Now we've completed the process of running our first community elections, let's put some effort into recording what we did, and think about what we could do better.
We've had some great debates. Some decisions have had to be made quickly for pragmatic reasons, and some problems were not foreseen. So this is a rough wiki space to start noting the "ok, so we should do that differently" issues that have arisen, and may continue to arise.
So in true wikispirit - go forth, edit and BE BOLD :)
Voter Eligibility
There was a lot of discussion about how to define who should vote for these "Community At Large" positions. Consensus formed around a broad eligibility, rather than a narrow definition of financial members of the Drupal Association. We settled on anyone who had an account on Drupal.Org, and had logged in during the past 12 months, but had created their account before the election was called.
Communicating to voters
From an eligible pool of voters of over 250,000, only 655 people voted in the election. How can we do better to get the word out that the elections are on, and that people have a new right / opportunity, to engage directly with the Drupal Association.
Voting System
* Add a "single transferable vote" algorithm to the Decisions module.
Nominations
* "In the event of fewer than X candidates for Y positions, the nominations period will be extended by 3 days until a minimum amount is reached."
Communication
* One of the more challenging things was informing the community that a) elections were happening, b) here's the process, c) these are the dates to keep in mind, etc. Next year we should line up / schedule communications and have a plan for what channels those things need to go out of (e.g. direct mailing to members, drupal.org front page, twitter, local user group outreach, etc.) so that we don't need to make this up as we go.
Comments
More TIme
I understand why things felt a bit rushed this go around, but I'd really like to see more time available for campaigning/voting.
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
Better official presentation
Better official presentation of candidates and campaigning I fully agree is something that needs to be improved. It something we continuously pointed out discussed in the meetings as something that needs to improve until next time.
I'm not so sure about a longer voting period though. I would actually prefer it to be as short as possible to avoid people being able to discuss to much em how they voted, which could influence those who haven't voted yet.
--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
Discussing voting
In towns around the country we see "Vote Labour" posters and "Vote Conservative" etc. - are you saying people should not try to show their support for their preferred candidate? I agree with a shorter voting period, but not for that reason. That sounds way too much like trying to control the outcome from within which is the exact opposite of what I personally believe we are trying to achieve by opening up the DA more.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your point I really don't see how we are going to get 10x or 100x the amount of people voting if electoral campaigning is frowned upon.
I believe you are
I believe you are misunderstanding my point. Please note what I wrote "how they voted", which means they have already taken action about something.
It is far easier for most people to get influenced by other if they know that person has already made a choice "I voted for X" that can't be changed, such as cast a vote in this case, than if they say "I am planning to vote for X". In the first case that vote is already counted for, in the second, the person still has time to change his/her mind.
Many countries has rules about that polls are not allowed to be made/presented to the voters the last 1-2 days before the ballots opens for example. In general I think that is a good rule. Everyone needs a little time before the vote to really be able to think things through without being bombarded with vote for me, X is leading the poll and so on. Up until then, you have full rights to show your support and get your message out.
--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
Cultural
So - and I'm totally up for learning the differences in culture here so don't take this in any other way please - what you're saying is that you think people will be influenced during the voting period if others say "oo I voted for Steve" and that will make them forget everything they thought about before and vote for Steve?
I just don't get it, sorry. I credit people with their own minds and ways of thinking - no matter how much someone says they voted for Ronald Reagan, it's still not going to make me tick the box for him. If he were up for election, of course ;)
No, I don't say that they
No, I don't say that they will forget everything. However, if they are still unsure of who to vote for and then they hear several saying "voted for X", then its pretty easy for them to think. "OK, seems everyone is voting for X, then there is probably little chance Y wont win so no point of voting for him/her".
Regarding differences in different countries. Here in Sweden for example, the general election is done at the same time in the whole country and thus no results are presented before all the voting stations are closed.
Compare that with the US system such as the Republican candidate for the election. It goes from state to state. Don't you think the results from states that has already voted will affect votes on states that hasn't? Also, candidates who get few votes are dropping out and can't be voted for in other states, which in turn also will affect the outcome.
For me, the Swedish voting system is fair for every candidate/party, the US system is seriously flawed and unfair!
--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
Interesting...
This is why I love Drupal!
I would think the opposite - if everyone was voting for Steve and I really didn't want Steve to get voted in then it would make me want to get out and vote more for the opposition. Sure, if I were apathetic I may just surrender to the seemingly inevitable, however I presume we are all talking about a small minority of the population who actually give a hoot about the software they use and thus I credit them with at least a little amount of brain-power to be able to make their own decisions when it comes down to the crunch. Some are bound to be pessimistic - not much I can do about at.
I get the feeling we are not seeing the wood for the trees here - I can almost name 50% of the people who voted - surely our number 1 focus should be on getting more people involved, not worrying about what they may or may not do when they do get involved.
[Edit - no bad feelings intended, appreciate first time this has been done and applaud efforts of everyone involved]
655 out of potential 140,000 is shocking and pretty disgraceful for a piece of software which reportedly powers over 2% of the web including the White House's site. Let's stop evading the obvious and focus on raising our profile first and worry about any perceived voting peculiarities and statistical fantasies later when we get 655,000 people voting. Otherwise I feel we will be discussing this forever!
