[March 2010 Council Election] Maemo Community Council election results
 

Hi all,

As Crashanddie has already said, the Q1 2010 Maemo Community Council election is closed, and the results are in. The results are now online:

http://maemo.org/vote/results.php?election_id=9


Congratulations to Randall Arnold, Andrew Flegg, Attila Csipa, Javier S. Pedro, and Ryan Abel on their election, and my commiserations to the candidates who were not elected, without whom there would not have been an election.

I encourage any of you so inclined to download the ballots file and reproduce the results, as Crashanddie did this morning, and post your analyses of voting patterns and other punditry here or on the community mailing list:

http://maemo.org/vote/blt.php?election_id=9

This election had the highest number of votes since we have had a karma condition on voting.

For information, there were 399 votes out of an electorate of 3485, giving a turnout of 11.45%, compared to the last election, where there were 303 votes out of an electorate of 2339, or a turnout of 12.95%.

The decreased turnout percentage can be explained by the new karma formula and the N900 release, which have resulted in a larger electorate.

As I mentioned on IRC, there have been at least 2 cases of elections which might have had a different result if a different counting method were chosen in the recent past - the GNOME board of directors result was quite controversial because of this, for example.

Fractional transfer STV has a few nice benefits: the result is reproducible, and can be run manually. You get to vote for candidates in order of preference, so you can vote for your actual favourite candidate instead of trying to strategically vote for the candidate who might need your votes to get elected. If your favourite candidate is eliminated, the other guy will get your vote anyway in the end.

We had a very very long debate on voting methods and counting methods a while back, and even held a referendum on the issue because people felt so strongly about it.

STV has a huge impact. What has a small impact (but often a decisive one) is the counting method that's used to count the STV votes. If you use Borda you can get different results to fractional transfer or random transfer.

In today's election, first past the post would have given the same result, since transfers went pretty evenly to Attila, JaviSPedro and andy80, but in last GNOME election: http://foundation.gnome.org/vote/res...election_id=13 Lucas Rocha went from 6th place to 3rd place with transfers, and Diego Escalante Urrelo took the last seat when starting in 8th place, inching ahead of Jorge Castro, who was 5th in 1st preference votes.

Dave.

Re: [March 2010 Council Election] Voting Now Open!
 

Thanks all for voting!

Yup, that^ about sums it up. :p

***

The concession prize I received for my involvement in the process of this terms community council election is that the candidate I did nominate, became one of the newer faces on the council. :)

Congratulations to Randall Arnold, Andrew Flegg, Attila Csipa, Javier S. Pedro, and Ryan Abel on their election to this, the 4th Maemo Community Council.

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

I'l echo what Dave (dneary) said. This was the most interesting run I can recall, and I believe the needs going forward will reflect that...

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

Congratulations to all who were elected, commisserations do those who weren't. Although not eligible to vote, as I haven't been around long enough, I've watched this process with interest and have learned a lot from it and the candidiates. Hopefully I'll be around and eligible to vote in the next set.

Looking forward to the future of the maemo community :).

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

Congratulations to those that won, and to those that didn't win: don't get discouraged! Please stick around, keep being helpful and high profile, and try again next term.

As for the voter turnout, I am a bit surprised and disappointed. With more than 1100 new eligible voters, we got less than a hundred more votes?

I suspect the low profile of the last council contributed to the low turnout. I'm sure quite a few new voters shrugged and said, "Why should I care? What does the Council do, anyway?"

We've got a strong, vocal, and engaged council this term. I'm sure you'll be a lot more high-profile and visible.

You're going to need to be. The ride from here to MeeGo sounds like it is going to be a wild one.

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

Suggestions from anyone on how to get a higher turnout in future is appreciated: show the council to be more relevant over the 6 month term? increased advertising? follow-up mailshots to remind people to vote?

Hopefully we'll live up to expectations!

Yeehah!

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

With the risk of overgeneralizing, the N900 brought in 1100 or so voters. (Some may have joined because of other devices, but some old-time users may have left because the forums shifted focus to the N900 and Maemo 5.)

Wow, that's pretty small. Does Nokia release the N900 sales figures?

