Re: [March 2010 Council Election] Maemo Community Council election results
 

Cheers to the "old-timers" and welcome to the new members... Congrats and good luck to all in steering the Council and the community through the rough times ahead :-)

Re: [March 2010 Council Election] Maemo Community Council election results
 

The operative word is "voters" - people who came in & did enough stuff to get 10 karma between the N900 release (end of October) and the cut-off date (31/12/09). If you look at the increase in the number of maemo.org accounts, it's considerably more than that - and I expect that we will have a much bigger electorate again next election.

Cheers,
Dave.

Re: [March 2010 Council Election] Maemo Community Council election results
 

Thanks to all people who took part in the election, both as voters and candidates.

My own take on the number of voters issue is twofold. First, a lot of people who came into contact with Maemo through the N900 has little to no information about the whole 'community thing', whatever the reason (not enough exposure, disinterest, etc). Community will always be a pyramid and it's not at all easy to grow the top section of it. An additional difficulty is the various media people use on maemo.org (some might just ignore mails as they are 'forum natives').

Second, we don't expire karma, so we might have a lot of voters in there who have moved on, but still have enough karma to appear on the lists. It would be nice (but probably quite difficult esp regarding karma formula changes) to reatroactively see just how many of the voting body is really active (say, gained at least 1 karma in the last year).

Last, but not least, those who dipped their toes in maemo.org with the N900 are quite fresh (the 3 month cutoff and the mainstream December release left a small window) so there is a good chance that the majority of voters were actually Maemo veterans.

In any case, I agree with qole that Council activity needs a higher profile if it wants to activate more people, and also with Texrat that the current forum organization combined with the raw amount of messages does not help 'community matter' visibility.

Re: [March 2010 Council Election] Maemo Community Council election results
 

You're blaming the electees for the apathy. That's a logical fallacy.

In addition, low voter turnout does not ipso facto discredit the possibility of true representation, which in this case is determined more by diversity of the elected body and goals of each.

The council can in no way whatsoever be considered anything remotely resembling a "king's council". I respectfully request a little more intellectual honesty.

Re: [March 2010 Council Election] Maemo Community Council election results
 

The blog is on maemo.org.

Re: [March 2010 Council Election] Maemo Community Council election results
 

I personally don't think the 3-month cutoff had such an influence in the amount of votes. We got 1 (one) email about someone who was interested in voting and his garage.maemo.org account was not 3 months old (but his tmo one was).

I'm pretty sure that we would have gotten quite an extra bunch of emails like that one if a majority of current tmo users would have wanted to vote.

Which is a sad thing, I guess.

Re: [March 2010 Council Election] Maemo Community Council election results
 

I feel tmo is a bit spefic in the sense that of all maemo.org media, it had arguably the least visible exposure of council elections. The average tmo user will easily miss the stickies in some odd forum, and since he/she didn't get a personal email, there are high(er) chances of missing it altogether. I would even consider that everybody who kas karma should get a notification (regardless of voting rights), so when the time comes, it would be no surprise that there is a council and that it can be asked about things, elected later on, etc.

Re: [March 2010 Council Election] Maemo Community Council election results
 

Hmm I nearly e-mailed but thought that a bit cheeky as my tmo account is only a month old :)

I think that would be a good idea... it would cut out a lots of the repetitive threads that annoy those that have been here for while.. and anonymous troll threads too! It was used to good effect on a bike forum I was on a while ago... you couldn't start a new thread until you had got a certain number of thanks by posting in other threads I think...

Re: [March 2010 Council Election] Maemo Community Council election results
 

I like that. Maybe we should start having a announcement mailing list? It should be used sparingly, and every new SSO user should be subscribed to it by default. What do you think?

(Apart from "yet another email address to add to my spam filter..." ;) ).

Re: [March 2010 Council Election] Maemo Community Council election results
 

Completely agreed. I brought up such a suggestion a while back and it didn't go over well though. :(

We have this "5 posts before you can PM requirement" that causes confusion. Rather than that, have a "New Member" sandbox section (primarily Community) that introduces new members to the community and includes a very clear sticky thread detailing the process of getting out.

I've been to some forums where new members could not even create new threads until certain achievements had been met, and I'm good with that too. It could be based on number of replies, number of Thanks, number of thread reads, Searches, whatever.

People opposed to such hurdles may think of this as simply a forum, but it isn't. It really is a community, and in the physical world communities only welcome transients for a short time. Residents commit to staying. I think we need some equivalent.