Adjusting to cultural differences
Steve, you are really missing the point here, and the bigger picture.
I have had the opportunity to live and work for longer periods in three different countries - Sweden (my home country), the UK (London for 3+ years) and in Spain (Costa del Sol for 7+ years). The experience of that has really humbled me when it comes to better understanding how different the views and cultures are about things we take for granted. Even though Sweden is my home country, I am still adjusting to the how things work after living abroad for the last 10+ years. A lot of things have changed during that time, trust me.
You really need to look differently on an election that is national and one that is international. For a national election your view works, but for an international it doesn't.
Take the self nomination used in this election for example. In some countries, such as the US and the UK that might work fine, but in Sweden not so. Here in Sweden the norm is that you need to be publicly persuaded to run for something like this. Even at the national party level this is needed so that you don't portray yourself as "better than anyone else" in the eyes of the voters. That's just how things works here due to historical reasons and culture. For the record, personally I think its stupid it still is like that.
That is, as I mentioned before, in reality the total opposite to how the US election system works. There you are seen as weak if you don't brag about how good you are and everything you want to change and do if elected. Basically the total opposite to Sweden.
In my opinion and international organization such as the DA has an obligation to make sure that candidates has equal opportunity to get elected. DA needs to find a model when it comes to nominations, campaigning and voting that is a middle ground.
As pointed out by many others, being good at English, active in the community and living in a country with an already developed Drupal market is a huge advantage. However that doesn't mean you are automatically the best candidate.
Especially considering that one of the most important tasks for the DA is to spread and foster Drupal to/in new markets. Who are the best people to help with this? I hardly believe it is people coming from already high density Drupal countries.
No, it is the people who come from just those markets/countries. They have already gathered a lot of Drupal experience as well as great knowledge about what the obstacles are to help growing Drupal on their market.
They might actually already be very active in the community, just that they focus that around for example a groups.drupal.org group in their own language (remember d.o is English everywhere else!). Making their hard community work practically invisible compared to someone like yourself who are a native English speaker and thus are very visible to the community at large.
Other disadvantages they have in elections such as this is that they most likely doesn't have a great network within the community, nor a big following on their local market and they very likely also speak a language that is not English.
You really need to take a deep look at the bigger picture here and not just base it on your own knowledge and experience about how things work in your country.
--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
Both
Hi,
I fully respect how different countries vote, I was looking at the current Drupal situation and thinking what would be best imho, and at the moment that is connecting and helping to further enable the network we already have.
We can work from our experience and help the smaller emerging communities more effectively with funds.
Whilst I am encouraged agencies are starting to understand a little more bringing us in earlier in the project but I am still seeing a rise in rescue jobs by those better at selling but struggle with delivery.
So hence why I suggested we split it into two categories next year, at large and emerging market or similar. That is just my view, we are on the internet here not any one country as you say so we have the opportunity to do things different. But yiu are welcome to think different, just saying how I feel right now, and that I am willing to understand may change as I learn more from people who take the time to educate such as yourself.
Steve
Great to hear
Thanks Steve. Just what I wanted to hear. What I like about the Drupal community is its willingness to work against being an embracing community that everyone can find a place in.
Unfortunately that is a bit hard to really see. Its not until you start to get under the surface and get to know other users in person you really understand how much they all work against including others.
Thanks for listening.
--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
There absolutely needed to be
There absolutely needed to be more time to vote. I know a lot of people who meant to vote but never got to it - I think it needed to be open for at least a week or two.
Which activities take a long
Which activities take a long time?
Does the voting window need to be open that long or should the informational period before voting be open for that long?
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
The latter
We need more time to prepare. The phone-ins were great, but we need questions up-front - off-the-cuff is great, but again the ones who will do best in that aren't necessarily those who will do best in the long-run. At least if we have time to prepare then we can ponder the questions posed and provide sensible answers.
/my2p
@cam8001: I would be very
@cam8001: I would be very interested to find out what prevented them from voting so we can take that into consideration when the next one is planned.
In todays world with mobile internet, internet cafés everywhere etc it should not be to difficult to be able to vote within 2-3 days if you really try and make an effort. Just my opinion.
I do understand that in this case, with a bit of short notice, the coting time might have been short. DA needs to improve the awareness of when the next election is and make sure there is enough time for nominations as well campaigning etc. Then eligible voters will have it far easier to make sure they can vote than this time.
This is something DA already is aware of and it was discussed during the meeting several times throughout the whole process as we where made aware about it.
--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
Elections 2013 Underway
Nominations are open now until September 16th.
Voting opens Sept 24 for 2 weeks!
Check the announcement for the full timeline
https://association.drupal.org/election2013
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab
Meetings
I was under the impression that each candidate was supposed to edit their answers according to what they said at the meeting. If we look at the edited answers and what was said during the meeting, however, we will see that the quality of the answers are very different. As a voter, I would obviously vote for the most complete thought out answers. So for the next elections, I suggest that we either 1) have the authentic real-time answers from the meeting, or 2) make it clear to each candidate that they can edit/expand their answers as they see fit (independently from what they said at the meeting).
http://groups.drupal.org/node/207398
Edited responses.
