. Other ideas ?

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Morgan Fainberg]

On Oct 3, 2016 14:15, "Edward Leafe"  wrote:
>
> On Oct 3, 2016, at 12:18 PM, Clay Gerrard  wrote:
> >
> >> After the nominations close, the election officials will assign each
candidate a non-identifying label, such as a random number, and those
officials will be the only ones who know which candidate is associated with
which number.
> >>
> > I'm really uneasy about this suggestion.  Especially when it comes to
re-election, for the purposes of accountability I think it's really
important that voters be able to identify the candidates.  For some people
there's a difference in what they say and what they end up doing when left
calling shots from the bubble for too long.
>
> This was a concern of mine, too, but IMO there haven't been too many
cases where a TC member has said they would support X and then fail to do
so. They might not prevail, being one of 13, but when that issue came up
they were almost always consistent with what they said.
>
> > As far as the other stuff... idk if familiarity == bias.  I'm sure lots
of occasions people vote for people they know because they *trust* them;
but I don't think that's bias?  I think a more common problem is when
people vote for a *name* they recognize without really knowing that person
or what they're about.  Or perhaps just as bad - *not* voting because they
realize they have on context to consider these candidates beyond name
familiarity and an (optional) email.
>
> I think that with so many candidates for so few seats, most people simply
don't have the time or the interest to look very deeply into things. I know
that that shows up in the voting. Take the election from a year ago: there
were 619 votes cast for 19 candidates. Out of these:
> - 35 ballots only voted for one candidate
> - 102 ballots voted for three or fewer
> - 175 didn't even bother to vote for 6
> - only 159 bothered to rank all the candidates
>

I want to point out that the last statistic is not super useful. The very
nature of CIVS allows for duplicated ranks. I rank folks where I would like
them and explicitly stack the bottom for those not in the top X, as I see
them all as equally viable but lower on my priority. So I am lumped into
that last statistic without it meaning I didn't actively and consciously
choose to do so for ease of voting. The web form on mobile (usually where I
vote) is not as responsive and sometimes might mis-rank folks).

So in short. Don't use the "failed to rank everyone" as a real metric. It
isn't representative  of what you're implying.

> So I think that there is evidence that unless you are already well-known,
most people aren't going to take the time to dig deeper. Maybe anonymous
campaigns aren't the answer, but they certainly would help in this regard.
>
> > I think a campaign period, and especially some effort [1] to have
candidates verbalize their viewpoints on topics that matter to the
constituency could go a long way towards giving people some more context
beyond "i think this name looks familiar; I don't really recognize this
name"
>
> Agreed 100%! It was made worse this year because the nominations closed
on a Saturday, and with the late rush of people declaring their candidacy,
gave no time at all for any sort of campaign discussions before voting
began. There really needs to be a decent period of time allowed for people
to get answers to whatever questions they may have.
>
>
> -- Ed Leafe
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Jeremy Stanley]

On 2016-10-03 16:15:01 -0500 (-0500), Edward Leafe wrote:
[...]
> So I think that there is evidence that unless you are already
> well-known, most people aren't going to take the time to dig
> deeper. Maybe anonymous campaigns aren't the answer, but they
> certainly would help in this regard.
[...]

Becoming well-known, at least within our technical community, tends
to be a mark of connectedness with the TC electorate (generally
through some manner of contribution whether that's serving in other
elected positions or working on cross-project efforts or simply
making excellent observations and suggestions on our mailing lists).
People who are relatively unknown in the community will, on the
whole, lack a breadth of experience outside their niche
cross-sections of OpenStack and so have trouble establishing
credibility with their constituency.

