2008/10/1 Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta(a)gmail.com>:
So what sort of things can we do? And when should we start doing
them?
As a start is there a general need to raise the awareness of the
election and voting process we are using?
Can we generate general interest material covering topics like:
Why vote? How do you qualify for voting? What's this range voting stuff?
Personally I'm sure we have to give a clear answer on "Why vote?"
question. I'm saying it because we are a big community and we need to
motivate people taking action. To do that I suggest to use widely read
means, like announce list and so on.
Community Q/A:
It's sort of a two part problem. One we just need to get people
out
there to ask questions. I think this comes down to communicating why
each election matters. Can we do that as a marketing campaign? Can we
"sell" the election process?
And second, we need a way to organize those questions and resulting
candidate answers so they are easily found. I've been talking to
people specifically about how to organize some sort of community to
candidate q/a. Nigel seems to have taken the bait and has a plan on
how to integrate community questions AND nominations into the voting
app for all elections.
The idea is great, but all the candidates have to accept this one.
Nominations:
This was talked about a lot in the post-Board election fab discussion,
and it was generally agreed that encouraging people to nominate others
would help increase the candidate pool, because some people are not
inclined to self-nominate. How do we go about encouraging people to
nominate other people? I don't know exactly beyond blogging about it
again.
Yes, it could help having more people in the election.
Personally I propose to give the time (a week?) to the people who want
to invite other ones to join the electoral process, maybe we could do
this trough our lists/blogs/etc. Then each person, after seeing
people backing him, will take the responsibility to add himself in the
Wiki with all the other candidates. I think it's the most logical
process we could have.
IRC Debate:
Another idea floating around is organizing a candidate debate for each
election. I can't take credit for this idea. It should be doable. My
main concerning is how to generate the questions/topics for a debate
format. This loops to my personal focus on trying to find a way
generate questions from the community for candidates to answer. If
you've got an idea on how to run a candidate debate for any of the
elections, feel free to chime in.
IRC Debates sounds great! Maybe, as you said, it would be usefull to
find the right way to hold a IRC Debate. Personally I think the only
thing to guarantee is that each candidate could have his/her time to
explain himself, with a max limit.
BTW, less rules, less problems :)
Meet the Candidate Videos:
If candidates wanted to make introductory videos can we organize a
space for candidates videos that makes it easier for people to find?
I think if 100% of the candidates could make such video (potentially)
it's a reasonable idea, but as today I'm not sure everyone could have
a camera. We can take the decision to make something like EventBox: a
camera that is shipped around the world, but it surely will take a lot
of time.
Finally:
I agree to have a Q/A with people and candidate and an IRC debate (by
project). I approve if we give a week to people to invite someone to
nominate himself, and, if there is a way to give all the people that
chance, to produce some candidate videos.
Personally I'm sure we have to guarantee that everyone could have the
same rights: to do this all the initiatives that will be taken for
those elections will have to be designed to fit everyone.
Best regards
Francesco Ugolini
p.s. I think we have to use, like the past election, a wiki page where
all the candidates nominate themselves and give the reason why they
are doing that. That's one of the best way to understand why a person
will nominate him/herself.