Hey Nick,
My apologies for this - I saw the note on http://groups.drupal.org/node/207398 saying this:
I interpreted that to mean we SHOULD take the opportunity to edit it. I also decided to put my answers on my blog for 3 reasons.
1. I felt the wiki page was getting very long, and hard to parse.
2. I found it easier to copy and paste into a single post, than edit the wiki page after I'd had to do some of it again due to an edit conflict.
3. The original responses (as scribed) were in the IRC logs.
So - apology out of the way - I agree with Nick. This is an important point. We do need to be clear about the process and expectations for next time. We need to work hard to ensure there is a level playing field.
If we are to become more international, and truly global, I think it would be great to let those who are multi-lingual also make statements in other languages.
Another point: I've had a couple of people complain that there was too much to read and follow, in different places, and they didn't feel fully informed about all the candidates. So I wonder if it would be useful for all candidates to prepare a very short statement as a summary, that could be listed in one place, which then links in to full profiles, responses to questions etc...
Not sure, but I think this aspect is worth exploring.
The election needs a TL:DR version of some sort. I think it might help more people participate, because they want to make an informed choice, but not spend hours tracking down all the relevant threads.
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab
Edited responses.
Hi Donna,
No need to apologize! We are all good!
I believe that the first phrase sums up the original intention:
As I understand it, the idea was to capture the discussion held at the meeting, as if someone who didn't make it to the meeting could read through the questions and answers and feel as if he were at the meeting. But if each candidate were to expand there answers to go way beyond what they said, then this would distort what has really happened at the meeting.
The first one to edit the raw data from the meeting was Stephanie, and I believe she did a great job to capture the discussion. So I followed her example and did the same.
When I saw that you copied all your answers and created a link to your blog, I actually thought it was a good idea. It really made it easier for people to read what were your answers as an individual candidate (but it certainly did not capture the discussion as a meeting of candidates and voters).
When I saw Steve not only editing but expanding his answers, I also thought it was a good idea. We had a short time to think about the questions. Answering these questions on the fly is hard even for native speakers. When Steve says he dedicated a whole week on this election, I believe him. His answers to the questions were really complete and well thought. It made it easier for people to really understand the candidate (but again, it certainly did not capture the discussion as a real-time meeting).
I don't think neither you or Steve took advantage by doing this. I believe that you both were honestly thinking about making it easier for the voter to understand your viewpoints.
In the next election, I suggest that we repeat these live meetings to see how each candidate responds on-the-fly to tough questions. But I also suggest that we collect questions from the community beforehand and hand them out to each candidate to answer with care. And as you suggested, I also agree with each candidate having a dedicated space where the voter could easily find all aggregated information from that individual in specific (including their on-the-fly and careful answers).
Kind regards,
Nick
Kudos to webchick
BTW, kudos to webchick for scribing native-speaker speaking fast and non-native speakers speaking with an accent!
At one moment I said that the Drupal Association should act as a catalyst, and everyone was wondering why I thought the Drupal Association should act as a capitalist! ;)
Did well for first go...
I think the process went well for the first attempt at something like this - and not just saying that because of the outcome ;)
I agree more time is needed for prep - I had to drop everything for a week to try and answer questions as thoughtfully as I could, and although it had been made clear to all nominees to update the wiki, not many did, and some were just external links which makes it more time-consuming to read. Also one long page doesn't help. Time was one factor I'm sure, but also to not fill in as asked will make some people think that some can't be bothered to put in the effort, so when it comes to representing them will they put the effort in? Of course there are many reasons why people vote for who they do, we will never know all cases.
Re voting time - 24 hours for voting may cause issues with people if they can't do a particular day, but then perhaps we can do the equivalent of postal votes.
Also of course we need to get more than 0.005% of those eligible to vote informed about the elections and voting. I understand out of a potential 270k accounts around 140k were "real" (forgetting test accounts etc.) and 655 voted so that's where the 0.005% figure comes from.
Two points I'd be eager to address before next time:
I don't think current board members should comment on any particular nominee positively or negatively during the process. I received the latter, for which I've sorted out with the person involved and had an apology which is good as all I was trying to do was get more people involved from my network of Drupal people, many of whom know little about what the DA is or what it does, and I thought that was one point of the whole process.
I don't think the Drupal Association should re-tweet anything from any of the nominees during the process
In general I think we need to lighten up a little on the whole thing as the point is as the community grows we want to welcome more people from all walks of life in, and to try and control who says what, when, where and how about the elections is going in the opposite direction of open, IMHO.
I am certainly looking forward to the year ahead and hope that I can be of great assistance to the community at large!
Elections must be fair
I 100% agree on board members not saying a thing about candidates, nor should the official DA communication channels (website, email, twitter, etc) do anything that could be construed as either promotional of one candidate over another. Think about how regular elections are held - the people running the election don't start talking about candidates, TV stations aren't allowed to give airtime to one candidate if they're not doing likewise for others, etc, etc.
