wanted: motu-sru members

[Scott Kitterman]

On Sunday 25 May 2008 15:04, Jordan Mantha wrote:
> On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 9:53 AM, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com>
>
> wrote:
> > > Emilio Pozuelo Monfort wrote:
> > >> What is the benefit of 2) ? Can't the MOTU team do the selection in
> > >> the voting?
> > >> If there's some people motu-sru would remove, I would hope for the
> > >> MOTU team to
> > >> remove them too in the voting.
> > >
> > >     The large benefit of allowing the existing members of motu-sru to
> > > select amoung the volunteers is to ensure that the team works well
> > > together.  If there is a removal with which MOTU disagree, such
> > > objection ought be raised in response to the motu-sru publication of
> > > the candidates.
> > >
> > >     While I can't be entirely sure, I suspect there will be time
> > > between the publication of the slate of candidates and MOTU Council
> > > configuring the appropriate polls for selection.
> >
> > I am strongly opposed to pre-selection.  We have had cases in the past
> > where a non-transparent pre-selection process resulted in a very limited
> > and from the perspective of at least a significant slice of the community
> > very unsuitable set of choices.
>
> I'm also opposed to opaque membership processes, *however* I also think
> that current team members are in a good position (in most cases, IMO better
> than MOTU-at-large) to judge candidates. I personally think if MOTU are
> just going to pick random people because they've heard of them or
> something, then we're better off having MOTU SRU making pre-selections (not
> final
> selections).

So far, from my perspective, the record of private pre-selections is not good.  
I understand what you are saying, but I believe that we will get a better 
result if all interested MOTUs have input.  Also I think the idea of a group 
privately disallowing participation is not very Ubuntu.

> > As an organization consisting largely of volunteers, the legitimacy of
> > our management teams comes from the fact that MOTU have selected them. 
> > Once there is a pre-selection, this legitimacy is lost.  If someone
> > volunteers that might be problematic, I think that we should trust the
> > MOTU to do the right thing.  Personally, I'm not at all opposed to MOTU
> > discussing the advantages and disadvantages of various candidates.  That
> > would, of course, include the current motu-sru.  I believe that whatever
> > concerns there may be that consider motu-sru to want pre-selection, I
> > think that with some constructive discussion as we move to a vote the can
> > be managed transparently in an effective way.
>
> Well, I'm not sure if legitimacy is neccesarily lost. Some is I suppose is,
> but the team members are still MOTUs so the question is really whether a
> subset of MOTU should do some selection or whether the whole thing,
> top-to-bottom, should be handled by MOTU-at-large. Ideally I would like the
> entire MOTU team deciding teams but issues I see are:
>   * many MOTU don't vote in the first place. I don't believe we've ever
> gotten over 50%. Most votes during MOTU Meetings are 4-8 people.

Yes, but when we've had elections it's been over a longer period with more 
participation.  If the polity self-selects to those who care, I don't think 
it's a problem.

>   * historically I don't see where we've been able to comprehensively vett
> people without devolving into a flamefest.

True, but I also think that was largely in cases where preselection had 
narrowed the choices to a yes/no option.  I think preselection encourages 
this.

>   * time consuming. Giving time for comments, time for nominatiions, time
> for voting, etc. can easily make the process of getting new members take at
> least 1 month.

True, but in the long run having teams that we've agreed can control access to 
the archive for MOTUs in some circumstances that is well accepted by the 
community is worth it IMO.

> Perhaps we can put some things in place to mitigate these issues.
> /me crawls back under his rock.
>
> -Jordan

Thanks for commenting.  It's better to discuss this back and forth.

Scott K