Java Games Community Board Elections

General Discussions
#1

Election Time!!! Help shape the future of the Java Games Community!

Please cast your ballots before Friday, February 13th. votes received after 8pm on the last day of voting will not be counted. The two nominees with the greatest number of votes at that time will take their place on the Community Board along with a third member, a Sun employee, chosen by Sun Microsystems.

Election results will be announced immediately following the close of the election.

The BOD will be responsible for promoting the Java Games Open Source Community within the game development community, overseeing community policy, settling disputes within the community and driving the future direction of the community. For a draft of the proposed set of Community Board rules see:

https://games.dev.java.net/JavaGamesBoardRules.html

The Board Rules will be finalized by the board following the elections.

VOTE NOW - Java Games Community Board Elections - VOTE NOW

#2

I send out a big digital handshake and kiss to all babies of Java Games Community Board citizens!

Good luck to all the candidates!

#3

Questions?

  1. Didn’t BlahBlahBlahBlah nominate himself?

  2. Its still not really been made clear what the point of this board is. What will they actually do?

  3. Where is the abstain button? (not that I’m going to use it, but it would be an interesting indicator as to support for this concept).

Kev

#4

That’s certainly a tough vote. Can’t we vote for all of them to be on the board? About time we had a bit more community influence :wink:

Cas :slight_smile:

#5

[quote]Questions?

  1. Didn’t BlahBlahBlahBlah nominate himself?
    [/quote]
    Yep. Perhaps I’ve been rejected? I thought several others had (been) nominated too, given the contents of the other thread.

(begins to wonder what’s going on)

#6

Personally, I’d have to abstain at the moment (although, as noted, there’s currently no option to :)).

[] I’m not sure why I’d vote for each of the different candidates, two of them I basically don’t know at all (are we expected to go and read all their back-posts in all forums that we don’t necessarily normally read, to try and work out how suitable they’d be?). Some background on each would be rather helpful…
[] I don’t really know what kind of person we’re looking for; I’d prefer some discussion with everyone else before I even considered a vote. Or perhaps the GTG has some advice on suitability, given they’re selecting their own candidate? The only “discussion” so far has consisted almost entirely of a few questions lobbed at the GTG, and one or two people’s brief opinions.
[list]
[] e.g. would it be stupid to say I wanted one from my own timezone/country? Certainly it can be a PITA working with people 5-8 hours different all the time…
[] e.g. what time commitmemt is necessary, and how much time do each of these people have? Does this even matter? Who knows?
[] (I don’t just want answers to those two questions, just giving examples of why I feel inadequately advised to make any serious decision on this right now. Or perhaps we are taking this too seriously, and shouldn’t really care…).
[] EDIT: having chaired several committees before, including big voluntary ones, I can probably still remember most of the “standard questions”. Given the high percentage of volunteers who either do absolutely nothing, or just spend their time networking for personal gain, it’s usually worth quite a bit of “filtering” at election time using solid criteria. “Votes of no confidence” tend to be very very under-used (people are too nice/polite/forgiving), although I’ve been mean enough to call them more than once, when needed ;D. My experience, though, has been with committees with 5 and 6 figure budgets, so perhaps is completely irrelevant; that’s why I’d welcome some more guidance…

[/list]

Or, to pick from some other not-really-answered questions that people have already come up with:

OTOH, thanks to Jeff we do currently know that these people can change the forum software.

Based on the sum total of our knowledge, it sounds like we’re looking for an IT consultant? (tongue firmly in cheek ;)).

#7

Did you write an email to dev@games.dev.java.net?

#8

Of course :slight_smile: But if there were any doubt, I would have thought it fairly obvious that I had at least intended to, given I said I had in the other thread…

#9

Posting to the forums here should be equal to posts to the mailing list?

#10

The list of nominees was taken solely from postings to the mailing list. While I recall BlahBlahBlah mentioning his self-nomination in the other thread, no email showed up to that affect in the dev alias, so it was not clear whether he was serious about it, and there was no opportunity for anyone to second the nomination. I apologize if there has been an error, but given that BlahBlahBlah has mentioned that he’d have to abstain, we’ll let the election continue as is.

