Re: Don't disclose election results

On 6/4/2014 6:44 PM, Delfi Ramirez wrote:
>
> Dear all:
>
> I have been quietly and deeply following yourconversation/discussion 
> about the possibility to introduce democratic procedural methods for 
> the W3C.
>

I would be interested in why you think the current election methods are 
not democratic.

There are many ways to run an election; each has advantages and 
disadvantages.  Some have argued passionately on this thread for STV; 
others have said that is too complicated.  But in any case, I don't 
understand why it would be characterized as not democratic.

> 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  <mailto: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, Yandexchaals@yandex-team.ru  <mailto:chaals@yandex-team.ru>  Find more athttp://yandex.com  
> -- 
> delfin@delfiramirez.info <mailto:delfin@delfiramirez.info>
> http://delfiramirez.info <http://delfiramirez.info/>
> skype username: segonquart
> twitter:@delfinramirez
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