Open Stack

TL;DR: how about we adopt a "soft enforcement" model, relying 
       on sound judgement and good faith within the community?


Hi Folks,

I'm concerned that the "expected election behaviour" review[1]
is not converging on the optimal approach, partially due to the
initial concentration on the procedural aspects of the proposal.

This concentration was natural enough, due to shortcomings such
as the lack of any provision for a right of reply, or the
fuzziness around who was capable of deciding a violation had
occurred and imposing the stiff penalties envisaged.

However, I think we should take a step back at this stage and
reconsider the whole approach. Looking at this in the round, as
I see it, the approach mooted seems to suffer from a fundamental
flaw.

Specifically, in holding individuals to the community code of
conduct[2] in a very *strict* sense (under pain of severe career
damage), when much of that code is written in an aspirational
style, and so is not very suitable for use as an *objective*
standard.

The reference to "the spirit of the OpenStack ideals" ideals is
even more problematic in that sense. Ideals by their nature are
*idealized* versions of reality. So IMHO it's not workable to
infuse an aspiration to meet these laudable ideals, with the
language of abuse, violations, investigation, punishment etc.
In fact it strikes me as a tad Orwellian to do so.

So I wanted to throw an alternative idea out onto the table ...

How about we rely instead on the values and attributes that
actually make our community strong?

Specifically: maturity, honesty, and a self-correcting nature.

How about we simply require that each candidate for a TC or PTL
election gives a simple undertaking in their self-nomination mail,
along the lines of:

"I undertake to respect the election process, as required by
the community code of conduct.

I also undertake not to engage in campaign practices that the
community has considered objectionable in the past, including
but not limited to, unsolicited mail shots and private campaign
events.

If my behavior during this election period does not live up to
those standards, please feel free to call me out on it on this
mailing list and/or withhold your vote."

We then rely on:

  (a) the self-policing nature of an honest, open community

and:

  (b) the maturity and sound judgement within that community
      giving us the ability to quickly spot and disregard any
      frivolous reports of mis-behavior

So no need for heavy-weight inquisitions, no need to interrupt the
election process, no need for handing out of stiff penalties such
as termination of membership.

Instead, we simply rely on good faith and sound judgement within
the community.

TBH I think we're pretty good at making ourselves heard when
needs be, and also pretty good at filtering through the noise. 

So I would trust the electorate to apply their judgement, filter
out those reports of bad practice that they consider frivolous or
tending to make mischief, or conversely to withhold their vote if
they consider the practice reported to be unacceptable.

If someone has already cast their vote when the report of some
questionable behavior surfaces, well so be it. The electorate
has a long memory and most successful candidates end up running
again for subsequent elections (e.g. a follow-on term as PTL,
or for the TC).

The key strength of this alternative approach IMO is that it
directly relies on the *actual* values of the community, as
opposed to attempting to codify those values, a priori.

Just my $0.02 ...

Cheers,
Eoghan

[1] https://review.openstack.org/98675
[2] http://www.openstack.org/legal/community-code-of-conduct