One of the first orders of business for the Board will be to determine whether certain activities currently managed through the mailing lists (project proposals & approval, etc), should instead use the forums, as these are the locus of communication for this community.

#11

I imagine (from actually reading his post) he meant abstain from voting (since there is no information on the candidates and that the list of candidates may not even be correct) rather than abstain from being a nominee.

Kev

#12

[quote]I imagine (from actually reading his post) he meant abstain from voting (since there is no information on the candidates and that the list of candidates may not even be correct) rather than abstain from being a nominee.
[/quote]
That’s how I read it, too. :-/

#13

[quote]The list of nominees was taken solely from postings to the mailing list. While I recall BlahBlahBlah mentioning his self-nomination in the other thread, no email
[/quote]
Well, I’ve had no failure delivery message, there’s nothing in my “unsent”/outbox, so I could only assume it sent OK :(.

Sigh. That was in reference to this thread, where we were talking about the options in the poll. I see now that I could have made it more explicit.

But the real issues here are more general. So far, with perfectly reasonably questions being asked but not answered (about the role of people in this board, etc), and apparently little interest from the forums in general, it’s looking less like a “community election” and more like a lost opportunity.

I’ve done a lot of committee work before; volunteer ones are usually tough to keep alive and tough to keep doing relevant work, but are fantastic when things come together. Sadly, some end up a miserable waste of everyone’s time. I’m not judging the GTG guys - I appreciate (as I’m sure we all do) how much they have on their plate, and especially the difficulties of trailblazing, where almost everything they do is “new” for Sun and requires negotiation with the corporate side.

However, so far I’m afraid to say this “election” looks more like the poor committees I’ve previously been involved with (and, FYI, ultimately resigned from after all attempts at reform failed). FWIW, I reckon this is only due to accident and lack of time. I mean, for instance, why on earth (if you’d seen my posting) didn’t you think to at least check with me whether I’d attempted to nominate myself?

And why did no-one think to email the forum moderators about this? (…or has my email server managed to lose it???). Especially when you decided there’d been too few nominations! I mean, these are people who’ve already volunteered to help you guys out - a quick email to us and perhaps we could have helped drum up more interest. As an aside, I would have thought it also a good idea to email any moderators who didn’t appear to have nominated themselves just to check there were no last-minute changes of mind, or that someone had forgotten / been too busy to do it.

Shrug; just ideas, maybe not even good ones :). It’s really great that you (the GTG) had a “Rules” (constitution) in place well before the election, but IMHO that’s only half the job done. You still need to steer the general community into participation here, or else you’ll end up with a “board” in great danger of ending up with little influence or relevance. If, for instance (playing devil’s advocate), this board has no more meaning than a name on a piece of paper, and “attendance” at meetings that are generally open anyway, what’s the point?

Theoretically, any of us can talk to any of you (the GTG) at any time already. As Cas has already alluded to, if board membership would grant us extra time for grabbing you from your busy schedules :), then that would be a major difference and would enable us to do a lot more to help you and the community. (Ask Chris - he’s probably fed up of me bugging him about getting just one or two articles onto JGO, so that I have examples to point to, and can ferret out more authors and bug them until they write something :)).

I don’t mind being excluded from the candidates, except for the frustration and sense of a missed chance to do more to help (which, AFAICS, is quite common here - the only thing holding volunteers back is the fact that the GTG folks are too busy to unblock things; no-one’s fault, but a problem that I suspected this board was formed partly to solve!). I had hoped that membership of this board might give me some extra time/attention so I could get what I needed to push ahead with such things, which are of benefit to the community here. I couldn’t care less what forum software JGO uses, and my name’s been on more than enough committees that the title alone has no value to me.

Give the candidates a bit more info, and give the voters clear guidance, and you could end up with a well-respected board where people know what they voted for, and why. Leave it to fizzle to a conclusion and I’m not sure it will have been worth the effort :(.

Sorry for the rant, but these things are much harder to correct once started off on the wrong foot…

#14

Hear hear.

And let’s have a manifesto from each of the candidates, please. Not a CV, but a manifesto: what your commitments are going to be (in terms of time and activity), and why you’re the best for the job.

