[OSGeo-Discuss] Proposed process for selecting OSGeo charter members

[Alex Mandel]

That's on topic, actually I think that is the topic.

I agree that it's a little odd. I can actually see cases where someone
may be on a PSC but not because 3 charter members voted for them (could
even have voted against them).

I suspect in the case of Local chapters the idea was that several
members of the Chapter would already be Charter members selected in
previous years from the general pool of nominations. So once a Chapter
gets enough charter members it becomes easier for them to ask for their
local leaders to get added. This does not prohibit a chapter liaison
from getting nominated or elected, it just means it isn't an automatic
approval. The idea here is if your chapter has 3+ Charter Members, and
your Chapter Liaison gets nominated, there is no need for all the
Charter Members to vote on that person.

So while I like the idea of a way to auto-accept some candidates I'm not
sure this proposal has the intended result.

The goals are:
1. Don't deny charter membership to well known good candidates (we can't
always just let in all nominees, that's unsustainable)
2. Streamline the election process
3. Prevent gaming of the system by an outside organization or bad actors

Maybe something along the lines of well known community participants who
are nominated and vouched for by X number of chart members get
auto-approved. By vouch, I mean that a charter member actually knows the
person, and has seen proof 1st hand of their contributions to the
community and commitment to our community principles likely from having
worked with them. This is different than voting in a way, since not all
charter members would need to research all candidates and a lack of vote
would have some meaning.

Course, I can think of ways to game all of these ideas.

Thanks,
Alex

On 06/17/2014 09:43 AM, Jo Cook wrote:
> Hi List,
> 
> Regarding the new proposal for voting in charter members- it's slightly off
> topic, but I doubt all existing Local Chapter representatives have been
> voted in by at least 3 charter members. That sets the bar quite high for
> new chapters as well- under the new regime if they have no existing chapter
> members it might not be possible for them to a) elect a chapter
> representative and b) get them elected as a charter member. Maybe I've
> misunderstood this part of the new rules?
> 
> Jo
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Jorge Sanz <jsanz at osgeo.org> wrote:
> 
>>
>> 2014-06-15 1:52 GMT+02:00 Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com>:
>>
>>>  Within 2 weeks we intend to start our annual process for selecting new
>>> OSGeo charter members.
>>>
>>> In previous years the Charter Member selection process has been a little
>>> contentious. We typically receive numerous nominations from high caliber
>>> members of our community, and insufficient positions to accept them all.
>>> This typically results in unnecessary disappointment and dissent.
>>>
>>> In response, the OSGeo board has agreed to trial tweaking the voting
>>> process. The aim is to automatically accept recognised OSGeo community
>>> leaders, while continuing with our existing process which attracts the many
>>> valuable community members who contribute in other ways. Community comments
>>> are encouraged, and will be considered over the next week.
>>>
>>
>>
>> No comments yet on this proposal on changing the Charter Members election
>> procedure, everything is OK?
>>
>>
>> --
>> Jorge Sanz
>> http://www.osgeo.org
>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Jorge_Sanz
>>