FESCo critique (was: Re: [Bug 178162] Review Request: libgeotiff)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 07:31:45 -0600, Josh Boyer wrote:

> > Food for thought: Self-nominees who had less than 50% of the possible
> > number of votes were able to enter FESCo. So, even if the majority of
> > contributors did not vote for them, they were able to join FESCo. It was
> > impossible to vote "against" somebody by not voting for him.
> 
> I'd like to personally state that if the community thinks that I as a
> FESCo member am not doing a good job for Extras, then they only need to
> speak up.  Should a large majority call for me to step down, I would do
> so willingly.  Just my personal thought on that.

Assume FESCo continues having 13 seats. Further assume there are 13
nominees prior to the next election. If 60% of the voters from the
community didn't want member X in FESCo, what could they do if the old
voting scheme was still in place?

> > For many decisions, FESCo's +1/-1 style votings are not even needed.
> > They just add overhead.
> 
> Example?

In the meeting logs. ;o)

> > What of
> > 
> >   http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SteeringCommittee/Meetings
> > 
> > is still relevant? As a new contributor, how could I learn about past
> > FESCo decisions and the decision of the individual members?
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean.  Those are the meeting logs.  They are all
> relevant to the history of FESCo...

What I mean is:

That Wiki section has the structure of an archive, and the meeting minutes
are misplaced. Assume I return from a four weeks vacation. How am I
supposed to learn what important things FESCO has decided on during that
time and also learn who from FESCo decided how? I see phrases like "voted
down" and "vetoed", but the details are hidden like a needle in a
haystack.  And no, you don't want your contributors to skim over four
meeting minutes in search of anything relevant which is burried beneath
"ongoing" action items. So, a split between relevant decisions and normal
FESCo chat stuff would be much appreciated.

Further, one reason I stepped down from FESCo, inspite of a sufficient
number of votes, is that I felt I had been absent from too many meetings.

Hence my interest in whether current FESCo members attend meetings more
often, and if not, whether they actively pursue Fedora Extras' goals or
what else they do. In recent meeting minutes the active members are listed
by name, missing members are not.