In short: elections must be ran fairly and without any bias from anyone involved in running them.
IA improvements for next time
IMHO all of the voting information should have been on one longer page with collapsible regions rather than spread across a variety of separate pages. A common example was that the actual page for voting didn't have any information or any links about the candidates, all you could see were the candidates names and had to go back to the main voting info page and then to another page to find out any information.
Would be good to compare
Would be good to be able to compare candidate's answers to particular questions, whether that works with collapsible regions or not I don't know without trying it out.
I did at first put links back to my profile, but I took them out as no others had and it looked a bit obtuse of me to do that.
Of course I had no idea at the time what others would do, I was kinda expecting everyone to add their answers in so just went ahead and did what was asked!
Musings of an election committee member
So, overall, I was really happy with the way this went. I'm hoping that much, much more of the DA's work from here forward can follow the same basic model of:
a) Board charters a committee consisting of both board members and non-board members in order to get something done.
b) Committee publicly solicits and incorporates community feedback throughout the planning process.
c) Committee reports the plan back to board and board says "Go for it!"
d) Execution proceeds, once again in public, led by the committee, but involving lots of different people from all over the community.
I think this elections process was largely an example of the DA and our community working well together, and I'm really proud to have been part of it (and helped engineer it).
There are a couple of things though that I think we should watch out for next time:
However. People are generally going to feel more comfortable voting for someone they see a lot of and like what they hear from them. And in this context, people with the most Twitter followers, people with blogs on Drupal Planet, people who are native English speakers, people who are able to attend both in-person meetings, etc. are at a distinct advantage over people who do not have one or more of those properties. It creates an un-level playing field, and creates a risk of the elections becoming merely a popularity contest, rather than about the individuals and their specific experience/platforms.
FWIW, I actually don't think that this fear came true in this election. While Steve and Donna share all of the traits above (they have 1000+ Twitter followers, had election-related blog posts that went out to Drupal Planet, and speak English natively) I firmly believe they got in on their own merits, and the next runners-up (Niccholas and Jingsheng) were people without any of these traits. So that's awesome.
However, it's food for thought for the next election committee. Just as Steve suggested that no DA members should be able to publicly say anything pro/contra any candidate during the election period, the next committee might want to consider making that swing both ways. But it's a trade-off, because self-promotion also helps get the word out about the election, which helps #1. ;) But I think "S/he with the most Twitter followers wins" is a bad road for us to go down in future elections.
Note that one could also argue that that elections being a popularity contest is just fine, that popularity with the community is what this is really all about, since we have the nominating committee there to do individual-based, rather than popularity-based, board member selection. It's just not my personal view.
The in-person meetings were great for putting a voice to a name. But for next time we need to give both candidates and the community much more notice ahead of time, and I think we should make them longer, too (2 hours instead of 1?). Nedjo had to cut off people a few times, and I don't know that we heard the best from all candidates because they had to make up answers to questions on the fly (some of them extremely excellent, grilling questions). OTOH, that's also a useful skill. ;)
But maybe for next time, we can ask for questions from the community ahead of time, tell the candidates and community 24 hours in advance what (at least some of) the questions will be, and then let people have 5 minutes (instead of 2-3) to answer in full. Just a thought. I'd welcome other suggestions on that as well.
I probably have other musings, but these are the big three I can think of right now.
Oh, one other thing. Thank
Oh, one other thing.
Thank you, Nedjo!!!
Nedjo chaired the election committee and was a major architect of this entire process, managed many of the communication-related tasks, meeting-scheduling, etc, and even helped with the last-minute hackfest required to get the voting opened. :) It was an absolute pleasure to work with you on this!
Absolutely
Absolutely! The whole election committee and everyone involved did an amazing job. Congratulations! =)
Responses
Absolutely +1 for nedjo who I don't really know but can see that he's done a lot of work on this.
I also agree with you re the more prep for nominees, more time to think about answers and reply - it all seemed very rushed, and that must have hurt nominees who weren't able to pick it up and run with as I did.
BUT webchick - I do still strongly disagree with you re the campaigning - as nominees we will/should use as many channels as we can to get our message out. Mine happens to be twitter as I have spent the best part of three years building up my twitter following - but only by helping people with Drupal I have built up this following. I filter Drupal news through twitter, and try to help out where I can see people being frustrated so I answer where I can. Your view on twitter sounds like a mass communications medium where people just spam each other, but my following is nurtured - each one of them I have either helped in a way, by providing the with the most relevant Drupal news, or helped them out with Drupal in one way or another. I do not see why this is an issue, it's just another communications medium.
Some of the other candidates have other mediums they connect with their community through - for example I believe one wrote a couple of books on Drupal - they have their community through that. I'm sure others have theirs on mailing lists or perhaps local user groups. I know for a fact that there's over 100 people I've helped introduce to Drupal over the last year who weren't eligible to vote because even though I helped them with Drupal and they wanted to support me, they haven't yet signed up for a drupal.org account.
