[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Board Election Results

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

On 10-Aug-07, at 7:26 AM, Landon Blake wrote:

> I wanted to add my agreement with a couple of the statements made on
> this topic.
>
> First of all, I agree with Gary, I don't think the benefit of  
> releasing
> the tallies outweighs the harmful side effects.

I'm just catching up on this thread, I didn't realise it was such a  
hot topic.  I'm all for debate about how to improve our processes,  
but I don't like the idea of changing a process after the fact.

I also agreed with the idea of not releasing a full ordered list with  
vote tallies.  I didn't even provide the top 5 in order of rank,  
instead did it in alphabetical order.  Otherwise, all you would get  
is a relative ordering of people versus other people.  Did someone  
vote more for one person because of their geographical location?  Or  
because there were better known or better qualified?  Or because they  
thought they had the best chance of winning?  Or did they like  
everyone but chose them randomly?

You could infer a reason for the order, but it would be pure  
speculation without knowing from every voter what they were  
thinking.  So, in the end, I believe that the number of votes is  
meaningless except to appease curiosity.  If we eventually move to an  
online system for managing elections then I'm sure the topic will  
come up again, as will the questions of giving multiple votes to one  
nominee or for voting for yourself.  All good issue worthy of debate,  
in my opinion.

> Perhaps an interesting approach at the next election
> would be to have the nominees answer a set of questions selected from
> the charter members. We could post each nominee's answer to the
> questions on the wiki.

I have thought about this too and agree.  We could even open this up  
to receive ideas from the membership at large, then boil it down to a  
reasonable set.

I had hoped there would be more discussion/debate about the  
candidates before the voting started - there was barely any - but  
having a selected set of required questions would help to serve the  
same purpose next time.

Sincerely,
Tyler