As for the anonymity idea, I rely far more on actions and positions
I've seen from candidates over their years of interactions with me
and the rest of the community. If I were forced to rely solely on
pseudonymous (what you described is not actually anonymous since
there would be a unique ID assigned) position statements, I would
mostly just end up attempting to map them to the candidates I knew
were running based on the opinions I know them to hold.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley


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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Edward Leafe]

On Oct 3, 2016, at 1:39 PM, Clint Byrum  wrote:
> 
> Of course, I read the essays of those who I don't know more carefully, and
> I often go searching through my ML archives to see if we've interacted on
> threads in the past. Still, I'm very unlikely to rank somebody higher than
> a personal acquaintance unless I don't have many personal acquaintances
> that I agree with that are nominated.

I understand, and would be less than honest if I stated that I never do the 
same thing. I'm questioning, though, whether that's a good thing, or part of 
our tribal nature as humans.

> So I get where you're going, but I don't think that can be "the
> election". In addition to not allowing me to judge peoples' character,
> it also introduces a _massive_ fraud incentive. If you are a candidate,
> and you write a paper that is equal to all others, you can gain votes just
> by secretly telling your friends which one is yours, and their implicit
> bias will 1) make many think this is morally ok, because they know you're
> a good candidate, and 2) make them more likely to vote for you.

I suppose that's a possible downside, although I don't know that anyone who 
would do that would have enough people they could call "friends" to get them 
elected. I know that such a tactic would certainly backfire if someone tried to 
get me to vote for them.

> One way to counter the problems associated with the popularity contest
> is to have some appointed members. We can admonish the TC to appoint a
> nominee who did not win the most votes, but who is more likely to break
> a groupthink cycle. This would only work if people paid attention to TC
> voting records, which AFAIK, nobody really does.

Heh, let's change the bylaws so that the top 4 (or 5 in the next cycle) 
vote-getters win, and the other two seats are chosen by lottery from the bottom 
5 vote getters! That's sure to liven things up! 

(kidding, of course!)

-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Edward Leafe]

On Oct 3, 2016, at 12:18 PM, Clay Gerrard  wrote:
> 
>> After the nominations close, the election officials will assign each 
>> candidate a non-identifying label, such as a random number, and those 
>> officials will be the only ones who know which candidate is associated with 
>> which number. 
>> 
> I'm really uneasy about this suggestion.  Especially when it comes to 
> re-election, for the purposes of accountability I think it's really important 
> that voters be able to identify the candidates.  For some people there's a 
> difference in what they say and what they end up doing when left calling 
> shots from the bubble for too long.

This was a concern of mine, too, but IMO there haven't been too many cases 
where a TC member has said they would support X and then fail to do so. They 
might not prevail, being one of 13, but when that issue came up they were 
almost always consistent with what they said.

> As far as the other stuff... idk if familiarity == bias.  I'm sure lots of 
> occasions people vote for people they know because they *trust* them; but I 
> don't think that's bias?  I think a more common problem is when people vote 
> for a *name* they recognize without really knowing that person or what 
> they're about.  Or perhaps just as bad - *not* voting because they realize 
> they have on context to consider these candidates beyond name familiarity and 
> an (optional) email.

I think that with so many candidates for so few seats, most people simply don't 
have the time or the interest to look very deeply into things. I know that that 
shows up in the voting. Take the election from a year ago: there were 619 votes 
cast for 19 candidates. Out of these:
- 35 ballots only voted for one candidate
- 102 ballots voted for three or fewer
- 175 didn't even bother to vote for 6
- only 159 bothered to rank all the candidates

So I think that there is evidence that unless you are already well-known, most 
people aren't going to take the time to dig deeper. Maybe anonymous campaigns 
aren't the answer, but they certainly would help in this regard.

> I think a campaign period, and especially some effort [1] to have candidates 
> verbalize their viewpoints on topics that matter to the constituency could go 
> a long way towards giving people some more context beyond "i think this name 
> looks familiar; I don't really recognize this name"

Agreed 100%! It was made worse this year because the nominations closed on a 
Saturday, and with the late rush of people declaring their candidacy, gave no 
time at all for any sort of campaign discussions before voting began. There 
really needs to be a decent period of time allowed for people to get answers to 
whatever questions they may have.


