[Osmf-talk] "Legitimacy from an election process to direct attention" – Your response to the question regarding Working Groups

[Christoph Hormann]

On Thursday 12 December 2019, Michal Migurski wrote:
>
> The annual board election is OSMF’s only way to gather binding
> feedback from the community.

The board elections do not gather feedback from the OSM community, they 
gather opinions/preferences on candidates from *the OSMF members* who 
are - as it has been discussed plenty of times - not representative in 
their composition for the OSM community. (in short: geographically 
membership is massively biased towards wealthy countries and also 
massively biased towards native English speaking countries - biases in 
other aspects probably exist as well but are harder to measure).

I would be very careful in trying to derive legitimacy of the OSMF board 
in speaking for the OSM community from the democratic process within 
the OSMF only but disconnected from the world outside the OSMF.  The 
OSMF (and its board) is only legitimately speaking for and acting in 
the name of the OSM community if and when it represents its values 
(which is still foremost the collection of local, verifiable geographic 
knowledge through global egalitarian cooperation of individuals) and 
its active members (which are still mostly local craft mappers, most of 
which don't speak English as their native language).

This is at least partly why many people in this and previous elections 
put so much emphasis on how much practical experience and references 
candidates have with the basic everyday acticities in the OSM community 
and how close they are to the pulse of the mappers world wide so to 
speak.  Because that is quite essential to ensure the OSMF stays true 
to its purpose of supporting the OSM project and community.

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