On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 08:11:59AM -0400, Sean Dague wrote: > On 10/30/2014 06:09 AM, Eoghan Glynn wrote: > > > >>>>>>> IIRC, there is no method for removing foundation members. So there > >>>>>>> are likely a number of people listed who have moved on to other > >>>>>>> activities and are no longer involved with OpenStack. I'd actually > >>>>>>> be quite interested to see the turnout numbers with voters who > >>>>>>> missed the last two elections prior to this one filtered out. > >>>>>> Well, the base electorate for the TC are active contributors with > >>>>>> patches landed to official projects within the past year, so these > >>>>>> are devs getting their code merged but not interested in voting. > >>>>>> This is somewhat different from (though potentially related to) the > >>>>>> "dead weight" foundation membership on the rolls for board > >>>>>> elections. > >>>>>> > >>>>>> Also, foundation members who have not voted in two board elections > >>>>>> are being removed from the membership now, from what I understand > >>>>>> (we just needed to get to the point where we had two years worth of > >>>>>> board elections in the first place). > >>>>> Thanks, I lost my mind here and confused the board with the TC. > >>>>> > >>>>> So then my next question is, of those who did not vote, how many are > >>>>> from under-represented companies? A higher percentage there might point > >>>>> to disenfranchisement. > >>>> Different but related question (might be hard to calculate though): > >>>> > >>>> If we remove people who have only ever landed one patch from the > >>>> electorate, what do the turnout numbers look like? 2? 5? > >>>> > >>>> Do we have the ability to dig in slightly and find a natural definition > >>>> or characterization amongst our currently voting electorate that might > >>>> help us understand who the people are who do vote and what it is about > >>>> those people who might be or feel different or more enfranchised? I've > >>>> personally been thinking that the one-patch rule is, while tractable, > >>>> potentially strange for turnout - especially when one-patch also gets > >>>> you a free summit pass... but I have no data to say what actually > >>>> defined "active" in active technical contributor. > >>> Again, the ballots are anonymized so we've no way of doing that analysis. > >>> > >>> The best we could IIUC would be to analyze the electoral roll, bucketizing > >>> by number of patches landed, to see if there's a significant long-tail of > >>> potential voters with very few patches. > >> Just looking at stackalytices numbers for Juno: Out of 1556 committers, > >> 1071 have committed more than one patch and 485 only a single patch. > >> That's a third! > > Here's the trend over the past four cycles, with a moving average in the > > last column, as the eligible voters are derived from the preceding two > > cycles: > > > > Release | Committers | Single-patch | 2-cycle MA > > ------------------------------------------------ > > Juno | 1556 | 485 (31.2%) | 29.8% > > Icehouse| 1273 | 362 (28.4%) | 28.0% > > Havana | 1005 | 278 (27.6%) | 28.8% > > Folsom | 401 | 120 (29.9%) | 27.9% > > > > So the proportion of single-patch committers is creeping up slowly, but > > not at a rate that would account for the decline in voter turnout. > > > > And since we've no way of knowing if voting patterns among the single-patch > > committers differs in any way from the norm, these data don't tell us much. > > > > If we're serious about improving participation rates, then I think we > > should consider factors what would tend to drive interest levels and > > excitement around election time. My own suspicion is that open races > > where the outcome is in doubt are more likely to garner attention from > > voters, than contests that feel like a foregone conclusion. That would > > suggest un-staggering the terms as a first step. > I am curious why you believe the staggering is dramatically changing the > outcome of the elections. Because this is a condorcet system, and not a > weighted one vote one, in a staggered election that would just mean > that: Thierry, Vish, Jim, Mark, Jay, Michael, and Deva would be in the > pool as well. Who I'd honestly expect to be ranked really highly (based > on past election results, and based on their impact across a lot of > projects). > > If there is some reference you have about why a race for 6 or 7 seats > with 6 or 7 incumbents is considered less open than a race for 13 seats > with 13 incumbents, would be great to see. Because to me, neither the > math nor the psychology seem to support that. > > Note in both elections since we started open elections all incumbents > that chose to run were re-elected. Which is approximately the same > results we've seen in PTL elections (with only 1 exception that I know > of). So that seems consistent with the rest of the community tone. We > can argue separately whether we should be actively creating more turn > over across the board, maybe we should be.
Well, FWIW, I think we should be, and I'd posit that the lack of turnover probably is one of the reasons for voter apathy. I'd hypothesise that smaller and/or newer projects probably do contain voters who feel disenfranchised, based on the historically predictable re-election of the incumbents. No criticism of those incumbents intended, I'm just pointing out that it may be hard for some folks to remain positive about a process if they feel that their interests are persistently under-represented (one disadvantage or the all-directly-elected vs PTLs+elected model I guess). Steve _______________________________________________ OpenStack-dev mailing list OpenStack-dev@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
