Hi folks,
These have come up before, but I don't think the board has ever
actually voted on them as an agenda item (forgive me if I'm wrong, but
I found no record of it).
Therefore, I would like these two membership-related proposals to be
picked up for discussion and voting by the board:
1) Make the publication of members' real names optional
This has come up a number of times, and there is broad consensus that
we don't need to publish real names of our members, even if we may
need to have them privately on file.
This proposal would be to explicitly permit members to reveal their
names only to the XSF Secretary, and allow pseudonyms to be used
elsewhere.
I believe that adoption of this proposal would help encourage more
people to join the XSF as members, who may be unwilling to publish
their real name on the internet, or connect their identity with the
XSF (for which I can think of countless possible reasons).
I'm not absolutely against this, and could be persuaded, but my concern is that members have voting rights, and ultimately control the Foundation.
We are, and should remain, an open and entirely transparent organisation.
I don't know of another standards organisation that allows for voting rights under pseudonyms.
IETF publishes full names for IESG, IAB, Nomcom, etc, for example.
I can be persuaded to change my mind, of course, and I do understand (and worry) that some people may have legitimate reasons why they do not want their name publicly listed.
2) Cease publishing vote tallies for membership applications
It has been raised before, by someone who said it contributed to not
renewing their membership, that the presence of "no" votes on the
membership page was not a good experience.
Realistically, it is very rare for members to be accepted unanimously
(most people have some "no" votes, and this will only increase as our
membership increases). However, I fear that publishing the vote counts
turns it into something of an unnecessary popularity contest, even if
it isn't aiming to be one. It's not necessary for them to be public,
as long as we keep the results on file.
For people who are part of minorities in our community, it can be
disconcerting to be told that some people voted against them, and to
have a publicly visible record and ranking.
Therefore I am proposing reduction of our membership results to a list
of accepted members instead of publishing tallies publicly.
I am not proposing changes to our council or board elections, as I
think those would need additional consideration and may warrant
greater transparency.
I'm fine with the voting tallies not being public, I think that's fine to change. I'll be disappointed in not being able to see how many people I can get to vote against me, but I do understand that it's not necessary to be public and could very easily upset people.
I also agree with the implied suggestion that we only list people who get voted in, and not those that failed to get the votes.
Dave.