[Osmf-talk] Change deadlines and add questionnaire for OSMF board elections

[Andy Allan]

On Tue, 9 Oct 2018 at 09:14, Michael Reichert <osm-ml at michreichert.de> wrote:

> This schedule forces many discussions among the members on the OSMF-Talk
> mailing list to happen in a short time and sets the candidates under
> pressure to answer many questions within the short time. That's why I
> propose following changed schedule:
>
> 4 weeks before AGM: deadline for members to put themselves forward
> 1 week before AGM: voting starts
> start of AGM: end of voting
>
> I hope that this spreads 400 emails over three to four weeks than one
> single week.

This sounds like a good idea to me. I agree that in recent years the
election process has ended up a bit too frantic, so giving more time
to the discussion phase is reasonable.

> (2) Questionnaire
>
> I think that moving the deadline for candidates to put themselves
> forward by two weeks gives the candidates more time to answer questions.
> (I hope that interesting questions are asked early)
>
> From my point of view, replacing the written solution by oral or a
> proprietary one, is not the right way to do. Any oral comes with
> accessibility issues for non-native English speakers and people with
> impaired hearing or a low-bandwidth internet connection. A platform like
> Reddit requires members to agree to its terms of service. The platform
> should be hosted by the foundation and members should not be forced to
> agree to any terms beyond those to access osm.org.

My main dislike of the questions-on-the-wiki approach is that it can
easily be dominated by question-askers who have some kind of axe to
grind. But the advantage is that it's an opportunity for members to
ask direct questions with a reasonable chance of an answer from all
candidates.

My preferred system would be something like a website where questions
can be posed, with each member being able to pose as many questions as
they like. The questions can be voted on by the members, and each
member is given 10 votes to spread between all the questions based on
which questions they like best. Then the top 10 most voted on
questions would be put to the candidates for their response. A bit
like various product sites that I've seen, that allow you to vote on
feature requests. Perhaps someone on this list knows of a similar
solution that would avoid us developing it from scratch?

Thank you Michael for starting this discussion well in advance of the election!

Thanks,
Andy