Cas :slight_smile:

#15

While I agree with everything you just said, it did have a certain smack of a campaign speech ;D

Kev

– Paid For By The Friends and Supported of The KevGlass Future –

#16

[quote]Well, I’ve had no failure delivery message, there’s nothing in my “unsent”/outbox, so I could only assume it sent OK :(.
[/quote]
Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the dev alias archives either. While I believe you did in fact send it, I only had the dev list to go on at the time the elections began.

[quote]`But the real issues here are more general. So far, with perfectly reasonably questions being asked but not answered (about the role of people in this board, etc), and apparently little interest from the forums in general, it’s looking less like a “community election” and more like a lost opportunity.
[/quote]
The role of the people on the board has been described in the proposed “Board Rules” and also (briefly) at the start of this discussion. Principally, the goal of the board, is to put as much control in the hands of the community as possible, so that the community’s concerns play a key role, not just those of Sun Microsystems. I’d like to think that if we had a board in place already, many of the issues you raised here would have come up sooner.

[quote]However, so far I’m afraid to say this “election” looks more like the poor committees I’ve previously been involved with (and, FYI, ultimately resigned from after all attempts at reform failed). FWIW, I reckon this is only due to accident and lack of time. I mean, for instance, why on earth (if you’d seen my posting) didn’t you think to at least check with me whether I’d attempted to nominate myself?
[/quote]
Once again, I apologize. For the sake of expediency I stuck to the rules. I’d already extended the nomination process by an extra week and didnt want to delay the elections. I assumed that if anyone had sent mail to the alias, and not seen their message on the list, they would either resend it or alert us to the problem.

[quote]And why did no-one think to email the forum moderators about this? (…or has my email server managed to lose it???). Especially when you decided there’d been too few nominations! I mean, these are people who’ve already volunteered to help you guys out - a quick email to us and perhaps we could have helped drum up more interest.
[/quote]
The nomination was announced on the main java-gaming.org page, and sticky at the top of the General Discussions forum. I assumed the forum moderators who frequent the site would have seen one of these announcements over the two weeks of the nominations. That said, I agree that asking the forum moderators to help drum up interest would have been an excellent idea.

[quote]Theoretically, any of us can talk to any of you (the GTG) at any time already. As Cas has already alluded to, if board membership would grant us extra time for grabbing you from your busy schedules :), then that would be a major difference and would enable us to do a lot more to help you and the community.
[/quote]
Another goal of the board is just that. To give the community greater access and control over these decisions, which are currently made solely by the GTG (though with the community’s interests in mind of course) By scheduling regular meetings of the board, we’re carving out a chunk of the GTG’s time to focus entirely on the issues involved in the community. In addition we are extending the authority to act on the suggestions of the community to members outside the GTG.

[quote]I don’t mind being excluded from the candidates, except for the frustration and sense of a missed chance to do more to help (which, AFAICS, is quite common here - the only thing holding volunteers back is the fact that the GTG folks are too busy to unblock things; no-one’s fault, but a problem that I suspected this board was formed partly to solve!).
[/quote]
Yep.

[quote]I had hoped that membership of this board might give me some extra time/attention so I could get what I needed to push ahead with such things, which are of benefit to the community here. I couldn’t care less what forum software JGO uses, and my name’s been on more than enough committees that the title alone has no value to me.
[/quote]
I hope you will continue to push ahead with these things. Hopefully, the addition of the board members will increase the likelihood that those things that will benefit the community are acted upon in a timely manner.

[quote]Sorry for the rant, but these things are much harder to correct once started off on the wrong foot…
[/quote]
Agreed, and no apology necessary. This is a first for us, and I’m sure there’ll be mistakes and plenty to learn. The first order of business of the board will be to revise and finalize the board rules, so hopefully many of these issues will be addressed and the next elections will go much smoother :slight_smile:

#17

[quote]While I agree with everything you just said, it did have a certain smack of a campaign speech ;D
[/quote]
Chuckle. Since it appears I won’t get to give a campaign speech, I didn’t need to worry about whether it sounded like a speech from one :).