-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Edward Leafe]

On Oct 3, 2016, at 12:51 PM, Doug Hellmann  wrote:

> When I vote, I consider the positions a candidate takes, the ideas
> they propose, and -- equally importantly -- their track record of
> actually getting things done.  Hiding the candidate's identity makes
> it impossible to evaluate that track record and have a sense of
> whether they're likely to make any real progress on their ideas.

That's a very good point, and one I wrestled with. I tried to balance that with 
the desire to see an influx of new ideas; I guess this balance is where we 
differ.

> In the past we experimented with a few formal questions being posed
> to all candidates. I appreciate the fact that Gordon took the
> initiative and started a less formal thread on his own this time.
> I hope that everyone feels able to do the same, whether they have
> questions for specific candidates or for the entire slate.

I agree, and wish that the discussion Gordon started could have happened 
*before* people started voting. 

-- Ed Leafe






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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[gordon chung]

On 03/10/2016 1:18 PM, Clay Gerrard wrote:
> I think a more common problem is when people vote for a *name* they
> recognize without really knowing that person or what they're about.  Or
> perhaps just as bad - *not* voting because they realize they have on
> context to consider these candidates beyond name familiarity and an
> (optional) email

fully agree with this. this is how i've voted in the past (and to an 
extent, this time as well.). that said, i think it's good to get to know 
the candidates a bit more beyond the initial, often heavily vetted, 
self-nominations. i don't know if this will change anything but 
hopefully it stops the downward trend we have for TC election turnout.

cheers,
-- 
gord


ps. i apologise to the people running who i do know for not telling them 
ahead of time i was going to ask random questions. equal playing field :P

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Clint Byrum]

Excerpts from Edward Leafe's message of 2016-10-03 11:46:41 -0500:
> So the period of self-nominations for the Technical Committee seats has 
> ended, and the voting has begun. I've been a very close observer of this 
> process for several cycles, and I have some ideas I'd like to share. Full 
> disclosure: I am a current candidate for the TC, and have been a candidate 
> several times in the past, all of which were unsuccessful.
> 
> When deciding to run, candidates write a long, thoughtful essay on their 
> reasons for wanting to serve on the TC, and those essays are typically the 
> last you hear from them until the election. It has been rare for anyone to 
> ask follow-up questions, or to challenge the candidates to explain their 
> positions more definitively. I have spoken with many people at the Summits, 
> which always closely followed the TC election (warning: unscientific samples 
> ahead!), and what their selection process mostly boils down to is: they pick 
> the names they are most familiar with. Many people don't read those long 
> candidacy posts, and nearly all couldn't remember a single point that any of 
> the candidates had put forth.
> 
> We are fortunate in that all of the candidates are exceptionally 
> well-qualified, and those elected have put in excellent service while on the 
> TC. But one thing I'm afraid of is that we tend to get into a situation where 
> groupthink [0] is very likely. There are many excellent candidates running in 
> every election, but it is rare for someone who hasn't been a PTL of a large 
> project, and thus very visible, has been selected. Is this really the best 
> approach?
> 

I think you're right, that groupthink is very likely. In so much as, I am
more likely to select people from my own closer peer group who thinks like
me, because I agree with their general way of working and thinking, and
thus, the TC will end up thinking like the largest, most moderate group
of people in OpenStack.

