Re: Reducing the board size

[Elijah Newren <newren gmail com>]

On 10/26/05, Anne Østergaard <anne oestergaard nu> wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-09-17 at 19:10 -0400, Luis Villa wrote:
> > On 9/15/05, Richard M. Stallman <rms gnu org> wrote:
> > > It sounds like increasing the size of the board by 3 people could
> > > achieve both of the goals that Dave was talking about: to get more
> > > things done, and to have more contested seats **(provided enough people
> > > decide to run so as to make a real contest).**
> > [Emphasis mine]
> >
> > This last is the true problem. I know that in each of the past two
> > years there have been at least two candidates each year (and more last
> > year) who placed their name in nomination only because they felt it
> > would be embarrassing if there were fewer nominees than seats on the
> > board, and/or because they felt the 'last' nominee would be a very
> > poor representative on the board. I certainly found myself in this
> > category last year.
>
> I do not understand this.
>
> Could you please clarify your statement?
>
> Last year there were 19 candidates and we only needed 11 for the board.
>
> Se the election results here:
> http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2004/preliminary-results.html
>
> I find it very healthy that we have so many candidates to choose
> amongst. Competition is good!

I find it very unhealthy that we only had 1 nomination 2 days before
the deadline (see
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2004-November/msg00000.html;
that one nomination was you by the way--thanks for jumping on things
early and leading the way), and re-reading the foundation-list from
the time it appears we only had 3 or so the day before nominations
were due.

It very much looked to me like people self-nominated based solely on
the fact that having an election for 11 positions with only 3 people
running would look really embarassing.  I was nearly one of those that
decided to run at the last minute based on this fact--but I really did
wait until the last minute (instead of the last hour as others
apparently did), and was happy to see the numbers fill up just a few
hours before the deadline.

> The same questions were asked to every candidate before the elections
> last year and I assume that GNOME Foundation members read the answers
> and placed there votes accordingly in favour of the candidates that they
> liked or knew best.

I remember reading through all those and seeing multiple years where
some candidates didn't bother answering *any* of those questions and
still got elected (I did do the work of carefully keeping track of who
answered the questions and who didn't and only voted for those who
answered--but apparently I was a minority).

> Reducing the size of the board without knowing what the consequences
> might be is a risky thing to do. I have not heard any convincing
> arguments so far in favour of reducing the number of board members.

I've heard lots of unconvincing arguments as well--on both sides. 
But, what is very convincing to me is the fact that it strongly
appears that we don't have 11 motivated people running for the board.

On that basis (and for that reason only), I'd recommend voting YES to
the reduction.


Just my $0.02,
Elijah