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Community Council/Council voting rights

The following referendum is to decide once and for all what requirements will be needed of Maemo community members before they may vote in community council elections. The choices proposed are to maintain the current levels, to reduce the karma requirement to 10, to reduce the karma requirement to 10 and allow anyone with an account over 1 year old to vote, or to drop all requirements other than having a maemo.org account.

To vote, please visit the voting page.

[edit] Proposed options

The changes mentioned below will be made to item #3 in the Council election process for all Community Council elections after the Q1 2009 election.

1. 25 karma minimum and 3 month old account (status quo)
   • Item #3 remains "Only community members who have had maemo.org accounts for over 3 months, and have karma of 25 or above, may vote."
2. 10 karma point minimum and 3 month old account
   • Item #3 becomes "Only community members who have had maemo.org accounts for over 3 months, and have karma of 10 or above, may vote."
   • The advantage of this option is that it requires both a knowledge of the community and some contribution before you are entitled to vote. The disadvantage is that it may not take into account certain contributions to the community which are not included in the calculation of karma.
3. 10 karma point minimum or 12 month old account
   • Item #3 becomes "Only community members who have had maemo.org accounts for over 12 months, or have karma of 10 or above, may vote."
   • The advantage of this method over the second is that members who have created an account will eventually get a vote, regardless of whether their contributions are included in the karma calculation. The disadvantage is that over time more and more of the electorate will be made up of people whose accounts are inactive, and who are no longer in touch with the community.
4. Karma ignored, account age ignored
   • Item #3 becomes "Anybody with a maemo.org account will be entitled to a vote."
   • The advantage of this method is that it is very easy to gain a right to vote in Maemo council elections and the council makeup is likely to be representative of more Maemo users, not just contributors to the Maemo community. These are also the disadvantages, as some community members wish the council to focus on active contributors and ballot stuffing through mass creation of accounts before an election becomes possible. It also becomes trivial for someone who has put lots of work into the community (which would be recognised by more active members) to be overlooked in favour of the author of a killer app, but who may just be throwing releases "over the wall" to the "real" community.
5. None of the above.
   • This option allows you to indicate that you think none of the options were satisfactory.