[Osmf-talk] Zusammenfassung der Antworten der Kandidaten und ihrer Wahlprogramme

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 12/8/19 05:12, Jóhannes Birgir Jensson wrote:
> A lot of the critique is interesting, but what Christoph is looking for seems to be a lot more than the question itself entails, so most people get a minus there for simply answering the question - somewhat unorthodox approach to evaluation.

I see your point. But I also think that answering a question is a chance
for a candidate to demonstrate that they are thoughtful. To pick your
example, if I ask candidates if they can come to a F2F meeting then a
simple "Yes sure" is "simply answering the question", but I'd actually
like a candidate to demonstrate that they are aware of the pros and cons
and why they think the pros outweigh the cons. Perhaps not in as many
words as you have given here (and frankly, a candidate dismissing the
carbon argument with a simplistic "you can pay money to plant trees"
like you did wouldn't get a full score on my eval sheet), but at least
show awareness.

> * Who made the board an elite? The members did when they voted.

Partly; they would also have to be born into a wealthy enough society or
a wealthy enough class in their society to be proficient enough in
English and exposed to OSM in the first place...

> * How about those that can't travel due to disability? 
> * How about those that can't travel due to phobia?
> * Where are the measureble benefits? 

>From my experience, face-to-face meetings do bring the benefits that you
describe ("usually intangible but you do notice the difference and the
functioning of the board should improve"), however I don't know how much
this is due to actually physically meeting in one place, and how much to
actually taking time off for a weekend to concentrate on OSMF matters. I
could imagine that good results could be had from a video-link supported
weekend meeting that does not happen in one place but where everyone
commits to being there the whole weekend. But I have never tried; there
are probably people here who have more experience with that kind of work.

Ultimately however the question of whether or not a board member would
like to attend a face-to-face meeting, and whether or not they have an
informed opinion on diversity, privilege, and carbon emission
surrounding such meetings, is not something that would greatly influence
*my* vote.

> [Christoph's] assertion that these are his views of the candidates, not the people, ring hollow when he does in fact infer that they can not be trusted to use their best judgement and are instead puppets of paymasters - that hurts on a personal level.

I want to pick this up because it touches on a fundamental problem we
have in discussions.

There are many nice people in OSM, some of whom I would call my friends,
but whom I would find unsuitable as a board member. Should they present
themselves for election, which I hope they won't, I will have to say: "I
like you as a person, but I will not vote for you because I think you
don't have what it takes." - This *will* hurt them on a personal level,
there's nothing I can do against that. They think they can do the job
well, I think they can't. No amount of goodwill is going to change that;
I could try and clad everything into nice words or not say anything at
all or even lie ("of course I'm going to vote for you") but that doesn't
really help.

No matter how factual you try to keep a discussion, it can always be
interpreted on a personal level. If I say something and you prove me
wrong, thereby demonstrating that I was stupid enough to not check my
facts before blurting something out, to a certain degree this "hurts on
a personal level" (whether it hurts more or less depends on how
sensitive I am, and how you express your rebuttal, of course).

It must be possible to say clearly, in the public discourse in OSM, that
you think someone is unsuitable for a job - be that an elected board
position, a membership in a working group, the maintainer of an
important piece of software, or anything else -, without this being
construed as a purposeful attempt to hurt someone on a personal level,
even if this can indeed be the effect. Otherwise we're reduced to a
bunch of claqueurs telling each other how awesome we all are, and being
unable to separate the good ideas from the bad.

We are relatively democratic, forming our opinions and making most of
our decisions in public, through discourse that is visible and
accessible to a large group of people. This is good. In order for this
to function, praise and criticism have to be part of the public
discourse; you can't have the praise in public and the criticism behind
closed doors without subverting the process.

We should aim to be respectful and polite and not hurt people
unnecessarily, but we must be allowed to call a spade a spade or we can
bury our transparency, openness, and democracy right now.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"