> I wrote a blog post about implicit bias [1], and in that post used the 
> example of blind auditions for musical orchestras radically changing the 
> selection results. Before the introduction of blind auditions, men 
> overwhelmingly comprised orchestras, but once the people judging the 
> auditions had no clue as to whether the musician was male or female, women 
> began to be selected much more in proportion to their numbers in the audition 
> pools. So I'd like to propose something for the next election: have 
> candidates self-nominate as in the past, but instead of writing a big 
> candidacy letter, just state their interest in serving. After the nominations 
> close, the election officials will assign each candidate a non-identifying 
> label, such as a random number, and those officials will be the only ones who 
> know which candidate is associated with which number. The nomination period 
> can be much, much shorter, and then followed by a week of campaigning (the 
> part that's really missing in the cur
>  rent process). Candidates will post their thoughts and positions, and 
> respond to questions from people, and this is how the voters will know who 
> best represents what they want to see in their TC.
> 
> The current candidacy essay would now be posted in the campaign period, 
> rather than at the time of nomination, and should exclude the sort of 
> biographical information that is currently the most important piece for many 
> people. Keeping anonymity will be difficult, and will preclude the use of 
> email for posting positions and responses, since email identifies the sender. 
> So perhaps candidates could forward their posts to the election officials, 
> who will post them for the candidates, identifying them by number only. The 
> voting form will only list the candidate numbers, so the end result will be 
> people casting votes for the candidates whose platform most matches what they 
> want to see in the TC, and who have best answered any questions raised by 
> others.
> 

Character is a massive factor in choosing representatives. The position
essay is just a small reflection to introduce one self to those who
do not know them. But really, I'm going to weigh Josh Harlow's value
as a TC member against Jeremy Stanley's value as a TC member based on
the various conversations we've had at summits, on the ML, and on IRC,
far more heavily than I can using a quick position essay.

Of course, I read the essays of those who I don't know more carefully, and
I often go searching through my ML archives to see if we've interacted on
threads in the past. Still, I'm very unlikely to rank somebody higher than
a personal acquaintance unless I don't have many personal acquaintances
that I agree with that are nominated.

So I get where you're going, but I don't think that can be "the
election". In addition to not allowing me to judge peoples' character,
it also introduces a _massive_ fraud incentive. If you are a candidate,
and you write a paper that is equal 

Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Doug Hellmann]

Excerpts from Clay Gerrard's message of 2016-10-03 10:18:43 -0700:
> On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 9:46 AM, Edward Leafe  wrote:
> 
> > After the nominations close, the election officials will assign each
> > candidate a non-identifying label, such as a random number, and those
> > officials will be the only ones who know which candidate is associated with
> > which number.
> 
> 
> I'm really uneasy about this suggestion.  Especially when it comes to
> re-election, for the purposes of accountability I think it's really
> important that voters be able to identify the candidates.  For some people
> there's a difference in what they say and what they end up doing when left
> calling shots from the bubble for too long.
> 
> As far as the other stuff... idk if familiarity == bias.  I'm sure lots of
> occasions people vote for people they know because they *trust* them; but I
> don't think that's bias?  I think a more common problem is when people vote
> for a *name* they recognize without really knowing that person or what
> they're about.  Or perhaps just as bad - *not* voting because they realize
> they have on context to consider these candidates beyond name familiarity
> and an (optional) email.
> 
> I think a campaign period, and especially some effort [1] to have
> candidates verbalize their viewpoints on topics that matter to the
> constituency could go a long way towards giving people some more context
> beyond "i think this name looks familiar; I don't really recognize this
> name"

I agree, on both counts.

When I vote, I consider the positions a candidate takes, the ideas
they propose, and -- equally importantly -- their track record of
actually getting things done.  Hiding the candidate's identity makes
it impossible to evaluate that track record and have a sense of
whether they're likely to make any real progress on their ideas.

In the past we experimented with a few formal questions being posed
to all candidates. I appreciate the fact that Gordon took the
initiative and started a less formal thread on his own this time.
I hope that everyone feels able to do the same, whether they have
questions for specific candidates or for the entire slate.

I don't want to speak for everyone else, but my self-nomination
email is only intended as a snapshot or summary of my thoughts on
a few issues that I see as important.  If I didn't mention a topic,
it's not necessarily due to lack of interest. I'll be happy to
respond to questions here on the list.