I wonder if Nokia can be convinced to advertise TMO, Council, etc. in some printed pamphlet that's distributed together with the hardware. (All modulo transition to Meego, of course.)

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

Congrats for the new council. I really think this one has the potential to be the best one yet.

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

Small voter turnout, but then again, the community *is* small. And by that I am referring to GeneralAntilles' comments from about a week ago or so. Many users, but few community members.

The coverage I did of the election got a few hundred views, whereas the interviews I did of Peter gathered a few thousand each. Numbers tell, even from some simple blog stats.

EDIT - congrats to the new Council!

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

How many token were sent ?

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

Indeed. I blog about the USB connectors falling out, and the views are astronomical, and number of comments respectable. Blog about community and council activity-- very few views and comments. I just didn't let it discourage me from running, but it is discouraging to me in general. : /

Given the steadily decreasing activity here in Community, I'm surprised the percentage drop wasn't larger (1.5% is statistically insignificant). I'm sure there's a correlation though.

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

Congratulations to the new council! I hope some of the unsucessful candidates can be persuaded to stand another time: we really did have a very strong field to select from.

As for greater voter engagment, I have a few thoughts but I believe I'll let them percolate for a little while before coming out with comments and suggestions. (Not least because both my brain and fingers are exhausted tonight!)

I look forward to what this new council can do for Maemo - and on into Meego.

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

I'll repeat here what I wrote this morning to cap off my nomination thread in the Community mailing list...


First idea! Pehaps we should revisit the decision to use the top bar of the forum page to direct forum users to non forum maemo.org sites. It was well intentioned but without SSO, we were effectively directing active forum contributors off the site. Perhaps the "community WiKi" should also be re-replicated on the forum "site" in order for that not to happen until the forum user is ready to commit.

In the end, apparently not as many forum members as was originally hoped for, got involved with maemo.org "the site". At the same time forum navigation links that normally occupy this top bar were reduced to a drop down menu making the forums that much harder to use.

Before this devolves, I said perhaps and I'm not "making of it what I will" my intentions I hope are the same as everyone else here.

At the same time I also realize that this is not the thread for this. However, where is the right thread for this? I got involved in the election process when I finally saw dneary's "nominations" thread 10 days after he opened it.

The thing is, in those ten days I was on the forum every day sometimes for hours. I only became aware of the thread when someone happened to post while I was on and the thread showed in the "Active Topics" sidebar. When I did follow the link I was alarmed to find that after 10 days only 2 people were nominated.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a lot of what is posted here doesn't get seen unless it happens to be an "Active Topic" at the time any particular forum member is visiting. Part of the reason for that may be the lack of visible tools available for forum navigation. If a forum member goes to the top bar and clicks "community", perhaps he/she expects to be taken to the community sub forum. The same thinking might apply to the "news" top bar link and perhaps they expect to see forum announcements or other forum news.

If on the other hand this link as well as 5 of the 6 top bar navigation links takes them to a "site" that requires a new log-in or to register, perhaps they won't be a clickin' up there as often as we would like.

I know "Google" searches on other subjects have conditioned me to think "bogus" and move on if a results link I click on requires registration, or to "log-on in order to view the requested information". I know that all maemo.org information is available to all viewers regardless of registration, but perhaps this conditioning I speak of applies to other members, especially new ones none the less.

Up until now the focus has been on SSO... Perhaps it should be more on bringing the information back into the forum and making the forum more navigable instead. Most of the information may already be here, just finding it is the bear.

I know I should "Feel Free" to start my own thread on this subject however, if it is only going to me posting in response to me, and if it might take 10 days for someone else to find it, I kind of loose some motivation. :)

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

I believe a large part of the problem you cite, YoDude, stems from forum structure. Community should be the very first section (General next to last under Talk IMO), and new user introduction threads should all be located here, NOT under General. That funnels new users into a community-focused area, which should be the default "home" for forum-users.

That's an incredibly easy fix that for whatever reasons has never happened. The next steps become increasingly difficult (as some, like adding additional context to Active Topics, involve coding) but I believe structure is where to start.

