RE: Don't disclose election results

> I guess you can count me as disappointed we didn't run a parallel trial ballot 
Can this CG quickly come to consensus that this is a Good Idea that should be pursued by the AB/AC/Team and implemented by the Fall TAG election?  

Does anyone disagree, whatever our opinions on STV?

-----Original Message-----
From: David Singer [mailto:singer@apple.com] 
Sent: Thursday, June 5, 2014 1:29 PM
To: W3C Process Community Group
Subject: Re: Don't disclose election results

I guess you can count me as disappointed we didn't run a parallel trial ballot which asked one or two more questions and used the statistics of that to learn something.

extra questions might have included:

* rank in order
* rate as preferred/acceptable/tolerable/unacceptable
* you didn't vote for 5; choose
  - I didn't know enough candidates
  - there were fewer than 5 I found preferable
  - I am a Strategic Voter (trained)
...

but it would have taken time to design and select the questions, and to tabulate the results;  and agreement from all concerned that the informative result would not be used to call into question the official normative result.

On Jun 4, 2014, at 15:44 , Delfi Ramirez <delfin@delfiramirez.info> wrote:

> Dear all:
> 
> I have been quietly and deeply following yourconversation/discussion about the possibility to introduce democratic procedural methods for the W3C.
> 
> As a public participant of this group, and not being affiliated --yet 
> --  with any corp that can represent a  candidate,  I agree completely 
> with the observations of Charles expressed in the last email.-
> 
> There is the need to be cautios publishing data, even if we advocate for an open web.
> 
> There is also the need for transparency and the use of democratic methods like elections are. Even if we all belong to different cultures or scenarios. And considering the W3C as a consortium. I do not see this as problem, but as an advantage.
> 
> Consortiums may advocate and put in practice for themselves democratic behaviours and protocols internally. This is good. It brings whealth and health to the consortium and, besides,  tangential value for the companies who take part of this consortium.
> 
> Being a public member, with no other interest than to spread and advocate  the goods of web standards and apply them in fields of work within companies or in companies, I would be pleased to see that the consortium has similar democratic rules as a held has with its stakeholders or leveraged shareholders. A reduced but positive election system.
> 
> To vote means to participate, and to participate means offering solutions and work.
> 
> My interests and appreciation for the work done by the W3C, where I have been kindly invited and where I am taking part since the year 1999,  is mainly because I consider it focused on a public common, this is the web standards, and the web.
> 
> As it is said before, to preserve the quality and excellence of the work done by Chairsand Commitee of the W3C, the observations of Charles expressed in the last email:
> 
> - be cautious.
> 
> - be transparent.
> 
> - promote and advocate for all the necessary members.
> 
> - organize internal charts
> 
> - have an architecture of "presentation" which may allow the internal infomation retrieved, to be this clear and comprehensible.
> 
>  
> cheers
> 
>  
>  
> On 2014-06-04 23:54, Charles McCathie Nevile wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 04 Jun 2014 11:24:45 +0200, Jean-Charles (JC) Verdié < 
>> jicheu@yahoo.fr> wrote:
>>> (omnibus reply) * I acknowledge there are cultural differences which make it tricky to publish results given it was not stated before the election began. But this is an assumption. That'd be great if someone neutral (within the team?) contacted each candidate in person to get their actual feeling about it.
>> I'm not sure I qualify as neutral. But I have talked to a lot of 
>> candidates and potential candidates over the years, and I thnk it is 
>> pretty clear that right now publishing the number of votes named 
>> candidates receive would have a chilling effect on how willing some 
>> good candidates are to stand.
>> 
>>> * I'm not sure these cultural differences still make sense when it comes to anonymised results. If we read that candidate "A" got 3 ballots and candidate "B" got 98, that's probably fine with respect to the future life of candidate "JC" or "Virginie", given that it's not so easy (out of 12 people) to identify who is A and who is B.
>> Right. For the moment, I would not support releasing more identifying 
>> information than that.
>> 
>>> * We're not a democracy nor a country FWIW. We belong to a consortium and our companies pay an insane amount of money to get there.
>> (I'm not sure it is insane - in our case we regard it as an important 
>> investment, if not a cheap one - but Yeah).
>> 
>> Indeed. And when it comes to voting, we are a relatively small group 
>> who find such data about what our competitors do quite valuable. 
>> Which is why I think it is reasonable to be cautious in releasing it. 
>> I believe that too much transparency will have an effect on the way 
>> votes are cast, and I doubt this would be a good thing.
>> 
>> Secret ballots are secret for good reasons. Given the size of our 
>> community, it isn't unfeasible to make some decent guesses and have a 
>> pretty strong sense about what the data really means,
>> 
>>> .I'd like to understand how such an amount of money do not bring people to believe it's important to contribute, at least when it comes to voting (for AB/TAG but also for chartering). * Same thing on different angle, I was not aware of such a poor engagement. Probably some more work needs to be done here. AB? Elsewhere? I'll be happy to help.
>> I think it is unfortunate that AC members cannot afford to be more 
>> engaged. But then, a lot of the members are quite small, and the cost 
>> of serious engagement in everything the AC does is quite high. 
>> Focusing on areas of priority to an individual member makes sense, so 
>> I doubt we'll ever get the sort of engagement we would really like to 
>> have. Indeed, if we are successful in becoming more directly relevant 
>> for developers and others on a large scale, I suspect the price will 
>> be that they are even less able to follow everything we do - not 
>> because it isn't transparent but because the volume of information is too great.
>> 
>> A couple of things can help:
>> + dashboards
>> + information architecture
>> 
>> W3C has a pretty chaotic, as well as large, pile of information it 
>> produces. This is not altogether a surprise - they devote their 
>> resources to the most urgent things we scream for, as a rule, and a 
>> little to the important things that have to be done. But taming and 
>> chanelling the information flow to make it more efficient to process, 
>> and therefore more effective, is a major task, and a very difficult 
>> one. Helping with that strikes me as the single most valuable thing to do to increase engagement.
>> 
>>> * As Daniel stated for himself regarding last year's ballot, I'd really like to know my own results. It's important for me to know if I needed two other ballots to get elected or if I had 0 casts. That would determine my future willingness to run again or not BTW. If this is really humiliating then may be the W3C can communicate this information privately to candidates.
>> I agree this information should be available to individual candidates 
>> if they want it, in confidence (i.e. they would not be at liberty to 
>> start de-anonymising the public data without more general consent).
>> 
>>> * I don't mix transparency with trust. I trust the W3C not to tamper with the results (but I trusted a lot of companies not to tamper with my data until some revelations happened last year so...). but trusting the W3C does not mean I do not want to understand what's going on. The results of the last 2 AB ballots bring a lot of information about the direction the AC Reps want the consortium to take, detailed results would probably bring a lot of additional valuable data.
>> Agreed.
>> 
>> cheers
>> 
>> 
>> -- Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex 
>> chaals@yandex-team.ru Find more at http://yandex.com
> --
> delfin@delfiramirez.info
> http://delfiramirez.info
> skype username: segonquart
> twitter:@delfinramirez
> common weblog: http://delfiramirez.blogspot.com
> about: Technology Lover & good cook.
> place: Somewhere over Europe.

David Singer
Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Thursday, 5 June 2014 21:33:44 UTC