Hello, Am Mittwoch, 9. Dezember 2020, 14:13:12 CET schrieb Adrien Glauser:
Not taking sides, but from a 10'000 foot view are the following statements true? 1. As of now there is no written Rule anywhere in the "normative" body of openSUSE that says what Board folks or former Board folks can say about a candidate on public platforms during an electoral period. Both groups are treated like normal folks even though they are incommensurably more influential than any single individual who doesn't belong to this categories. 2. Usually it's good to provide rules like that. This makes electoral period fairer to all parties involved, and fosters candidates <-> members communication. 3. If such a rule had been there, probably Mark's resignation would have been prevented, and usually things won't be so messy with oS governance.
I fully agree with your goal. However I'm not sure if we need to invent a rule for that, or if applying existing rules would be the better way to reach the goal. I also think that Simon has a fair point - current and past board members might be able to ask good questions that others can't think of. As long as these questions are asked - in a fair way - to multiple or all candidates (obviously, exceptions might apply if the question is based on a statement of a board candidate) - without putting too much own opinion into the question and - can be answered without needing "insider knownledge", especially if some of the candidates already have board experience I don't see a serious problem with current or former board members asking questions. Heck, what I just described can be summed up as "common sense", and should apply to everybody. Looking at what happened during this and the last two elections, I can see that _a single person_ (directly or indirectly) caused all the mess we have seen. So let me try to come up with a rule proposal (intentionally slightly simplified, see [1]) Current and former board members should only ask sane questions. Wait, does that allow the reverse argument that other people are allowed to ask insane questions? Let's fix that: People should only ask sane questions. Much better, that helps to prevent insane questions. But then, isn't that something that is a very obvious statement? Yes, it is, and we even have a written rule for that: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Guiding_principles We value... [...] ... respect for other persons and their contributions, for other opinions and beliefs. We listen to arguments and address problems in a constructive and open way. We believe that a diverse community based on mutual respect is the base for a creative and productive environment enabling the project to be truly successful. We don't tolerate discrimination and aim at creating an environment where people feel accepted and safe from offense. IMHO what that single person who caused all this mess did clearly violates the guiding principles, and we already have rules that the board can for example ban someone from the mailinglists for breaking the guiding principles. Which leads to my final question: Is there something left that we need a rule for, or is it enough to apply the existing rules? Regards, Christian Boltz [1] Note that "questions" is meant in a very broad sense. It's meant to also include comments etc. The reason I only use "questions" in my proposed rules is to keep them simple and easy to read. Besides that - when reaching the final proposal, this detail doesn't matter anyway ;-) -- Das wird mit TCPA alles vorbei sein. Nicht, dass Windows dann stabiler läuft, aber auch die Abstürze sind zertifiziert. [Matthias Houdek in linux-liste]