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

I hope in a periodic, monthly?, Council's newsletter (or video news? :) to host on maemo.org in a visible position - not a forum thread or wiki page. Or why not a Council's blog?

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

"Visible" is relative though. Given that, every important message like a newsletter instance should be hosted one place, replicated to all.

EDIT: sorry for continuing the off-topic talk. The posts should be moved to "Ask the Council".

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

Congratulations for everybody but specially to Attila and Javier for bringing fresh brain to the Council. Renewal is a key factor in democracy.

A recommendation for the new Team: take your time agreeing on your prioritized agenda for the next six months, go for it and get the rest of us involved.

About participation: yes, bigger numbers and percentages are always nicer in democracy but what really counts is the final result. we had critical mass for 10 candidates and a promising elected team. the Maemo community can congratulate itself!

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

Looks like a good group of winners, though the one I favored most (and voted for) didn't win. But I don't see how by any stretch of the imagination a group of people that slightly more than ten percent of the people voted for can be considered "representative" by any definition, and to call the organization a "democracy" also seems far-fetched. It is more like a king's council.

Still, good luck.

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

My issue with the 'General' forum is that is has almost completely been taken over with n900 newbies asking very basic questions. I have to bite my fingers not to run through screaming "Search!" Moving it away from being the first forum at the top of the page might help. Or it might simply move all the n00bs into the Community forum.

Personally, I never rely on the 'active topics' bar until I've actually checked each forum that interests me. I think 'Active Topics' is only useful for the people who live here. The risk of missing something important is too high.

I said earlier I have some suggestions for increasing interest in the council: I'll try to get something posted, though probably not till tomorrow as it's a busy time of year. ;)

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

Congratulations go to all elected members.

Looking at your discussion, I can see groups building up in this community.
1) The "original" (<5) maemo members
2) The "new" (N900) maemo members

In both these groups there are
a) experienced community users
b) hardware/software aware users (IT professionals) and
c) normal users otherwise known as "the rest of the world" (more so in the (2) group)

The challange now is to cater to all of theses groups without one group overrunning the other or even chasing valuable members away.
Without making it a closed community, with a steep "sign-up" curve.

Maybe a way would be where new members can only post in only certain topics/categories until reaching a minimal karma?

PS. For me it looks, like a shouting match on Active Topics. and maybe it should be removed?

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.

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

In hindsight the easiest filter would have been a Phone specific sub-forum. Also in keeping with your theme on using the "Community" forum as a place where new forum members would be funneled: This would be the place to sticky a "New Members Please Read" thread.

I know we don't apparently like the word "Rules" around here but most every other forum has them and the first one is usually "All new members are expected to read the dang things"

We can call them posting guidelines or whatever, but something should be there because that is what most new members will look for. Most new forum members are new to this forum, not new to forums in general. Perhaps we shouldn't try to reinvent the wheel here but use whatever momentum a new member brings with him/her to an advantage.

As I recall back in the days of the first council's (pre forum) someone wrote a very good intro on the opening page of the maemo.org site that explained the levels of community involvement that were available to new members. Perhaps something along these lines should also be included to explain the whole community. I know the current intro makes no mention of talk.maemo.org but does link to maemo.nokia.com :confused:

And finally perhaps the definitions of Maemo "community" and "developer" need to be expanded to better distinguish these terms from the more traditional, Forum Nokia like definitions...

When maemo.org first acquired itT I saw it as an expansion of the community to include "engaged users" and other evangalista's. I also saw it as reaching out to those users with the message that you too are a developer if you take the OS that was presented to you, and make it work for you, in your world. I saw the forums as a place for these users to share these personal development experiences and perhaps even come to the same conclusion; that using Maemo made them a developer... and it was easy!

Windows7's recent "I'm a PC" ad campaign with the tag line "That was my idea" effectively taps into this dynamic. We should too.

With MeeGo looming some may say it's to late or what would be the point:

To that I say , meh. The point is the dang Maemo community. If it doesn't pull all these elements together than what was the point of the last 4 or 5 years? If we don't pull all these elements together than what would be the point of a MeeGo community even bothering to listen to, or positively reacting to this communities collective voice? In this case it is all or nothing I believe. And if that is the case, then you 5 fellows have a lot of work ahead of you. :eek:

In EIPI 's interview I talked of committees as one way to help manage council tasks... These committees do not have to be manned exclusively by council members, only chaired by a member.

