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RE: Update To Townhall Elections | What Exactly Is A "Working Group" And How Do We Nominate?
we discussed everything from 15mins to 24hrs, 12hrs was agreed upon as a reasonable time frame. This allows all time zones to participate, with plenty of time to do so. This is only for the working group and all other elections (for the more important decisions), will be for much longer periods of voting time.
In India the scheduled timing translates to 11:30 PM(Sunday night) to 11:30 AM(Monday morning). Many from India(and surrounding countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka) would be missing it.
Monday mornings are usually busy(not just in India but elsewhere too ;) ).
If we really want everyone to participate then this timing doesn't work for many in Indian subcontinent. Consider keeping the voting open for 24Hrs.
I am confused how having a vote time available from 11:30pm to 11:30am does not give individuals enough time to go into a discord server and click an emoji. I am confused how they would be missing it. The voting process will take seconds. If it is important, people can take a few seconds out of their morning to click an emoji to cast their vote. Having the voting time open for longer periods of time could increase the chance of fraudulent votes and more manual "checks" on the already stretched volunteers. This is a vote for a non leadership, unpaid, temporary position. All future votes that will actually be for deciding how this thing takes shape will be given much larger vote windows to ensure it is plenty of time. This one will be 12hrs, which I still believe is more than enough time.
@llfarms - let give you the real world examples. In India the general elections happens from 7 AM to evening 6 PM (5 or 6). Whatever is the case, most people appear to vote in the evening. Lets say around 4 PM.
Now let me give an example of what @lifesaver (Who organized the FIRST ever Steem Meet In India) will be doing on Monday Morning. He will be sitting either in his motorbike or some other form of transport in multiple traffic jams. I assume the case most of the users will be spending their time on the road from say, 8 AM to 10 AM (not the entire time.). Over the weekend, Sunday night, many will be traveling or obviously sleeping.
As for me, I can make it anytime & I have multiple internet connections and power backups due to the nature of my work.
I suggested to add the word "Diversity" not just for the gender equality, but its about the people from everywhere. Users from Korea, Nigeria and South Asian countries deserves to included even though their time zones are different.
I also want to add about the members from @travelfeed which is an active community & from what I understand (which may be wrong) many of them members from that community are traveling. I hope someone who knows more about @travelfeed clarifies their view.
Using your example, would it not be fair to say that they could then vote before 8am? I myself will be missing an event to attend, I will also have to take off work to ensure the votes are counted and all fraudulent votes are removed at the end of that 12hr window.
The concern here is that someone might be traveling though and wont have time to get on discord to vote? Do you see why I feel this has gone to a very weird place? They don't need to speak, or be present, they just have to click an emoji sometime in that 12hr window.
If this was for an election to pick a new CEO or to allocate funding somewhere, I would completely agree with you. This vote is for a group of secretaries who will spend their days fielding unrealistic needs and complaints while managing a discord and planning an election, then the group will be disbanded. I feel it is being seen as an opportunity to advance an individual or project and quite frankly, that disappoints me.
I disagree because the "Working Group" is very important. Its like the "Election Commission Of India" which is powerful and make important decisions. The election commission has any visibility only for say, 2 months before and after the elections - and they are single most powerful and IMPORTANT entity during that time.
This election is very important as this committee is which decides the "voting process", "creates the ballots", "creates the ballot boxes" & finally this is the committee counts the votes.
Needless to say, this committee will also have some say in the case the elections are rigged. Lets think of a voting scenario where certain Steem Blockchain members gets massive number of votes and no one notices the fact that accounts voted were actually belonging to a "botnet" ?
Another scenario is, there are lot of people claimed accounts after HF20. If I really have the intention to "win" this election, I will buy all those accounts, obviously anonymously and then use those to vote me or the "highest bidder".
These are scenarios I came up just now. There will be many such scenarios the working group has to consider and the working group is the single most important step and it will decide whether any democratic or decentralized foundation / alliance will be elected or not.
The election will be done on the chain, no ballets to make and all votes will be on the chain so will be easily checked against. New accounts wont have much of a vote so it wont matter much. All discussion of the WG is open to the public, and some of the original WG might stay on to help get them started. If there is an issue it will be seen by all. That is the beauty of complete transparency.
If you feel it is an important role and want to ensure your friends are there to vote you, I would ask them to take a few minutes time after they wake up and before 11am to cast their vote.. or maybe some are night owls and can do it then. You are suggesting the time frame is undoable.. if it was 3am-4am I would probably agree. 11:30pm to 11:30am is a very large window with times that are quite normal for people to be awake during.
This conversation and this request has become completely ridiculous at this point and I still have not heard a valid reason of why it does not work. I am sorry we can not please everyone in this, but 12hrs will be the voting window in this election. I hope people set their alarms to ensure they are available at some point during that time if it is important to them. Future votes will most likely be done differently.
To add to @lifecruiser's points, India and South Asian visitors accounts for a large audience. This is not counting eSteem mobile app, Partico, APPICS, Steepshot & other interfaces like buys and steemspeak.
An approximate data is shared below.
https://www.similarweb.com/website/steemit.com#overview
@llfarms: I am not arguing or opening a can of worms to make it difficult for you and others. I know its very tiring no matter whoever is involved. To get the clear participation, its essential to ensure 100% participation from most of the users. To add to the number of users, the South Asian nations form the largest democratic group in the history of man kind and they do understand voting process really well.
Personally I have worked with teams in USA (California), Canada, Spain, UK & China along with Indian Counter parts for most of my professional life. We used to manage the calls by having them at 7:00 AM PST which made it possible for everyone to adjust and attend. Then we used to rotate it once in a while to accommodate Australian & Chineese Counter parts.
I understand this and its why future votes (for those very important decisions) will most likely have a week long voting process. This group does not need a "representation" of all dapps or communities as it isn't there to represent anything or make decisions on anything more than to ensure proposals are gathered and presented to the community. I don't believe 100% participation of every user on the blockchain is vital in this specific election, as it's for a temporary, unpaid, non leadership role. We aren't trying to ignore whole areas of the world, and I still don't understand how the cut off time does so.
In fact, I would argue if someone is nominating an individual to "represent" a community or project then they are doing it for the absolute wrong reasons. As the only concern here should be finding a group of organized, proficient, detail oriented individuals that are willing to spend their time ensuring this is done fair. What community, project or dapp they are from should not even be considered, as that is making it about something else entirely.
The group had voted for it to be a quick 15min voting window, I extended it to try to be as inclusive as possible. I do not feel that 12hrs is unfair and at this point I believe the requests are reaching a very odd place. In order to vote in this election we will be requiring individuals to put in a very small amount of effort, and we have made that effort as small as humanly possible without actually casting the vote for them.
If an individual is concerned about not being able to be at the actual "town hall meeting", they can use the absentee process listed above. If an individual is concerned that sometime in that 12hr time frame they will not have 2 mins to go vote in the server, I'm really not sure what else we can do to help.
(I am reading this. will respond. I slept at 4 AM yesterday too & not able to focus.)
Either ways we are putting hard work. 12 hrs window frame is sufficient but i feel that 24 hrs will give a little more edge to the participants and this will also clear the timezone problems that we are discussing. Again its a small task of just clicking an emoji but for a stronger future I feel its more than just a task as we are building a new future for this chain and platform. @llfarms is correct and @bobinson has a fair point to. I think we must extend it and make it more clear so no one can say that they didn't got a fair opportunity to cast a vote just because of timezone.