Re: Criteria for a successful DPL board
On Sun, Feb 18, 2007 at 08:34:09PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > Now, conventional wisdom says that optimal teams (that's teams rather than
> > just groups) are composed of 5 or 7 people.
>
> I don't think we'll have any problem as there's no real limiting factor.
> When you handle very simple tasks, only one can do it at a time and having
> more only lead to troubles. However when most of the expected work is
> "discussing issues" and "taking decisions" I don't think that the number
> is a problem, but rather an advantage.
I think it is, because there will always be a few people demotivated by
a too large group. They will feel that their voice makes no difference,
and/or that someone else is probably going to voice the same opinion as
they would, so they won't participate.
Of all the cliches in today's popular psychology :) I've actually seen this
one to be true in the real world. :/
> One of the key points that is interesting in the board that I propose, is
> the principle of 'discussion by proxy' so we really need some diversity in
> the board otherwise the decisions may be too far from the real consensus
> of the project.
>
> If the board wants to be successful leading the project, it will have to
> take decisions instead of letting ambiguous situations continue forever,
> but those decisions must match as closely as possible what the project
> would have decided by himself via a GR.
>
> That's why I think we can lead even with diversity in the board.
I'm not convinced, because letting ambiguous sitations continue forever
has been sort of a norm so far, in part because the ratio was 1000:1;
if we just improve that to 1000:10, that in itself doesn't necessarily
fix the problem; but the *right* 10 (or 3 or 5) might.
> > In the first case, election is easier, because we just scoop off the top
> > >5 on the vote result, and throw them in; in the second case, the
> > election is tricky, because how do you regulate nuances to make sure no
> > incompatible people are thrown together?
>
> Yes, this is really something problematic, in particular when the DPL
> elections tends to always interest one or two candidates which are known
> to have problems within the community. On the other hand, it's easy to
> rank them below NOTA... and we can decide that the candidates must be
> acceptable to 70% of the voters (so they should not be below NOTA more
> than 30% of the votes).
That also has a problem with leading to a deadlock, you'd need a strategy
for working around that.
> > So, I'm thinking a compromise on the second case should do the trick:
> > * elect the top-leader as the first on the vote tally, regardless of
> > platform
> > * have a 3- or 5-member leadership team, selected by the top-leader
> > but composed from the rest of the winning vote tally, where by "winning"
> > I mean those top 3 or top 5 who win over NOTA
>
> it's not clear how the top-leader select here... how can you choose 3
> other out of the top-3 of the other candidates ? There's no choice to do
> in that case...
If there are only 3 who win over NOTA, then the top-leader only has 2 to
choose from :)
> > * this selection must be based on a public pre-vote and post-vote discussion
> > on platform compatibility, with veto rights by someone, maybe secretary?
>
> I like the principle of the top-leader with the tie-breaker vote. I don't
> think that he should select the other members of the DPL board however,
> but we must make sure that the other members are able to work in teams. I
> think that the above-NOTA quorum could be used to ensure that.
The above-NOTA quorum will give you generally acceptable candidates, but
that alone is not a guarantee that they will mutually get along good enough
to be a good leadership team.
--
2. That which causes joy or happiness.
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