Hi fellas!
Ok, let me try to make this as short as possible so that you bother to read it. I have followed the archive and I just can't help commenting. These are my *personal* comments, nothing else. And hell yes, this is a critical posting - but so be it, hopefully it will make my words come through to you, and I don't care if I make anyone upset, this is all too important for me to worry about that.
Now - I am *really* worried that this is not going well, so please, please hear me out. And please, please don't start *arguing* with me - because that would just make things even worse. In order to prevent that, I will not reply to any replies to this post (but I will reply to private email) - you may of course spend time discussing this post with each other - fine.
1. Daniel wrote that he didn't see why there is a "rush" for an election. The thing is - we *promised* that we were stepping down at this date "no matter what" and that is what is going to happen. Period. So yes, there is a *rush*. This is *very* important to the current board and even more so to me *personally*. Let me underline the above by saying that *I* (can't tell for the rest of the board) am stepping down even if this team utterly screws it up and leaves us in a vacuum again. Ok? And yes, if this fails I will blame this team, you bet.
2. It seems to me that you are fumbling the ball. Please, please, please - save these endless discussions about voting systems and politics for later. This team is not getting disolved after the election, you will have plenty of time later too. Get a simple voting system in place ASAP and make it transparent. I agree with the "worries" about accusations later on about how legitimate the election was - but come on, keep it on a practical level here. Most of us haven't even met in real life and I could be a 12 year old girl from Uzbekistan for all you know, I could even be 10 people on squeak-dev. Given all emails I write it sure sometimes feels like that. :) Personally I would actually prefer to just hack up a system that accepts votes from all subscribers to squeak-dev and add a confirmation email mechanism to ensure one vote per person. Sure, I could subscribe 100 people to rig the election - but such a thing could pretty easily be detectable. Anyway, get something done - Cees has repeatedly shown that he wants to help - use him for god's sake. Then it is faaaar more important that you focus on 3 and 4 below IMHO.
3. You have so far only done one thing: discussing a voting system. In fact you initially got another immediate task (which as far as I can tell have been largely ignored) and you have done nothing on the most important task of finding candidates and building an awareness of what is coming on squeak-dev. If we don't have candidates it doesn't *matter* what voting system we have!
4. You are actually IMHO missing the absolutely most important risk. And no, it isn't fraud - it is the lack of participation. Just look at how many signed up on this list! Hell, I am not worried about fraud - but I am dead worried about only getting 11 people voting instead of 1000. And if the voting system for example only allows voting on one candidate for the board - then hey, it would make it even worse.
So in utterly short words: - Get a *simple* voting system set up NOW. A transparent one. - Find candidates. Start asking for them on squeak-dev. Start emailing people in private to get them to step forward. Create awareness that this is happing NOW. - Worry about the participation.
Ok, end of rant. If you are pissed off at me now and are itching to tell me all about it - wait 10 seconds and then instead decide to show me how wrong I am by getting this team to *deliver*. I don't care about ANYTHING else.
regards, Göran
PS. Why haven't you tried making this team larger? You are so worried about accusations from the community towards the board later on about the election - if I were you I would be more worried about such accusations *towards this team*.
elections@lists.squeakfoundation.org