So I really think that you're on to a loser here when you're saying about the popularity thing - at the end of the day this was a vote for "at large" directors, and if people don't have a community following because they haven't spent the last few years helping people out and growing that, then they aren't the best people to be "at large" directors.
I still feel you are viewing twitter as some kind of mass-marketing machine, when if you really knew how much effort I've put into helping people through it then perhaps you would change your mind about the situation. Perhaps not - just thought I'd clarify more from my side - people didn't vote for me just cos my name was Steve and I said Vote Steve - people voted for me because I've actually taken the time and effort to help them out in some way or another, and they feel like I would represent them well as a board member.
Again I re-iterate - I have never seen an election without a campaign - please do give me examples of this situation you see where nominees aren't publicising the fact they're up for election - I can't think of any, perhaps you can enlighten me...
No, to be clear, I'm not
No, to be clear, I'm not saying anything against you, or your Twitter list, or how your list of followers was developed over time. I'm simply recognizing Twitter for the tool that it is: an excellent way of broadcasting messages to a wide network of acquaintances and friends and spurring them to action. Not everyone has 1000+ Twitter followers, or 1000+ Linked In followers, or 1000+ mailing list subscribers, or 1000+ podcast listeners... or whatever it is that gives certain people a platform with access to a captive audience for their message. And those people who don't have these types of large networks at their disposal are severely handicapped in terms of their ability to campaign compared to those who do. That's it.
At Small?
So how about next year we have one "At Large" and one "At Small" seat?
Campaigning
For my RPG club, we have an open forum area where candidates for President can post their campaign manifestos, people can post questions, and candidates can all respond in a single discussion stream. It's much more effective, I think, than splitting it up into "comment on the candidate's bio", and because it's a single stream you can actually get discussion going. That gives people time to see the candidates in action.
I'd much prefer that to a quick election. I knew extremely little about any of the candidates going into the election, and would like to have seen more opportunity for them to discuss, answer questions (not all of which come up on a moment's notice in an IRC debate), and even engage each other so that we can see how they handle differing opinions (which presumably there will be on the board).
Elections Distribution
Sounds like an opportunity for a distribution! =)
I could see organizations and groups setting up this distribution on a subdomain like elections.example.org that automagically takes care of everything!
It all felt a bit rushed,
It all felt a bit rushed, which was sad to see - a lot of the communication could have been better. However I did really like the fact that these community members where very approachable for questions, which I took advantage on to really understand who I was voting for beyond their community-face time. I would say, this is a very big advantage and made me feel more included in the issues I care about.
There where a few major usability issues, that probally have prevented participation (from experience, I can only assume the lack of clear call to actions, had a drastic effect on the amount of participation). I would love to help out on this next year.
I do wonder, you mention Marta - how will she be part of solving this communication problem? I do not see her in this discussion, how will she get to know of the findings here?
Simple checkbox
Just a nit. I would have preferred checkboxes next to the name of the candidates, like an old-fashioned paper ballot.
Rick Nashleanas
www.monarchdigital.com
The ranked voting system (as
The ranked voting system (as opposed to radios/checkboxes) was actually "by design." Community members involved in the election planning felt strongly that "First Past the Post" (highest raw number wins) voting was unlikely to yield a result people would be happy with, so we went for "Instant Run-Off" style instead. See http://groups.drupal.org/node/200143 for the background discussion.
That said, I think the actual voting interface could be a lot smoother (drag and drop, for example) and better explain what's going on. Luckily, the software powering the election is Drupal code, so if you have specific suggestions simply file a feature request (and patch, if you can!) against Decisions module. :D
Ballot ordering
That's another well-known facet of ballots that we didn't really take into account, and I forgot to mention before. In real-world elections candidates go to a lot of trouble to try and be first on the ballot because there is a natural tendency of voters to vote for people higher up on the list. You can't do much about that in a paper ballot, but with an electronic ballot we can, and should, randomize the order that names are listed in to eliminate that. (I've done that in online elections I've run before as well, although not recently due to the limitations of AdvPoll, Decisions, and friends.)
I don't think DnD would be a good way to order candidate preferences, as that implies you're voting for all of them. It is completely legitimate to only rank a subset of them and not vote for certain candidates at all. I did so myself in this election.
The Interface needs DnD IMHO
I think the interface needs drag and drop for ordering the candidates. I spent several minutes going through the numbers figuring out that I had two people ranked 3, etc.
I also think the point that you are not necessarily voting for everyone is good. ( In the experimental period after the fall, Russia had a "None of the Above" option on some ballots, and if None won, then no candidate could take the office. )
This could be done with a horizontal separator, so that you would drag candidates from below, into an ordered section above. Or there could be a column of candidates on the left, and an initially empty ballot on the right, and you pull candidates into the ballot and re-order them there.
Like the below/above
Like the below/above suggestion. Was just thinking of the same but you beat me to it :)
--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
Just so you know, Decisions
Just so you know, Decisions module has that feature (if it didn't before), and the "randomized candidate name order" (or whatever it was) checkbox was checked.
