[Osmf-talk] Election procedure (was: Re: Elections 2018)

[Christoph Hormann]

On Saturday 15 December 2018, Peter Barth wrote:
>
> I personally liked two things most: First, the increased amount of
> time for reading and evaluating the manifestors and answers which
> helped to form a better opinion about the candidates and if they are
> inline with my views. The second aspect is the simulaneous
> publication of answers as you know that it's the candidates' views
> you read and not something they copy from other candidates. This gave
> a more genuine feedback of views.
>
> I also had the impression that the new election mode was well
> received by the German community, at least from those I had a chat
> with.
>
> What are your opinions?

My overall impression was positive for similar reasons as the ones you 
mentioned.

I was somewhat 'underwhelmed' by the amount of discussion taking place 
during the allocated discussion period.  It takes people a longer time 
to take notice of stuff like the answers to the questions and to study 
them until a broader discourse starts taking place.  Ultimately most of 
the discussion that happened took place after the elections had already 
started (which was obviously not intended).

I am also not sure if the condensation of the question Michael performed 
was really necessary.  The indirect questioning format itself seems to 
have lead to the original questions already being made with more 
consideration than in previous years.  I would probably have preferred 
it if the question preprocessing would have just grouped the questions, 
and written a summary but have kept the original questions for 
reference and leave it to the candidates in how much detail they want 
to answer (which they did anyway).

This matter ultimately prooved to be somewhat less problematic this year 
because we did not see the same amount of avoiding and sidestepping the 
questions we had last year (either due to the different format or due 
to different candidates).

I think for the future it might be worth considering if we can extend 
the candidate questioning to a truly multilingual format.  This could 
definitely help to encourage a much broader range of community members 
in taking interest in the OSMF.

What i am disappointed about is that the board made and published their 
decicion about the DWG appeal in the middle of the election process.  
Independent of the decision itself this was a really poor choice in 
timing and IMO very disrespectful of the candidates and the election 
process.  This is particularly remarkable because it was the board 
which introduced the changed pre-election procedure and then the same 
board decided to disrupt this procedure - not to mention the fact that 
the new board will have to deal with the whole aftermath of it - with 
the need to either defend and justify the decision of the previous 
board or to once more revise it.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/