[Linux-aus] Voting has started

[Jonathan Oxer]

On 1/18/06, skribe <skribe at amber.com.au> wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jan 2006 09:44, Jonathan Oxer wrote:
> > The second part of the page lists the candidates for each position,
> > along with their spiel. The people listed as candidates are the only
> > ones who actually appear on the ballot.
>
> I'm going to insist on being a pendant about this.  Sorry.

Hehe, you know that I *have* to take the bait on this one! If it were
any other word in the email I wouldn't have even noticed:

s/pendant/pedant/

;-)

> Pia claimed that the reason that noms were sent to the list was because of
> transparency.  This is also about transparency.  If a candidate who has the
> required number of noms has declined or withdrawn then that needs to be
> included on the noms page.

I assume you mean "nominee who has the required number of noms" since
they don't actually become candidates unless they accept the
nomination, which is the whole point of the discussion.

Nominees were specifically told that if they did not wish to accept
their nomination they were welcome to respond with a note to that
effect. You can see this on Michael Davies' nomination comments, for
example, where he explains that he's not going to accept the
nomination and why. They also have the option of saying so to the
linux-aus list if they choose.

Of course, it's up to the nominees to do either of those things and
it's just as legitimate for a nominee to have no interest in the
election and simply ignore the fact that they've been nominated. If
that happens there'll be no indication of their intent in the
"Nominations" section. Therefore the authoritative list for candidates
is the Candidates section, and the names that appear in the
Nominations section is irrelevant at the point that voting starts.
It's only the candidates that matter.

> The other alternative is for you to have a separate page for all the
> candidates, not just those nominated. The number of candidates needs to match
> those on the ballot.  It would make it easier to read their blurbs as well.

You're right, the display formatting could probably be made a bit
easier to follow. It ends up being a very long page when all the
spiels are added and both nominations and candidates are listed. I'm
sure Stewart would be interested to hear suggestions about better ways
to display the information, but as other people have mentioned the
voting code is not going to be changed while voting is in progress so
any suggestions will have to wait until after the AGM to be
implemented.

Cheers   :-)

Jonathan