[Osmf-talk] OSMF Articles of Association - Discussion on Revision for 2013 AGM

Henk Hoff henk.hoff at osmfoundation.org
Wed Mar 6 23:10:43 UTC 2013


In the last years abnormalities in the membership-signup have always been
reported.

Yes, any mechanism you can come up with is not fool proof. We've also
discussed that in the AoA review group. The problem is that during the time
when members can vote for board members, any decision that is made either
by accepting a spike in the signup of members or refusing membership to
people is alway highly controversial.
This mechanism is a way to avoid these controversial decisions.
If there would be a spike in sign-up around now, we can have it handled by
the "normal" procedure that the Board can refuse membership. That decision
would then not be burdened by an ongoing election.

On the issue of the Board potentially hiding things. There is now a monthly
updated membership statistics page with all the relevant numbers. Any spike
in sign-up can be noticed by everyone.

Cheers,
Henk



2013/3/6 Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>

> Hi,
>
>
> On 06.03.2013 23:33, Henk Hoff wrote:
>
>> First question is: do we want to have a mechanism that prevents a
>> possible "buying votes" or "hijacking elections".
>>
>
> I think yes, but "a mechanism" could be very broad.
>
> If, for example, the list of members (at least with name and email) was
> available to all members, then that would IMHO already be a sufficient
> deterrent, because if I signed up 50 of my employees 31 days before the
> election then *someone* will notice the spike, or recognize the names, or
> whatever, and while I would not technically be hindered from ordering my 50
> employees to vote for me, the risk of public outrage would be too big. Even
> with a secret ballot, a statistical analysis which everyone could perform
> would point in the direction of me having bought the vote.
>
> If, on the other hand, nobody except the OSMF board ever gets to know who
> the members are, then everyone has to simply trust the board, and if such a
> mass-signup suddenly happened then board would be in the difficult position
> of having to decide whether to go public with it or remain silent.
>
> I am in favour of the list of members (name, email, signup date) being
> available to at least all other members, and I think that control mechanism
> would be sufficient.
>
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
>
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