[Osmf-talk] AGM and board elections

[Simon Poole]

Am 20.09.2014 20:43, schrieb Randy Meech:
....
> 
> A lot could be done to promote the very existence of the OSMF to
> actual OSM users, and to encourage them to join, vote, etc. When you
> look at the shockingly low number of votes required to get elected
> (merely 57 votes elected Oliver in 2013!
> https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2013/09/09/election-results/), it
> really gives you pause. The current situation is not only not diverse,
> but also amazingly unstable.

One of the reasons we made it easier to join the OSMF last year goes
back to discussions we had in 2012 during which the board discussed the
issue if we even wanted to have more members (which before that was at
least not clear).

....
> There should be more OSM users voting, and more OSM users running.
> What if the number of OSMF members/voters equaled the number of
> registered users (~1.7mm
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats#Registered_users) or even
> highly active users (~1% of 1.7mm would be 17,000!
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats#Highly_active_users)? That
> seems not only more democratic, but also much safer.
....


True, however looking at the existing national organisations and the WMF
the percentage of "organised" members tends to be very low and at least
in some countries the organisations are not unknown to new mappers.
Formal membership in an organisation is simply slightly at odds with the
basic premise of OSM.

As said above at least from a pure legal pov some of the hurdles are now
gone. We don't have a good solution wrt the membership fees which at
least for some regions are a big hurdle, but I'm a tiny bit optimistic
that we may have something this or next year (it is again one of those
issues that have been on the table since 2007).

....
> Increasing the number of members/voters by promoting the OSMF to the
> current user base would likely make the board look very different,
> more representative, and in all likelihood much more diverse.
....


If we take it as a given that increasing membership is a good idea, the
question is what should the board or more specific: I, do about it? This
might seem like a rhetoric question, but isn't.

Simon

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