I figured instead of just complaining I would offer some practical fixes which would avoid the issue of disfranchising in the future.
First let’s examine why this is is an issue. In order to become a member of the Foundation one must prove they have worked on significant pieces of GNOME and have two references to back them up. A lot of people I know balk at even going through this first step because as far as they can see there is little benefit to becoming a member. I try to remind them that voting is an important benefit. During my tenure as a Foundation Board member we saw this as an issue and tried to promote Foundation participation by those in the GNOME Community. Among other things we required people receiving funding from the foundation to apply for membership at some point in the future. However the problem still remains that being a member constitutes a voting ballot once a year (1 and a half years during my tenure due to realigning election years) and little else (there is the occasional smaller ballot). A foundation member also has to renew their membership once every two years. So if a member has to think about Foundation process once a year and membership process once every two years it is easy for membership to laps until a member finds themselves in the quandary I now find myself in. To further exacerbate the situation it is a known issue by the membership and election committees that spam filters eat their e-mails and that the only reminders sent out are the exact same e-mails.
So how do we fix this?
Long Term Solutions
1.) Make registration an in person event to compliment the reminder e-mails – one of the things Foundation Members tend to do every year is go to one of the many events the Foundation sponsors. If there is a registration system their names should be flagged and they given the opportunity to renew their membership if it is set to expire in less than a year. This should be an offline form that is processed at a later date as we all know how bad conference networking can be. This can be a stipulation to organizers for receiving funding from the Board.
2.) Remind people when they are interacting with the Foundation process – Since voting happens every year, why not warn people when they vote that they will not be eligible for the next years vote unless they reregister at some point during the year?
Short Term Solution
All those who were denied a vote and who voted in last years elections should be allowed to reregister for this vote and given a ballot.
[read this post in: ar de es fr it ja ko pt ru zh-CN ]
I don’t mean to be contrary, but I think your first suggestion re: in-person verification is unreasonable. I’ve been a foundation member for some time now, but I am the only foundation member in my area. It would require that I or someone else travel in order to verify or renew membership. Perhaps this is not a problem for some, but it’d be far too difficult for the majority.
A more public reminder pre-election is something that can and probably should be done. Considering there is nothing that can be done about end-user Spam filters, or emails that simply sink to the bottom of the queue I suggest the option moving forward to have the Membership Committee and other prominent groups (ie; the board) blog about membership verification and renewal some point before elections begin. This way it is public, everyone is reminded (bypassing email issues) and everyone has a chance to verify their membership. If they can’t be bothered to verify that their membership is current, the fault is on their end and they have no case.
I vote (as a volunteer on the Membership Committee) that your short-term solution be granted.
PS. My vote doesn’t resolve the issue on it’s own. The full membership committee will need to approve or deny the solution.
Comment by Christer Edwards — June 3, 2011 @ 10:02 am
The in-person is an optional step to just bring membership to the forefront of events. It isn’t the required way to do things. We would still have the current forms. The upside is we get more people to register for the first time also
Comment by J5 — June 3, 2011 @ 10:08 am
I agree. I was myself nearly out of this election. As I was thinking about standing for election, I had a look at the members list and realized I was not in.
That was purely by pure luck.
I think that being a member should be something more proeminent with several advantages like Ubuntu is doing.
As a quick fix, we could also have a fixed renewal period every two years which would be the same for everyone. That way, there could be posts on planet.gnome saying “We are in a renewal period, check that you’ve received the mail”.
I’m not sure on how to fix the situation but I agree that there’s a problem.
Comment by Ploum — June 3, 2011 @ 11:09 am
What about auto-renewals? For example if you vote or commit anything to GNOME repositories, then your membership would be automatically renewed for the following two years. I think that would make sense.
Comment by Tommi Vainikainen — June 3, 2011 @ 3:17 pm
What about no need for renewals? You are always allowed to vote. Once an election is announced you get to request a token via email/webform and once you get it you can vote.
Inactive members aren’t gonna vote anyway.
Comment by Benjamin Otte — June 3, 2011 @ 4:27 pm
How about providing foundation members a web-login to gnome.org? That way you’d get notified about expiring membership by reading PGO. As an idea.
Comment by Mathias Hasselmann — June 3, 2011 @ 5:06 pm
Automatic renewal if one commits to git.gnome.org sounds like a good solution to me – that is if the intention of the foundation board is to represent those who actually build GNOME.
(speaking as someone who was a foundation member until a few years ago, and who missed his renew email in the SPAM folder and never saw the benefit in re-applying)
Comment by John Stowers — June 3, 2011 @ 5:58 pm