Yeah - I thought I saw that
Yeah - I thought I saw that option available when I tested the module. But when it came to vote, the ballot didn't seem to randomise candidate order. I probably won the Donkey Vote because I was at the top of the list! ;) I wonder if that means there might be a bug there we should track down and patch?
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab
Better Marketing
I voted, but I had no confidence in my vote other than superficially looking at their d.o profiles and a cursory google search.
Power to the People
It felt quite empowering voting directly on a matter that should have a massive impact on building the Drupal community.
Lots of little ways to improve the voting process, but this was a great start. Thanks to all those who organized this and those that were generous enough to stand for election.
Votes
Slightly off topic, but are we really sure there were only 655 votes? The reason I ask is since I posted this tweet quite a number of people have said "Huh, even I voted..."
https://twitter.com/#!/greg_harvey/status/167630287889637376
Which makes me deeply suspicious of such a low number. I mean it is possible that I happen to be in the Twitter network of most of the people who voted, in a way that would make sense, but is there any way to confirm that number? I'm thinking web server logs.
It might be possible that we
It might be possible that we could corroborate with server logs or otherwise pull a list of the names who voted. If you feel strongly about it, please file an issue at http://drupal.org/project/issues/drupalassociation. The election committee does not have access to that data (by design).
However, I was monitoring things pretty closely on IRC, Twitter, issue queue/forums, etc., and saw no reports of any errors regarding voting, and the count of both raw # of votes and eligible voters kept steadily going up over the course of the voting process. So unless there's an open bug in Decisions module about random vote eating, I feel pretty confident in the results.
It doesn't totally shock me TBH that there are only around 600 people who are clued into all the right places, were on top of the timelines for when voting opened and closed, were not traveling or on vacation at the time, etc. considering this is the first time we've ever done this. Hopefully by next time that number will quadruple or more. :)
OK
Well, if you're not surprised, I'll take your word for it. I don't see any particular need to waste anyone's time - just I was quite shocked - I would've expected at least a DrupalCon's-worth of people to vote and I know three people from my company voted alone. Oh well. Next time! =)
Low voter turn out.
I found a lot of people that weren't aware the elections were happening. Some of those felt the elections weren't relevant to them, and some assumed they were ineligible to vote. So, there's certainly room for improvement.
I'm convinced we need some sort of direct communication to eligible voters. Many people who regularly use Drupal.org don't even go via the front page. They might constantly have a session open, they might go straight to drupal.org/user - they might go straight to their relevant issue queue... so a post on the front page, below the fold, isn't really sufficient.
Sending an email to all eligible voters in advance of the election, alerting them to nomination and voting periods seems sensible to me. However I'm also aware some view this as an UNacceptable spam-a-thon.
Some have also highlighted the "why" issue. Why should the Drupal community vote for "At Large" members of the board? This is something we really need to work to address.
[Edited to add the bold UN above - because that was what I meant.]
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab
thoughts...
Communication was probably our biggest failure. I knew what was going on because I read and promoted the news items to the 'front page' of drupal.org and was in IRC for discussions. Our general users, who, apparently, were supposed to benefit from the election, really have to hunt to find news. (Below the fold of the front page, go to /news, check out the Planet and maybe see something.)
Since we can't really email 800,000 users (our entire, unblocked user population) to generate interest/knowledge, we should be able to use our website to let them know what's going on. But a huge failure of the redesign is a lack of a global message. (Yes, we have the red bar on top, but that screams "Danger! Danger!" and not "There's something cool for you to see!"
As someone who knows the 250,000 number bantered around is much too high (I've seen the user/user page and the profile spam they make), I think if we allow general voting for the "At Large" positions, we probably should use a separate voting domain and have users "register to vote" by logging in with their d.o username/password starting a month before voting opens. It may limit the number of eligible voters, but we'll know those that do vote might a) care more, and b) show up to vote.
I was just on IRC and asked one of our newer users who was working on a patch for something in Core if they voted. I asked "quick, non-scientific poll - did you vote in the Drupal Association election?" And the response was: "silverwing: What is that?" Yeah, communication is lacking.
The 270K number should be
The 270K number should be "fairly" legit. http://drupal.org/node/1404500#comment-5551180 is how that figure was generated, and it left off spam users and users who'd never logged in. You can view the whole pool of eligible voters in that .txt file there.
+100 to a place on drupal.org to communicate important news "above the fold." I agree this would've helped A LOT, and I also agree that communication was the #1 failing of these elections. :(
-1 to voter registration, though, IMO. I think voting should be as inclusive as possible, since these are intended to be "community-elected" positions, not "small subset of community who saw an announcement that you need to register on some other site and made the time to do that"-elected positions. :D
Voter Registration
Actually, I think some form of Voter Registration is worth thinking about. It's at least worth exploring what it might look like, how it might work, and what the impact might be.
If we cast the widest net in terms of eligibility, but don't want to spam people who don't care - perhaps we need to think about this kind of in between step.
We find a way to communicate with the community in the broadest possible way, and then invite them to sign up to some kind of voting / election / alert / registration thingie of some kind - which is then the place we direct attention toward.
Dunno - just brainstorming.
How do others address this?
Australia makes voting compulsory, but you still have to enrol to vote. And we generally get a voter turnout of between 90 & 95% of eligible voters.
Linux Australia just ran a by-election, and only about 50 people voted - out of a nominal community of around 5000 - of which about 500 attended the conference.
Other committees I've been on... only people who've attended the annual general meeting get to vote. So the fact we're using an open electronic voting method is a really big plus for a global, virtual community like ours.
We're designing our own democratic processes here. Let's canvas lots of views, let's research different approaches.
I think we want to be as inclusive as possible. We want to reach out and educate those who don't care, or feel the decision isn't relevant to them, or feel their vote doesn't count.
At the same time, we don't want to irritate those Drupal users who really aren't interested in the Drupal Association. Keeping in mind the association is not about governing the Drupal project itself, I suspect that's a fair call.
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab
Well, those are fair points.
Well, those are fair points. It creates a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario though. Restricting the voting pool allows us to only spam people who care with election information to not tick off everyone else (yay), but in order to find those people who wish to engage in elections in the first place we have to cast a wide net. :)
But maybe we could do it in two phases:
1) Spam email to 270K (or whatever) eligible people "There are Drupal Association elections coming up! If you'd like to take part and be notified of election happenings, click this link: . We promise not to spam you anymore until next year unless you do." Not sure if that's exactly legit with international spam laws, but maybe the DA could get some legal resources to look into it.
2) From there forth, add the people who click that url to a) the electoral list so they can vote, and b) the "spam me about election happenings" list. Then send out notifications to this group at all major points.
Those points would be (including, but not limited to):
- Hey, there's an election happening again.
- Election planning/brainstorming kick-off
- OMG planning/brainstorming is about to end!
- Call for nominees kick-off
- OMG call for nominees is about to end!
- Get to know nominees kick-off & meeting schedule
- OMG in-person meeting A starts tomorrow in 24 hours!
- OMG in-person meeting B starts tomorrow in 24 hours!
- OMG get to know nominees period is about to end!
- Voting period kick off
- OMG voting period is about to end!
- Voting results announcement
(So you can see why we were hesitant to send that volume of email to 270K people)
What people are saying
What alot of people have told me is that when they saw the email etc to vote they were like oh I do not contribute enough or I do not get involved enough to cast a vote. That is really the major of responses I got. Also it is hard ie who is Person X? If people do not know the list of candidates well enough then they may go ok I do not have an opinion?
You increase and grow any community let alone open source you will always dilute the pool of those who participate and those you dont #fact. For example 20% of our users could be enterprise employees (an example only not a reference) who use drupal as a tool set and do not feel they have the time etc to get involved in the community or really just dot have an opinion. We got a small turn-out but we got a turn-out that was not just core contributors so that in itself is the first step I feel.
A real simple thing to do is;
You can always go down the Australian route ad make it compulsory to vote ;P (that is a joke by the way I do not agree or support compulsory voting)
Or we can pat ourselves on the back and say hey we got it started and the Great Wall of China was not built in one day or even one year and we are on the road with continuous improvement we will get there.
A big Stage right around the corner.
This sounds like a PR issue to me.
In a few short weeks there will be, in my estimation, 3500 to 4000 ppl gathered together in the name of Drupal. What better stage than to make a tremendous amount of progress at demystifying the DA.
I have not done any kind of poll... But I would have to guess that if one were to pop in to user groups, camps, etc and start asking, "Hey... What's the DA and what does it do and why should we care?" The blank stares would likely explain the inattentiveness and low activity in this recent election.
The fact is that the DA does PLENTY, and ppl should care. They just don't know it yet.
While we don't need Denver to look like a DA-con or anything that extreme, I do believe that our President of the DA, and founder of the project, Dries, should make a strong plug [at the least] for the DA on his State of Drupal address. What's more relevant to the State of Drupal than the State of the DA? OK. Maybe many things are more relevant, but nonetheless it's a choice opportunity to convey the message.
What else do we need? [I say "WE" as a paid supporting member about to start my 3rd year]
What else can be done? Do we need something in the swag bag; some literature of some kind? Do we need a booth with material on it that is frequently occupied by some members whose very presence at the table would invite conversation? Do we need some slides on the big screens as people are coming and going in the main room?
For all I know some of my ideas are already in motion.
Do we really want to get the word out that the DA is here and busy and relevant?
Before an active and participatory election process can be successful the DA itself must run for the position of "Visible and understood by the community" a position that it certainly does not hold at present.
I wonder what progress at "Demystifying the DA" will be made in Denver......
why so few candidates?
I was pretty shocked when I saw the number of candidates. I really expected dozens of people to step forward.
So, one thing I'd like to understand better is why so few people actually ran.
I'm sure a lot will say "being busy" but that just means "lower priority than other stuff in my life" so I'd like to know secondary reasons beyond that. Is the other stuff pressing right now and for the next year? Or did people get de-motivated for some other reason.
I think we will need an anonymous survey to get answers to this question.
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
The main reasons, based on
The main reasons, based on what various individuals have told me, are:
1) The travel commitment was too hard, especially if self-funded (we did make that clear [I hope?] in the nomination form that we would be able to fund people who couldn't fund themselves, not sure everyone got the message).
2) 5 hrs/week commitment was too hard. In practice, I'm not sure this is really true for all board members. My board time tends to go in spurts of 0 hrs for 2 weeks in a row, then 20 hrs for 2 weeks in a row, then 2 hrs/week for another month, etc. but I think this is a pretty fair to set expectations clearly.
3) Confusion/lack of awareness about the voting process and what was happening, etc. It was problematic that we were defining the very idea of a nominations process just before asking for nominees, the tools we used to get the word out were not enough, and the aggressive timeline we had didn't allow for more direct outreach.
4) Being a board member is perceived as tedious/boring/bureaucratic, and requires skills like fundraising, governance, etc. that a lot of people either don't possess or would rather spend their time coding/reviewing patches than doing that.
Asked & Answered
The question of "Why so few candidates" is a very valid one.
Another good question is "Why so few votes" when our community is so large.
While we're at it, let's throw in "Why such little PR" in a community that thrives on getting together. And I don't just mean PR for this blitz-krieg election cycle. I am continuing my point from above wherein I make the case that this is 99% [if not 100%] a matter of PR.
Let's look at the 4 excellent points made by Angie:
1] "The travel commitment was too hard..."
This was less than clear:
Read https://association.drupal.org/at-large-nominations and it says
If you follow the 1st link in that statement "elections announcement" then you get a different story.
Read https://association.drupal.org/2011-elections-announcement and it says
2] "5 hrs/week commitment was too hard..."
This was quite vague. I suspect that many ppl were concerned that they would accept the position then find out the hard way that the details and actual requirements were straining. In the face of the unknown, I'm sure many assumptions were made. Assumptions to the real possibility that there would be virtual-meetings that would [a] be ill-timed due to the global nature of the DA, [b] run into business hours, [c] interfere with established schedules already on the books, [d] etc.
I doubt any one wanted to sign on then discover that there was a conflict with some immovable object in their pre-existing schedule. Who wants to be known as the person who won the election then couldn't quite meetup to the unknown expectations?
Granted... There's no way in my mind that a formal job description could enumerate, in excellant detail, the weekly let alone daily requirements associated with the position. However, I have to believe that fear of the unknown played a role here. It certainly did for me.
3] "Confusion/lack of awareness about the voting process and what was happening..."
This goes back to my PR montra from 6 days ago. Once the process was defined, perhaps members of the board should have done some PR at camps and guest appearances on podcasts. I'm just shooting from the hipp here. I originally agreed that having these 2 seats filled BEFORE DrupalCon-Denver was a good idea, but apparently it was not. The fast track ended up being the low participation track which I know has been very disappointing to so many.
4] "Being a board member is perceived as tedious/boring/bureaucratic, and requires skills like fundraising, governance, etc. that a lot of people either don't possess or would rather spend their time coding/reviewing patches than doing that."
While it is possible that some people may have held this view, I'd say by in large no one really knew what to expect. The "curiosity approach" is great for sales, but not so much for inviting people to join a governing body.
Let's compare this to the elections of 2009.
In years past we were invited to run on a platform of what exactly it was that we waned to do, what goals we had, how much time we had to give, how we proposed to accomplish our goals.
The 2012 elections said, "Hey, come join us as we do what we do! We just figured out the election process. You might get reimbursed for travel, and we're going to need 5hrs/week"
In 2009 I applied along with a 26 other people. http://drupal.org/node/375900 The list of candidates is a 404 page.
This year I did not join the 10 applicants. https://association.drupal.org/nominations
Is this not clearly a PR issue? If I call it a lack of public awareness would that be better? How about calling it a need to get the message out?
Amaree, THANK YOU for making similar points "promote the drupal association, lets face it many in the community do not clearly understand what they do and why they should vote"
Kattekrab, THANK YOU for your statement that, "We find a way to communicate with the community in the broadest possible way"
Silverwing, THANK YOU for your statement that, "Communication was probably our biggest failure. I knew what was going on because I read and promoted the news items to the 'front page' of drupal.org and was in IRC for discussions. Our general users, who, apparently, were supposed to benefit from the election, really have to hunt to find news. (Below the fold of the front page, go to /news, check out the Planet and maybe see something.)
I care very deeply about this situation. I believe firmly that what is good for the DA is good for the Community, is good for the Project.
Until the DA gains visibility, and becomes more relevant, I simply do not see how the 2013 election can be all that different from 2012. You can give people longer times to submit their candidacy, longer times to campaign, and longer times to vote. But if the DA remains the globulous, undefined and, by extension, unknown entity, then can we really expect a bigger community buy-in for next year?
I want nothing but the best for the DA. I just don't think they hear the ppl when they ask, "Who are you again? What do you do exactly?"
I actually have a lot more to say, but this is already much longer than I'd like. ;-)
Kevin John Gallagher's "Results are in"
John asks some good questions here about how this all worked.
http://kevinjohngallagher.com/2012/02/the-results-are-in/
We should also be thinking about these questions for designing this process for the future.
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab