When EPEL was originally set up, the 'board' was elected similarly to FESCO and other committees. I think we ended that after we had a couple of elections with fewer people running than places and the members mostly being appointed. At that point we 'joked' about the seats being life appointments and at some point we took it seriously.

• How many committee members should there be? (Currently 7)
  I would say 7 is a good number for the amount of work needed to keep 3-4 EL releases working.
• Is this a "lifelong"[1] setting? If not, how long should it be?
  We have done this, but I think it is becomes an obligation after a while you feel you can't give up. Looking back as an emeritus, I would have done better with some feedback from the users that my work was what was wanted or someone else.
• Does the emeritus status give any weight to your vote?
  It allows me to take over the EPEL football when the chair is not around. There may also be some powers of coup-de-tat but I would have to find the paperwork. Seriously.. no. emeritus gives no votes and not power. [Or at least I have never thought I actually did. If people have felt otherwise, my apologies for not taking the position more seriously or causing harm.]
• How does one get on the committee?
  Usually someone leaves and you have shown up enough that the rest of the people appoint you to the committee
• How does one step down from the committee temporarily?
  You usually say I can't meet obligations for N time and need to step away. I think I have seen this once. We did not appoint anyone during that time away.
• How does one step down from the committee permanently?
  You email the list and go to a meeting announcing you are stepping away permanently. It is accepted and someone new is appointed in your place.

Personally I would like to see a 1 year seating and elections back. If there are not enough people to fill positions, the scope and size of what EPEL can do should be lowered appropriately and the user community made aware that 'you don't show up, you don't get to choose the soup made that day.'

Number of Committee Members: 7

After discussions in the EPEL Steering Committee 7 seems like the right number.

Lifetime of Committee Members

There are two different ideas for this.

Lifelong - Basically as long as the person wants.
Pro: Less energy dealing with changes.
Pro: It's what we currently do.
Con: If a person wants to step down it feels permanent since it's rare that it happens.
Con: It doesn't allow much of a rotation.

Set Time - A set period of time and then some type of "election"
It could be yearly. But it sounds like people are thinking of two years with staggered elections.
Pro: It would allow people to step down when they are busy, and come back when they have time.
Pro: It allows a rotation of people on the committee.
Con: It represents a change
Con: Energy/time has to be used each year to setup/do the "elections"
Neutral: "Election" has to be defined. Is it a formal vote, a consensus, what.

Note: For both Lifelong or Set Time, we need to document how one would step down if the need arises.

I've started #242 to discuss formalizing the voting process.

+1 on set time option.

Number of Committee Members: 7

After discussions in the EPEL Steering Committee 7 seems like the right number.

After more discussion at the meeting today, it was decided that 7 would be the maximum number of committee members. If there comes a time when we don't have enough people wanting to be on the committee, we can drop the number. But we should try to keep it at an odd number.

Lifetime of Committee Members

There are two different ideas for this.

Lifelong - Basically as long as the person wants.
Pro: Less energy dealing with changes.
Pro: It's what we currently do.
Con: If a person wants to step down it feels permanent since it's rare that it happens.
Con: It doesn't allow much of a rotation.

Set Time - A set period of time and then some type of "election"
It could be yearly. But it sounds like people are thinking of two years with staggered elections.
Pro: It would allow people to step down when they are busy, and come back when they have time.
Pro: It allows a rotation of people on the committee.
Con: It represents a change
Con: Energy/time has to be used each year to setup/do the "elections"
Neutral: "Election" has to be defined. Is it a formal vote, a consensus, what.

Note: For both Lifelong or Set Time, we need to document how one would step down if the need arises.

After discussion in this weeks meeting, it appears that we are leaning heavily towards Set Time, but we didn't feel that we should vote on it yet.

This led us to discussing how committee members would be elected. It seems there was three different ways for elections.

Election by Current Committee and/or EPEL-Packaging-SIG
There wasn't too much discussion about this, but it did come up.
Pro: No Ballot Box stuffing
Pro: The current committee and SIG usually knows who has been doing the work.
Pro: Easy to do.
Con: No community involvement (short sentence, major issue)
Con: Possible for the committee to become an "echo chamber"

Community Election setup by current EPEL Steering Committee
I believe this was only mentioned once.
Con: Ain't nobody got time for that (or something to that effect)

Community Election piggyback on Fedora Elections
This had most of the discussions.
Pro: A large community involvement
Pro: Infrastructure and Standards already setup.
Pro: Possibility to get more people involved in EPEL
Pro: Possibility to get more people involved in Fedora
Con: Possibility of people voting that don't know/care about EPEL
Con: Possible Ballot Box Stuffing

Since voting via Fedora Elections had most of the discussion, I will point out a couple of the highlights.
- It was pointed out that Fedora Elections don't have huge turnouts. That lowers the concerns about Ballot Box Stuffing, as well as people voting who don't know or care about EPEL.
- We should send out announcements to epel-devel, epel-announce, and the Fedora channels about the elections.

Con: Possibility of people voting that don't know/care about EPEL

I had a followup thought about this after the meeting. Fedora elections are optional. There is a badge for participating, but it doesn't require voting in every election, just in one each cycle. So for example, if there is an election cycle with FESCo, Council, and Mindshare elections, someone could vote in the Council and Mindshare elections and skip the FESCo one for whatever reason (and still get the badge for that cycle). The same would be true for an EPEL election in the piggyback approach. Fedorans that don't feel knowledgeable about EPEL, or simply don't care about it, can skip that election and vote in the others.

This weeks discussion formalized several things.

• Number of Committee Members: 7 Can be fewer if needs to be.
• Lifetime of Committee Members: Set Term
• Method of Voting for Committee: Community Election, Piggyback on Fedora Voting
• Vote How Often: Once a year in Fedora's Spring Vote - 3 members one year, 4 members the next year

I will take this off the meeting agenda. I will writeup a new committee page for the "new" documentation. (The non-wiki documentation)

Pull request with the new page is here
https://pagure.io/epel/pull-request/246

After discussion in meeting and comment, and a few minor edits, the pull request has been merged. We have the new policy in place.