#93 Elections: Better explain roles of Council and FESCo
Closed: Complete 7 years ago Opened 7 years ago by jflory7.

Summary

As part of the Elections discussion in #90, it would be helpful to better explain the roles of the Fedora Council and FESCo to motivate new candidates to run for election.

Analysis

One thing that was noted in our elections discussion at Flock 2016 in the CommOps Workshop was that the electable roles in Fedora can be confusing or unclear to someone who may want to run for the position. By analyzing the descriptions of these groups, summarizing their responsibilities, and helping bring more exposure to those responsibilities, it would hopefully encourage more nominations and candidates in elections.

Consider the following descriptions from the wiki pages for both FESCo and the Council (respectively):


FESCo handles the process of accepting new features, the acceptance of new packaging sponsors, Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and SIG Oversight, the packaging process, handling and enforcement of maintainer issues and other technical matters related to the distribution and its construction.


The Fedora Council is our top-level community leadership and governance body. It is responsible for stewardship of the Fedora Project as a whole, and supports the health and growth of the Fedora Community.
The Council is composed of a mix of representatives from different areas of the project, named roles appointed by Red Hat, and a variable number of seats connected to medium-term project goals. Decisions are made by a consensus process, in which we work together as a common team to find shared solutions and address concerns, with a focus on giving voice rather than on balance of power.
The Council is ultimately accountable for the Fedora Project as a whole, and is responsible for providing advice to and oversight of other Fedora governance bodies and teams as needed.


The Council has a more detailed summary, and also on their wiki page, they do have a section for "Responsibilities", although it's more general principles and large tasks instead of smaller examples of work.

To better communicate what these groups do, it could be helpful to have a series of bulletpoint responsibilities for both groups to quickly summarize the type of work these groups do, what specific kinds of decisions they make (maybe backed by examples), and a one or two-line summary of the categories both bodies assist with.

Worth noting that the purpose of doing this is not to downplay the significance or responsibility needed for these committees, but to help illuminate and demonstrate by example the type of work these groups do. By doing this, it will be help motivate potential candidates to self-nominate or community members to put out nominations for seats. By better explaining and breaking down the roles and responsibilities, communicating what people on these committees do will be easier and hopefully not as daunting to potential candidates.

The ultimate intended impact of solving this ticket is to help create a larger pool of candidates for elections and encourage participation in the nomination process.

On FAmSCo / FOSCo

FAMSCo and FOSCo also would fit under this umbrella, but it should be determined whether both bodies will exist together in the future, and if not, focus on defining the roles and responsibilities for the active one that will exist in the future.

Implementation

  1. Review existing roles and responsibilities of committees, find any other places where their roles may be explained (wiki pages, personal blog posts, etc.).
  2. Draft series of bulletpoints that summarize the work by committee members.
  3. Support these bullets with examples of past work where applicable.
  4. Write a Community Blog post summarizing what it means to be a member of each committee in $NEXT_ELECTION and emphasize the nomination process (any contributor can nominate someone or even nominate themselves!).
  5. Two weeks before the nomination deadline, help promote this article in the community to generate interest.
  6. Rinse and repeat for future elections.

CC

@bee2502 @bex @jkurik @mailga @mattdm


Discussed in 2016-11-29 meeting.

We're picking back up on some older tickets again. We wanted to help get this one rolling ASAP since December election cycles are right around the corner!

Summary

  • @meskarune File a ticket in the Fedora Council Pagure suggesting the idea of having a mentorship or training period for first-time candidates who are elected into the Council to help them get started and familiar with the position
  • @dhanesh95 Reach out to the Fedora Council, either on the mailing list or IRC, to work with them on updating the wiki page to better explain the roles, responsibilities, benefits, and skills needed to be a Council member no later than end of day, Friday, Dec. 2, 2016
  • @jflory7 Reach out to FESCo, either on the mailing list or IRC, to work with them on updating the wiki page to better explain the roles, responsibilities, benefits, and skills needed to be a FESCo member, no later than end of day, Friday, Dec. 2, 2016

Analysis

We had a fair amount of discussion about this topic in the meeting. In a nutshell, we broke up the immediate tasks into three things, as described above. @meskarune already filed the ticket in the Fedora Council Pagure about a mentorship or training program for first-time Council members during the meeting, which is awesome! For more info on that, you should follow the ticket.

@dhanesh95 and I are going to work on starting to improve the profiles / explanation of the roles of the Fedora Council (@dhanesh95) and FESCo (me). Why do this? The purpose of us making more clear and concrete examples of what it means to serve in one of these electable bodies should help improve participation and interest in the Elections. The Council has some description and when I last looked for FESCo, I couldn't find anything specific. For both bodies, it would be helpful to draw out clear descriptions of their roles and responsibilities, examples of some of the skills that are helpful to serve in this seats, and the kinds of benefits it offers (e.g. growing your own experience, having an impact on the Fedora community, etc.).

Our goal is to get discussion rolling on these things by the end of the week, and hopefully we will have some more to discuss at next week's meeting.

CC

@bee2502 @jkurik

Discussed in 2017-01-24 meeting.

Ultimately, we decided on following the Council's thoughts that their wiki page was already busy enough and that anyone running for the Council should be able to understand the roles and responsibilities of the Council from existing information and participating in meetings.

For FESCo, we still believed an improvement could be made, but we will move this as a downstream ticket to the FESCo ticketing instance. @dhanesh95 volunteered to work on this one, with a deadline of Sunday, 27 January 2017. Once the ticket is filed downstream, we agreed to close this ticket and let FESCo determine what is best to describe their operations as they see fit.

@dhanesh95 volunteered to work on this one, with a deadline of Sunday, 27 January 2017. Once the ticket is filed downstream, we agreed to close this ticket and let FESCo determine what is best to describe their operations as they see fit.

I've posted a comment on the FESCo ticket. I think we can safely close this issue now.

@dhanesh95 volunteered to work on this one, with a deadline of Sunday, 27 January 2017. Once the ticket is filed downstream, we agreed to close this ticket and let FESCo determine what is best to describe their operations as they see fit.

I've posted a comment on the FESCo ticket. I think we can safely close this issue now.

@dhanesh95 Agreed. Closing the ticket as complete.

@jflory7 changed the status to Closed

7 years ago

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