I believe that if these council chairs reached out and tapped on the shoulder of most forum members and asked via private message (publicly is not as effective :) ), many would welcome the idea of sitting on a council sub committee and contributing to the task at hand.

This would also promote the use of the mailing lists and foster greater individual community involvement.

... just sayin' :)

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

I am not trying to troll or anything, but maybe the decision people made if to vote or not was influenced by how the Council was treated in the MeeGo announcement (they weren't told anything about it) and how it reflects its real importance or influence.

No one wants to vote for "decorative" authorities.

I voted still, as an act of faith.

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

First off, congratulations to those elected, and to all the candidates: congratulations for making it a good election.

I think this is a good idea and would be in favor of people who gain no karma in the past year being expunged from the voter list.

There are a lot of good ideas in this thread. Maybe the new council should put them together in a list and make them some of the first orders of business?

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

Hi,

I got 3 or 4 emails from people with new accounts who wanted to vote. I told them they could not, and that was the end of it.

In the case of jacktanner, he had some bugzilla activity, so I spelt a grey area and sent him to the council.

In the case of a dozen others, their tmo accounts were old enough but their maemo.org accounts were not, and so I applied the instructions of the council and automatically issued a ballot.

At the cut-off point, there were about 20 people with sufficient karma who did not meet the date requirements (from memory - I could go back and give you an explicit count if you wanted). 10 of those had linked talk accounts which were not old enough, and the others had no other linked accounts.

Cheers,
Dave.

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

https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-announce

Dave.

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

I see the council has tough tasks ahead of it.
I'll be holding thumbs and hoping that It'll just increase the "maemo experiance".

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

A basic principle of democracy is that voters know what they are voting. If the electorate is far bigger than the people that actually know what is the Council, then there are two solutions, none of them being a more noisy campaign or a more explanatory ballot sent:

- Have a constant communication and promotion of the Council that doesn't escape to the attention of active community contributors.

and / or

- Raise the bar to get voting rights, playing with karma increase, older registration, old karma deprecation...

In absolute terms 400 voters for 5 elected posts reflects a good weight of representation! Nobody can deny that these 5 people now represent 400 Maemo contributors. Well, that is useful for what is the (otherwise humble) purpose of the Council:

It is now the responsibility of this 400 voters to make sure that the elected Council executes the mission as expected. Anybody else can just jump and help on this goal again. I haven't seen a Council member ever saying 'no, we won't pay attention to you because you did not participate in the election or you don't have enough karma, or even a maemo.org account.

It is relatively pointless to compare elections in free software projects, but as a reference: the Debian project leader was elected with 406 votes and the GNOME Foundation board was decided with 213 votes. The elections for the Fedora Board have more voters (can't find the total amount) and... anybody knows where to find the Ubuntu council election stats?

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

True, and the rest who didn't bother to vote can't complain :-)

I think percentages are more interesting, those results were out of electorate bodies of 1013 (40%) and 369 (57%) respectively.

This post indicates 18252 which would make 225 ballots a mere 1.2% (ie much worse than maemo.org). The one before that was a bit better with 8163 eligible voters / 297 valid ballots (3.6%).

Couldn't find that either, though this may indicate the number of eligible voters.

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

Congratulations to the new council. These next several months will be very challenging. I hope the council continues to welcome and represent the "average user". I wonder whether many of these "average users" (such as myself) who use this forum had not yet obtained sufficient karma to be eligible voters. A very quick analysis of the council candidate declarations indicates that two candidates who specifically indicated their concern for the "average user" did not win.

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

Getting those percentages in maemo.org would be quite trivial: raise the bar to an equivalent of becoming a Debian maintainer or a GNOME Foundation member and you will be there. But that would have other problems too.

This is why Perhaps is not much worth to be concerned about percentages. If the Council does great useful work with a clear benefit for the community then the response will grow. Easy. ;)