Re: [Fwd: Resignation from GNOME Foundation Membership Committee]

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

This is hardly an official board response, just my opinion. 

On Thu, Sep 19, 2002 at 07:20:54AM -0600 or thereabouts, John Fleck wrote:
> I would suggest that the people who are flaming him should bloody well
> have volunteered themselves to serve on the membership committee. They
> didn't, he did, and he was trying to do the job we gave him - to apply
> the criteria, vague and muddy though they may be.
> 
> The flamers seem to be suggesting that Mike and the committee should be
> willing to accept someone's application based on name recognition.
> That's a clique, not a serious foundation with membership based on an 
> attempt to gauge contribution and apply a set of criteria.

I agree whole-heartedly. Name-recognition is not the way to 
do this. Name-calling is even less necessary. 

As for the decisions, some people who chose to comment last night
on IRC (a conversation in which I should note Martin was in no
way involved) were apparently not even aware of the gnome-foundation 
module in CVS, which has seen steady work all through the year
as well as this recent burst of activity. Nor had they seen the 
guidelines which have an appeal procedure already: 
http://foundation.gnome.org/membership-policy.html 

The call for people to do the gruntwork went out quite some time ago:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2002-August/msg00002.html
Anyone could have responded. 

A reminder to update your email address went out around then too:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2002-August/msg00010.html
A lot of people should have responded.

(This is after it was (presumably) tidied quite substantially
during the elections last year; elections at which we didn't
even get 60% turnout. 251 out of 420 is 59%. That's pretty shabby.)
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2001-November/msg00037.html

I am very very sorry to see Mike step down. I hope he reconsiders,
but whether or not he does, I am personally very grateful for the 
work he and the committee members both past and present have put 
into it over the last months. Thank you, all. Running an election 
is no easy task and I thought we were lucky to have someone 
who'd done it in the real world helping. 

The board has left it to the election committee to apply the 
guidelines. If they were rubbish guidelines, that's hardly
the election committee's fault: they have been there for ages,
uncommented-on.

I don't think they are bad guidelines myself, but it didn't occur 
to me that some people would feel exempt from parts of the procedure. 
We have joke applications, "I am a garden gnome" and blank forms in 
that module. Look for yourself. It all seems to me the equivalent of 
receiving your annual "Are you still at this address?" note from the 
electoral registrar in Britain and opting to announce that you live 
on the moon, or are Tinky-Winky the Tellytubby; then being surprised 
when you don't receive your polling card and writing to the papers
instead of to the registrar. 

Telsa