#18

Ok, we’re starting to get somewhere. This is the kind of information potential candidates need before deciding to stand:

…but by my reckoning there’s still a lot of info you guys haven’t given that’s needed before you could start asking people to vote seriously.

My next big question is this: How committed are we to the current process and timeline, can we delay it or modify it?

Do you want the best board you can get, with a solid mandate from those who voted, or is it more important to get something - anything! - in place by a certain date (a pressure which I can fully appreciate)? (NB: I’m not trying to imply that a board voted for now would be “invalid”, just that enough holes have come up so far that I wouldn’t even vote - as I touched upon in my previous post - and presumably there are others who also wouldn’t vote. If that turns out to be a significant number of people that boycott the election, then the board will not have a “solid mandate”, but merely “a compromise”).

Because if we don’t absolutely have to stick to the status quo, I’d say this has become a bit of a mess which we can still quite easily clean up. At the risk of sounding dictatorial, I’d suggest gathering some more feedback and some sound advice from the JGO community on the handling of the elections etc (which is going to require some more data from the GTG guys, or at the very least a statement to the effect “We don’t know, we hadn’t really thought about it; what do YOU want it to be?”).

The evidence so far makes me think there are some important viewpoints you haven’t considered yet which might come out in response to more info from you guys. Historically, these forums have thrived on suggestions and critiques. You’ve suggested almost nothing (we’ve asked, and been met mostly with silence). I’d hazard that many (if not most) of us here contribute best by constructive criticism. Just the opinions and expectations of individual GTG members, your stream-of-consciousness ideas on what this board is and will be, would give us so much better an idea of what criteria we should use to make the decisions you want from us (both as candidates and voters). If you feel we should have been discussing this more amongst ourselves, fair enough, but howabout stimulating the discussions?

Accept that the first attempt was in good faith, but misguided, and start again with a process everyone’s happy with and which we voters feel less confused by. I cannot over-emphasize how completely in the dark I (and, I believe, most others) have felt about this process - I am absolutely sure the GTG guys don’t fully appreciate this, having seen the other side of the fence before, and knowing how different things can look with just a very slightly different perspective. (NB: the transparency’s been good, you haven’t been secretive, but it’s felt like getting blood out of a stone…)

Just a guess, but e.g. perhaps Cas would re-consider standing, given the above new info, and his previous statement. As it happens, I think a very large number of people would vote for Cas if he stood (but you’ll never even know as it stands, because there’s no way for people to voice dissent or dissatisfaction with candidates! No R.O.N., no “abstain”, nothing…).

EDIT: P.S. thanks for responding to my latest points. However, I note that you didn’t answer any of my earlier questions about how we, as voters, should be making the decision… Blood. From. Stone.

PPS: good move in putting the vote on the front page, BTW :slight_smile:

#19

In response to suggestions from the community, I have added an option to abstain from voting, for whatever reason one may choose to.

That said, I would encourage community members to choose from the existing candidates and to post questions for the candidates if one is unsure of their qualifications or is having trouble making a decision between them.

Once again, the exact role of the board will be to provide a greater voice for the community in decisions regarding community policy, community direction and community evangelism. This does not in any way reduce the rights of non-elected community members to voice their questions/concerns/opinions/suggestions/etc. Our hope is that by delegating greater responsibility and authority to the members of the community, we can better represent the will of the community at large, beyond the specific objectives of Sun Microsystems.

As detailed in the board rules, board members have equal authority in making decisions affecting the community. The only exception to this is in the event of a tie that continues for more than two meetings (something that can only occur if a non-Sun board member is absent for more than two consecutive meetings) and so, this really is an opportunity for the community to take the reigns in shaping its future.

While there are likely to be a number of bumps in the road, each of the nominated candidates is more than capable of representing the will of the community, and I believe the community will greatly benefit from their participation, whoever is ultimately elected.

#20

I’m afraid I haven’t the time to stand this time round - suddenly have little time left for fun now I work as a menial slave. I’d think twice if there was more direct input into the Java platform. (Hell, I’d rather quite like a job with Sun really :wink: )

Cas :slight_smile: