Small suggestion: maybe expand

produces an unsafe environment

To either “produces an unsafe or unwelcoming environment” 或 “produces an unsafe or uninclusive environment”. Implicit in those options is what’s the difference between unwelcoming and uninclusive. I lean a little toward the “uninclusive” 语, as to me it says that challenging ideas can sometimes be unwelcome, but still done in an inclusive way.

Broad pattern thing:
We’d described using 在fo@thatÇa米p.org 为 “non-public” concerns, which might include harassment problems in forums (or possibly in comments on individual sites/camps?). This doc also suggests contacting Council members. But for any particular situation at a THATCamp, the target of 在f该@吨ha吨camp.org and any council member won’t likely be in a position to take immediate action. I’m good with saying info/council member is a good, safe, non-public place for anything on thatcamp.org, and also for situations that happen at any particular THATCamp that call for non-immediate attention. But I worry about suggesting info/council members can respond to immediate issues at a THATCamp. It’s the synchronous vs. asynchronous ability to take action that I’m fretting over here. It’s probably not realistic to say that a THATCamp Council member can take meaningful immediate action at any particular THATCamp, and so I worry about suggesting that we can by saying contact us in the initial incident phase if the initial incident is at a THATCamp.

On the site, in forums or in any particular THATCamp’s site and discussion, definitely info / any council member is an appropriate place to report.

Do we also want to say that THATCamp Council is an explicit resource for THATCamp organizers unsure about how to resolve an issue? If an issue comes up that an organizer is unsure how to respond to, is an anonymized forum post an appropriate way to get guidance? This touches on how THATCamp Council sees what it can and cannot realistically do to help.

1) Specified 5 votes in favor to amend the Charter
2) I kept the explanatory text in the bullet point under Elections; it’s important for other bits of the Charter, especially why there’s partial bloc voting, and it’s the main place it’s stated that the terms are staggered.
3) I also kept the term “RRCHNM representative,” since even though “appointee” is accurate, 这个词 “representative” makes it more clear that the reason for the position in the first place is to represent RRCHNM, which is a uniquely interested party. 术语 “appointed” also appears several times, so it’s clear that the rep is appointed.
4) Great catch, 虽然, on the nonsensicality of mid-term elections for a departing RRCHNM rep. I fixed that in a couple of places where it appeared. If an RRCHNM rep leaves mid-term, RRCHNM will just appoint another one.
5) On the issue of a Chair resigning the Chair position or the Council, I modified the existing language under Elections that dealt with the Chair rotating off the Council to deal with that. Two weeks struck me as too short a time, so I specified that the meeting has to take place within a month.
6) To deal with the problem of Darth Vader as Chair, I added this point under Structure of the Council: “如果主席拒绝召开会议，及时, any member of the Council may convene a meeting.” I actually think that the rest of the existing language about agendas and quorate Councils and votes is *probably* good enough to deal with the issue of removing the Chair, but it might be a good idea to put that issue on the agenda for the first meeting. Which will likely happen in April.

而现在: to elect a Council!

Under Elections, not sure second point needs more than “Elections will be held in March for the 3 seats becoming open” — rest sounds like explanatory notes.

Also under Elections, one of the points includes mention of RRCHNM representative leaving and holding a vote for the replacement. Seems like RRCHNM must appoint the replacements? 和, maybe use “RRCHNM任命” instead of “RRCHNM representative”?

Aaaand the possibly bigger one. Hopefully I just missed it and/or it’s been covered somehow that I’ve forgotten about. Do we have something about the Chair 1) wanting to not be chair anymore, but still be on Council, 或 2) leaving Council altogether, 或 3) losing the confidence of the council to be Chair? We have material about Chair rotating off regularly, but I’m not sure if that covers these special cases.

1 和 2 might be easiest. For 1), Chair has to schedule a meeting for deciding new Chair (and any other business that has come up). For 2) that’d just follow the replacement procedure already there (大多 — more below*). These might follow from what’s there for usual elections, and just need a little language in the points about Chair rotating off to make it explicit.

3 is weird, since in that case it could be that the Council can’t count on the Chair to do things like responsibly call meetings to do business. Very unlikely case, 可以肯定的, but some mechanism seems in order.

Maybe something like this in a Removal of the Chair section or bullet point: If all members of the Council except the Chair agree, they may call a special meeting for the sole purpose of voting to remove or replace the chair. The Chair shall be removed if 5 votes in favor of removing the Chair are cast

That still leaves things a bit anarchic, since nothing directs who would chair such a meeting, post the agenda, 等. But I think it wouldn’t be helpful to try to designate a chain of succession. Seems an extreme enough case, 虽然, that some level of anarchy would already have set in, so it would call for extreme measures. Hopefully no conch shells would be involved. (Why yes, yes I have been waiting through this whole discussion for a place to make a “Lord of the Flies” reference.)

Don’t know if 5 votes sets the bar too high or too low for removal

* On the regular replacement procedure, the Chair should probably be required to call an open meeting of the Council no more than two weeks after the election for the mid-term vacancy is held, to introduce the new member to the community and the other Council members. If it’s the Chair who is being replaced, at that meeting they can choose their new Chair.

RRCHNM will appoint one representative to the Council, 通过他们的决心的内部流程选择. 其他附属RRCHNM可以通过正常程序运行理事会.

might cover all of it.

1) I took out the limit on RRCHNM employees. Both Lincoln and Patrick were convincing.
2) I added in a provision for mid-term (简单的多) elections to fill vacant seats.
3) I changed a bit but not much of the last paragraph in “理事会的结构” so that the process of amending the Charter itself is a bit more precise.

Nearing the end …

But I’d say that the general process of the community proposing amendments and the Council voting on it is okay — “See Meetings of the Council” is meant to imply that proposed amendments have to be on an open agenda and so on, like any agenda, but I’ve specified that it needs to be at least a week before a meeting. I’m not keen on “ratification by the community,” not because I don’t trust the community, but because I don’t want to wear people out by asking for their opinion too often. Given that there are yearly elections (and that the Council is going to be a good group of trustworthy people), I think that should prevent the worst of any abuse. Here’s the language:

任何THATCamp理事会成员或社区成员都可以提出修改章程或THATCamp议会解散随时. 这样的建议，必须放置于被理事会会议召开前至少一个星期提交给THATCamp社会征求意见的公开可用的议程. (请参阅下面的理事会会议。) Five Council member votes are required in order to amend the Charter or dissolve the Council.

A majority vote of a quorate Council is required in order to amend the Charter or dissolve the Council.

所以, this would be 1) community discussion, 2) council finalize language and vote, 3) community ratifies? In that sequence, I think simple majorities from both council and community would be sufficient.

And I second the idea that it’s not necessary to spell out the process by which RRCHNM appoints their representative; that should be an internal matter.

Seems like the THATCamp charter shouldn’t tell the separate RRCHNM how to do it’s thing? Maybe just

RRCHNM will appoint its representative, through a process that RRCHNM deems fit

or somesuch thing. That is, if the Director wants to decide, or if Director wants to raise the question at a meeting of some sort, or if it’s a free-for-all, or whatever — I don’t think the THATCamp charter can define any process for the RRCHNM representative appointment. It just has to have an agreement that RRCHNM will find a representative somehow, to their taste.

The edges are getting edgy! There’s also the flip-side I don’t think we’ve considered much, of a person with no prior affiliation with RRCHNM coming onto the council.

This would also imply that, if during a member’s two year term — and the member is not affiliated with the Center in any way– a job opening comes up at RRCHNM, then if that member successfully applies for the job, that person is automatically removed from the Council. Generally speaking in the world, a new job requiring someone to step off of a board makes sense when there’s a conflict of interest. But I don’t see a conflict of interest in this hypothetical situation. I’d hate to see someone who has been showing good leadership on the Council have to be removed for that being recognized by a successful application to a job at RRCHNM.

总体, I agree that in most cases too many people connected to RRCHNM on the Council isn’t what it should strive for — definitely that’s part of the striving for diversity that we’re going for. 但, I see too many possibilities where the barring of more than one person, somehow monetarily or otherwise connected to the center, as risking us miss out.

And I don’t quite buy the idea that two people from the center necessarily reduces perspectival diversity. Runs that risk, 是, but it’s possible that people might think that two people who are both at the center provide different perspectives.

所以, I’d say let anyone stand, and let the voting process sort out whether it’s a good idea or not.

Hah, sounds good.

That said, I think that you’re right in thinking money should probably be the deciding factor. I think it’s a-ok to exclude me in this situation, no worries. 🙂

I’ll add in a bit about saving records, 太, for the inevitable FOIA request. 🙂

还, perhaps double-checked in regard to the issue of legal requirements for open records in organizations that receive public funds? I’d say that it is highly unlikely that anyone would FOIA request a THATCamp meeting, but it never hurts to be prepared. Weirder things have happened.

3. That makes sense to me!

1. & 2. 哦, accessibility issues, that’s a good point. I wonder if the best thing to do might be to say that there should be notes posted from every meeting, and then audio or video recordings are up to the discretion of the Chair. I had assumed as a matter of course that someone would report the outcome of the meeting, but I should state it. As for the open/closed nature of meetings, 嗯. I’d say we should do it the THATCamp way, and say that meetings are public by default: “公众开放的网络上 (会话可以在博客, 吱吱喳喳, 拍下, 记录, 并张贴)” but that the Chair can specify that a meeting be entirely private. And in that case it’s entirely private except for the outcome of any vote, including how individual Council members voted. What do you think? Maybe we should just make all three meetings public … I’ve added this language under Meetings.

3. When I wrote that I was thinking about the voting system used in elections, not in internal Council votes. The specific WordPress plugin to use for voting (at least initially) is now specified in the Charter, so I took the language about the Chair deciding out. I don’t think we need to specify how Council members vote on community issues — it’ll basically be calling for the Ayes and Nays. If there’s some super-sensitive vote that comes up where Council members want to vote so anonymously that *other* Council members don’t even know how they voted, 良好, I’d say the Council should hash that out among themselves if it happens.

谢谢, Aram!

1. More specific on Patrick’s comments about recording above: Do we care about the format and availability of meeting notes/minutes? Is just audio recording fine? If we don’t include some sort of written summary does that run afoul of accessibility issues? Are there rules about the ‘open/closed’ nature of such meetings? Specifically, if the chair decides not to record a meeting are members still free to publicly distribute their own notes from that meeting? Is there a mechanism to formally go off the record? Should there be one allowed?

2. In a vote, do we care about anonymity or non-anonymity? If we do, we might want to require one or the other. If we don’t, we may want to note that both are allowed.

3. Do we care about the voting system? I saw an earlier comment about voice votes and hand votes, would we want a web-based solution for consistency? I notice that “The Chair will have the power to choose and implement voting mechanisms after discussing them with the Council.” has been crossed out as an option, is it just not a concern?

As for recording meetings, 是, I meant to leave all decisions about recording meetings and posting recordings up to the Chair. Will try to clarify, and maybe to move all the stuff from Meetings of the Council to Responsibilities of the Chair.

With the RRCHNM representative being appointed by the Center, I’m not sure that any additional elections are needed in case someone else from the Center want to be on the Council. The appointed person would be the official representative of the Center, and then anyone else who happens to be from the Center would be just another candidate.

例如, I imagine that the appointee would have to be full-time employee. But if one of the grad students wants to stand alongside everyone else, I think that’d be great.

This assumes that RRCHNM would have to figure out its official representative internally, which makes sense as an appointment. It also assumes that RRCHNM would declare the appointment before the elections, which I also think is appropriate.

For recording meetings, is the intent for there to be two things at the Chair’s discretion: whether to record, and whether to post the recording? 或, is the idea that any recording is expected to be posted? There’s info about what the Chair will do specified both under Responsibilities of the Chair and under Meetings of the Council. They seem to be pretty much the same, but not quite sure, about the recordings and about the mechanism/place for the meetings.

This is a little weird, but maybe something along these lines….

* If the election does not unambiguously show clear winners for the N (3 或 4) 开席, a single runoff election will be held.

* The runoff election will be single non-transferable vote — each user in THATCamp casts one vote for their choice.

* The runoff will be held among the top vote-getters for the N open seats. [For 4 开席, take the top 4 vote totals, and any candidate with vote counts in those top 4 vote totals is in the runoff]

* If the runoff still leaves ambiguity, outgoing council decides.

This is weird in that it proposes, 例如, that there could be one clear winner in the 1st election, but any number of ties for other spots, but that one clear winner would still be in the runoff. The flip-side is that it takes care of the situation of a tie for clear winner in the 1st election. They’d both be in the runoff. 所以. Yeah. Possibly weird.

Goals I’m aiming for with this are:
* Keep the goal of partial block voting that I see — bringing to the surface voices that might otherwise be drowned out
* Have a fallback mechanism that pushes toward stronger differentiation of choice from THATCampers in the second round
* Let THATCamp community rethink and redistribute votes after a winnowing when it is needed
* Limit how long ambiguous situations could drag on

Currently the language is:

In the event of a tie for the last open seat, 决选将追平候选人之间举行.

I love the partial bloc approach for the election, but the possible scenarios for runoff get weird if they are also partial-bloc. And also if they aren’t. It looks possible, 例如, for there to be 1 clear winner for the 4 seats open in the first election, and any number of people tied for 3 remaining seats (或 2 clear winners and any number for the remaining 2), so the “last open seat” isn’t the only possibility? I’d imagine that we’ll have enough voters to make that possibility vanishingly small, but it’s a potential bug.

In that case, continuing partial bloc voting for runoff might work, but still runs the possibility, albeit slim, of endless inconclusive runoffs — no white smoke for you! So we still need a cutoff to the runoffs.

和 “last open seat” case doesn’t work in partial bloc, since everyone gets N-1 votes for the N=1 open seat. So this is the easy case — just need to specify that in this case it’s not partial bloc anymore, it majority wins, again with some mechanism for cutting off the runoffs.

The possible permutations get weird for 4 开席. A couple examples, assuming only the minimum 7 candidates.

