Fedora-Council/tickets ticket #470: Two proposals regarding elected Fedora Council reps

[t2dbot (Tickets to Discussion Bridge)]

@mattdm filed Fedora-Council/tickets ticket #470. Discuss here and record votes and decisions in the ticket.

Ticket text:

@@mattdm

1. Currently, we elect one Council representative every six months, for a twelve-month term. I think the idea was to provide continuity. However:
   • In practice, this stagger is more confusing than useful. We have a lot of longer-term Council positions.
   • It doubles the election overhead. Likewise, it’s actually easier to bring on two new people at once.
   • I have an unsupported intuition that we’d get more interest and attention when it’s not just one seat available.
   • A new person elected in November makes it hard to plan for our annual in-person meeting in January or early February.

Therefore, I propose that we move to having both elected reps aligned with the April/May release – still a 1-year term, but both at the same time. We could either

A. Make the presently-to-be-elected term a short one, ending in 6 months.
B. Go the other way, and make it 18 months.
C. Extend the current term by six months, skipping the current election.

My suggestion would be C, presuming the current representative (@bookwar) is up for it.

2. While we’re at a it, what do you all think about expanding the number of elected reps from two to three? With the new Executive Sponsor duty, and with everything we’ve got planned, I feel like more is merrier.

[jflory7 (Justin Wheeler)]

@@mattdm

Therefore, I propose that we move to having both elected reps aligned with the April/May release – still a 1-year term, but both at the same time.

+1

The continuity and easier annual planning make sense. I support a single election round for the Fedora Council.

@@mattdm

A. Make the presently-to-be-elected term a short one, ending in 6 months.
B. Go the other way, and make it 18 months.
C. Extend the current term by six months, skipping the current election.

I am -1 to Option B. 18 months is a long time and there is a whole lot of $LIFE that can happen in that time.

I am +0 to either option A or C.

@@mattdm

While we’re at a it, what do you all think about expanding the number of elected reps from two to three? With the new Executive Sponsor duty, and with everything we’ve got planned, I feel like more is merrier.

-1

We need to do more to ensure our existing elected reps are better supported and empowered to do good work in the Council. Our past few elections were low turnout in candidates who ran. I prefer that we iterate and build on what we have first to make it successful, before adding more people onto it.

Also worth noting, I am monitoring at least two emerging Community Initiatives that would come to the Council for review in a month or two. This also means two additional Council seats added from the Community Initiatives themselves.

[bcotton (Ben Cotton)]

@@mattdm

Therefore, I propose that we move to having both elected reps aligned with the April/May release – still a 1-year term, but both at the same time. We could either

A. Make the presently-to-be-elected term a short one, ending in 6 months.
B. Go the other way, and make it 18 months.
C. Extend the current term by six months, skipping the current election.

Option A is the best approach. Asking someone to commit to a volunteer position for 18 months is a lot and Option C is bad optically.

The difficulty here is that this needs to go through the Policy Change Policy, which means the election process should be well underway by the time this gets comment and final votes.

@@mattdm

While we’re at a it, what do you all think about expanding the number of elected reps from two to three? With the new Executive Sponsor duty, and with everything we’ve got planned, I feel like more is merrier.

As a procedural matter, this should be a separate ticket. On the substance, I’m opposed. Historically, we’ve had a lot of trouble with sustaining Council member engagement, so I don’t see a benefit to adding a third seat. It adds a cost, though, because it means paying for more travel and hotel for in-person Council meetings. It seems like a poor use of our project resources.

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

Adding another seat was kind of an afterthought, and I’m persuaded it’s generally a bad idea. However, putting the procedural-separate matters together into one gives me an idea for another option:

D. Run this election as normal, but elect two more candidates in April/May. There would be three elected positions from May until the end of term at the F41 election cycle.

This would let us make the change without postponing for another year and half, and without disrupting the current election or short-circuiting the Policy Change Policy.

And because of the timing, it would avoid increasing the Council F2F cost. It might mean another person for Flock, but I think anyone likely to be elected would also probably be eligible to ask for travel funds for that anyway.

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

Coming back to this, with less urgency since we’re past the immediate election… but I’d like this to be in place well ahead of the next one.

Proposal: In April/May, elect two representatives. There will be three elected positions from May for about half a year, until the end-of-term at the F41 election cycle (at which point Akashdeep’s normal term ends). After that, we’ll continue with two elected representatives, with both terms ending and beginning in April/May every year.

[jflory7 (Justin Wheeler)]

I am curious, why not just keep it to one seat with a 6-month term in April/May? Why should it be two seats? I didn’t follow that.

My concern is that our past few elections have been single candidate elections. I’m not sure adding more seats will get us the results we want. I could be convinced otherwise though.