[HOT] Congratulations to our new voting members!

[Harry Wood]

I think we're agreed that we should try to make HOT membership mean more. But we will have to recognise that this will be a gradual transition. At the moment it doesn't mean much.

I suggest in the near future we need to always offer voting with three options. "yes" or "no" or "abstain".  This lets us reflect the fact that a lot of members are either not bothering to vote, or they don't feel strongly either way (an understandable viewpoint, for the moment at least)

In our membership vote just now, we've successfully approved a small number of new HOT members, the cream of the crop you might say. But I can tell you that Maning Sambale and Emir Hartato both missed out by just one tick!  This is a matter of some regret and frustration which my fellow board members have expressed too. I'm pretty sure this happened not because people were opposed to these and other people being members, but because people unwittingly voted against them either by not voting at all, or by only ticking the names of people they know well (the approach I tried to recommend against in my "how to vote" email) 

Imagine if we had voted yes/no/abstain for each nominee, with the default being abstain, and we would count the 2/3rds threshold as applying to the 2/3rds of the total non-abstaining votes for that nominee ...then the result would have been quite different, and I think more fair and reflective of what members are actually thinking.


But another confusing thing about the vote was that the key issue under discussion was not related to individual nominations, but a more broad question of how many new HOT members we wanted to approve. Perhaps we should decide upon (somehow) what that number should be pegged at, forget about the 2/3rds thing, and simply say: Which x nominees gained the most votes?

Any change to these voting practices would be something of a constitutional change, requiring membership agreement to enact it. Which is annoying because...

This is all getting a bit circular isn't it? We have to remember that membership doesn't (yet) mean much. Meta discussions and votes about voting are probably not the best way to change that. Happily there are a couple of other issues coming up, which the membership could/will and vote upon. Board elections for starters.

Harry


----- Original Message -----
From: Schuyler Erle <schuyler at nocat.net>
To: hot <hot at openstreetmap.org>
Cc: 
Sent: Wednesday, 2 January 2013, 20:57
Subject: Re: [HOT] Congratulations to our new voting members!

The duties of voting members merely include electing the Board of Directors, altering the voting membership, and for approving changes to the bylaws themselves. Voting membership holds no other responsibilities, and no other distinction, beyond this.


Without you, there would be no "Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team" worthy of the name. I think I can speak for the Board certainly, and perhaps everyone else, when I say that, voting member or otherwise, we appreciate all of the work that you selflessly put in on behalf of the team to help us achieve our goals and live up to our ideals of enabling humanitarian efforts through our maps and our software.

That said, I would like to note that many of our voting members barely fail to live up to the responsibilities that are expected of them by virtue of having been elected to such duties by their peers. I won't name names, but the fact is that getting some of you to vote in elections, and even getting you to fill out a simple form indicating your continued interest in the organization, feels like pulling teeth. I feel that voting membership in HOT begin the implicit responsibility of setting a positive example of activism, volunteerism, and engagement for the rest of the team. I will tell you honestly that I think some of you are terrible at this. If you think I am trying to shame you into being more involved, you are absolutely correct.

I will also admit that I am being pretty hypocritical in leveling this criticism at my friends and compatriots. But I think it has to be said.

What is the reward for all this work for which we are not paid and rarely thanked? It is simply the ability to go to sleep at night knowing that you have rendered a service to your fellow human beings, that you have made some contribution, however large, to improving the world for everyone. The maps that we make, and the work that we do to make them, have an impact on the world. They have saved lives, and helped communities in need. They will continue to do so, as long as we remain committed to the the idea that geographic information, freely made and freely shared, can transform our world for the better.

In this brief life that we share, I can think of no greater achievement than this to claim for ourselves, and I say that you claim it for yourself every time you exert yourself through the labors of our team. I hope that you will all take heart in this thought, and redouble your efforts in 2013, that we may see the world a year hence a more hospitable and more charitable place for everyone.

SDE