Doug

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Doug Hellmann]

Excerpts from Hayes, Graham's message of 2016-10-03 17:35:44 +:
> On 03/10/2016 17:49, Edward Leafe wrote:
> > So the period of self-nominations for the Technical Committee seats has 
> > ended, and the voting has begun. I've been a very close observer of this 
> > process for several cycles, and I have some ideas I'd like to share. Full 
> > disclosure: I am a current candidate for the TC, and have been a candidate 
> > several times in the past, all of which were unsuccessful.
> >
> > When deciding to run, candidates write a long, thoughtful essay on their 
> > reasons for wanting to serve on the TC, and those essays are typically the 
> > last you hear from them until the election. It has been rare for anyone to 
> > ask follow-up questions, or to challenge the candidates to explain their 
> > positions more definitively. I have spoken with many people at the Summits, 
> > which always closely followed the TC election (warning: unscientific 
> > samples ahead!), and what their selection process mostly boils down to is: 
> > they pick the names they are most familiar with. Many people don't read 
> > those long candidacy posts, and nearly all couldn't remember a single point 
> > that any of the candidates had put forth.
> >
> > We are fortunate in that all of the candidates are exceptionally 
> > well-qualified, and those elected have put in excellent service while on 
> > the TC. But one thing I'm afraid of is that we tend to get into a situation 
> > where groupthink [0] is very likely. There are many excellent candidates 
> > running in every election, but it is rare for someone who hasn't been a PTL 
> > of a large project, and thus very visible, has been selected. Is this 
> > really the best approach?
> >
> > I wrote a blog post about implicit bias [1], and in that post used
the example of blind auditions for musical orchestras radically
changing the selection results. Before the introduction of blind
auditions, men overwhelmingly comprised orchestras, but once the people
judging the auditions had no clue as to whether the musician was male
or female, women began to be selected much more in proportion to their
numbers in the audition pools. So I'd like to propose something for the
next election: have candidates self-nominate as in the past, but
instead of writing a big candidacy letter, just state their interest in
serving. After the nominations close, the election officials will
assign each candidate a non-identifying label, such as a random number,
and those officials will be the only ones who know which candidate is
associated with which number. The nomination period can be much, much
shorter, and then followed by a week of campaigning (the part that's
really missing in the current pro
> >  cess). Candidates will post their thoughts and positions, and respond to 
> > questions from people, and this is how the voters will know who best 
> > represents what they want to see in their TC.
> 
> On the topic of implicit bias - I am open to correction on this, but I
> do not think we have had a TC member who was not heavily involved in
> either Cross Project teams, or one of the projects that spun out of
> Nova in the early years.
> 
> Now, is this bias, or a side effect of people on smaller projects not
> necessarily having dedicated upstream time.
> 
> Is this something we are worried about (or should be worried about)?

That's a good question. Leadership sustainability one of the reasons
I hope that the new PTG structure, with separate days for cross-project
meetings, will result in more folks with more time for cross-project
work that will give them the sort of perspective, and interest, to
make them good TC members.

Doug

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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Hayes, Graham]

On 03/10/2016 17:49, Edward Leafe wrote:
> So the period of self-nominations for the Technical Committee seats has 
> ended, and the voting has begun. I've been a very close observer of this 
> process for several cycles, and I have some ideas I'd like to share. Full 
> disclosure: I am a current candidate for the TC, and have been a candidate 
> several times in the past, all of which were unsuccessful.
>
> When deciding to run, candidates write a long, thoughtful essay on their 
> reasons for wanting to serve on the TC, and those essays are typically the 
> last you hear from them until the election. It has been rare for anyone to 
> ask follow-up questions, or to challenge the candidates to explain their 
> positions more definitively. I have spoken with many people at the Summits, 
> which always closely followed the TC election (warning: unscientific samples 
> ahead!), and what their selection process mostly boils down to is: they pick 
> the names they are most familiar with. Many people don't read those long 
> candidacy posts, and nearly all couldn't remember a single point that any of 
> the candidates had put forth.
>
> We are fortunate in that all of the candidates are exceptionally 
> well-qualified, and those elected have put in excellent service while on the 
> TC. But one thing I'm afraid of is that we tend to get into a situation where 
> groupthink [0] is very likely. There are many excellent candidates running in 
> every election, but it is rare for someone who hasn't been a PTL of a large 
> project, and thus very visible, has been selected. Is this really the best 
> approach?
>
> I wrote a blog post about implicit bias [1], and in that post used the 
> example of blind auditions for musical orchestras radically changing the 
> selection results. Before the introduction of blind auditions, men 
> overwhelmingly comprised orchestras, but once the people judging the 
> auditions had no clue as to whether the musician was male or female, women 
> began to be selected much more in proportion to their numbers in the audition 
> pools. So I'd like to propose something for the next election: have 
> candidates self-nominate as in the past, but instead of writing a big 
> candidacy letter, just state their interest in serving. After the nominations 
> close, the election officials will assign each candidate a non-identifying 
> label, such as a random number, and those officials will be the only ones who 
> know which candidate is associated with which number. The nomination period 
> can be much, much shorter, and then followed by a week of campaigning (the 
> part that's really missing in the current p
 ro
>  cess). Candidates will post their thoughts and positions, and respond to 
> questions from people, and this is how the voters will know who best 
> represents what they want to see in their TC.

On the topic of implicit bias - I am open to correction on this, but I
do not think we have had a TC member who was not heavily involved in
either Cross Project teams, or one of the projects that spun out of
Nova in the early years.

Now, is this bias, or a side effect of people on smaller projects not
necessarily having dedicated upstream time.

Is this something we are worried about (or should be worried about)?

> The current candidacy essay would now be posted in the campaign period, 
> rather than at the time of nomination, and should exclude the sort of 
> biographical information that is currently the most important piece for many 
> people. Keeping anonymity will be difficult, and will preclude the use of 
> email for posting positions and responses, since email identifies the sender. 
> So perhaps candidates could forward their posts to the election officials, 
> who will post them for the candidates, identifying them by number only. The 
> voting form will only list the candidate numbers, so the end result will be 
> people casting votes for the candidates whose platform most matches what they 
> want to see in the TC, and who have best answered any questions raised by 
> others.
>
> My feeling is that the result would be very different than the current 
> process. My question, then, is whether that would be a good thing? It would 
> require more work from the candidates and especially the election officials, 
> so we should make sure that the goal is worth it. Do we want everyone to have 
> an equal chance to serve on the TC, or should those who have earned name 
> recognition by their excellent work in other parts of OpenStack continue to 
> have an advantage?
>
> [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
> [1] http://blog.leafe.com/bias/
>
> -- Ed Leafe
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

[Clay Gerrard]

On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 9:46 AM, Edward Leafe  wrote:

> After the nominations close, the election officials will assign each
> candidate a non-identifying label, such as a random number, and those
> officials will be the only ones who know which candidate is associated with
> which number.


I'm really uneasy about this suggestion.  Especially when it comes to
re-election, for the purposes of accountability I think it's really
important that voters be able to identify the candidates.  For some people
there's a difference in what they say and what they end up doing when left
calling shots from the bubble for too long.

As far as the other stuff... idk if familiarity == bias.  I'm sure lots of
occasions people vote for people they know because they *trust* them; but I
don't think that's bias?  I think a more common problem is when people vote
for a *name* they recognize without really knowing that person or what
they're about.  Or perhaps just as bad - *not* voting because they realize
they have on context to consider these candidates beyond name familiarity
and an (optional) email.

I think a campaign period, and especially some effort [1] to have
candidates verbalize their viewpoints on topics that matter to the
constituency could go a long way towards giving people some more context
beyond "i think this name looks familiar; I don't really recognize this
name"

-Clay

1.
http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2016-October/104953.html
<- "role of the TC and your priorities"; seems like a reasonable thing for
someone to be able to answer about folks they're putting in the top six
slots in the voting card!
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