* 1 clear winner. 6 other people all have the same number of votes
* 2 top winners. 5 other people with equal votes
* 2 top winners, 2 “second place” winners with equal votes, 3 others with clear winners for the “remaining” 2 seats

Again, not likely situations, but possible.

所以, starting with partial bloc, we’re looking at what to do with edge cases, what edge cases we need to explicitly anticipate, and when to say it punts out to the outgoing council to sort out the hanging chads.

If the Chair has rotated off the Council, the Council must appoint a new Chair at its first meeting following the election. 即将离任的主席应协调的日期和地点本次会议为她/他最后担任主席.

This makes it sound a little like chair duties continue automatically, unless chair explicitly leaves the Council or the chairhood (“chairhood” is a word now). I imagine that, no matter what, the first thing a new council does is choose their new chair.

The part about outgoing chair coordinating the first meeting sounds good.

On some of the new stuff:

In the “First Council” section,the doc currently says that the election of March 2015 将 “replace Drs French, 注FELDT, and Murray-John”. That sounds like we’d be automatically off the council, which isn’t what I _think_ the intent is. Maybe nothing need be said, since it’s clear that our terms are 1 年?

我认为, 然后, that there should be one reserved slot on the Council for a RRCHNM person who won’t need to run for popular election. If there’s more than one person at RRCHNM who wants to do it, they should be chosen by a separate election that’s open to the community, I’d say.

Not sure what you have in mind with “do you want to state that a Council member cannot be present at every THATCamp” — can you clarify? And I can’t think of other things that need to be specified as outside the Council’s domain: I was going to say we could put in something about how the Council won’t interfere with individual THATCamps, but that wouldn’t be true in the case of a THATCamp that was inviting a bunch of speakers or being otherwise unTHATCampy.

Hmm. I’m not immediately in favor of requiring every Council member to go to a THATCamp during their term, mainly because this is unpaid service and I don’t want to burden people, but on the other hand, it’s hardly an arduous requirement to find one in two years you could go to cheaply, and it’s true that that’d keep you at least the bare minimum in the loop. Don’t know. It’s growing on me. I think you’ll see it in the next draft. 🙂

* See suggestion that we get rid of nominations below: thatcamp.org/02/18/creating-community-governance-for-thatcamp/comment-page-1/#comment-10658 — I put that in the document, too.

* There is language now (because of Jeff’s suggestion) that the Chair has to schedule meetings when people can attend, but I can change the language to say that the person who misses meetings *can* be removed, rather than *will* be. Dave’s example was in fact about a group in which if you miss meetings you lose your voting privileges for a period, but that seemed a bit complicated for a group that I don’t think will meet or vote that often.

* Great point. Will adopt basically exactly as you suggest.

* I’d rather leave the timing of this meeting up to the Chair (I’m now Chair pro tem, ICYMI), though sure, common sense dictates that the first meeting should be soon after the election. I’m already worried that the document is getting too long and too precise: I’d rather leave most stuff undefined in the beginning and create rules only as necessary. I don’t want to create precise rules that then get ignored for good reason: better not to have the rules at all and trust the people. I trust the people.

* Yep, the Chair votes — see my comment below: thatcamp.org/02/18/creating-community-governance-for-thatcamp/comment-page-1/#comment-10659

* rough consensus
* if rough consensus breaks down, a vote (and yes, the Chair gets to vote)
* if the vote is tied, the Chair makes the decision

I guess that the last bullet point amounts to the Chair voting twice, but I don’t have any particular problem with that. I especially like this language, Kevin: “大体, the Council will just go about its business without any reference to actual parliamentary procedure, instead acting on consensus, but it gives a framework for any rare situation where consensus breaks down.”

当然, we could wind up with a lot of split votes and a lot of ties if we have a large slate of 20 people or so, but we could do a runoff (or two!) if that happens.

I worry that if that’s built in, 虽然, that the Council _must_ abide by it. Much agreed that a framework for when consensus breaks down is a wise move. For THATCamp, 虽然, I don’t think RR is the right framework. I’d prefer something without so many layers and subtleties.

但, 是, we then become hypocritical for claiming to use it and yet rarely bothering to do so.

if the Chair casts a tie-breaking vote, does the Chair usually vote? that is, does the chair only vote in the event of a tie, or does the chair vote on everything, but their vote counts double when there is a tie?

In Robert’s Rules of Order, the chair does not vote twice. The chair, as a member of the group, has a right to vote, but if s/he chooses not to vote, then s/he can break the tie. It might be helpful to consult Robert’s Rules on various questions in formulating this document, and you might even add a clause saying something like “For all matters not addressed herein, follow the most recently published edition of Robert’s Rules of Order”.

* Forgot who mentioned this, but does the Council nominate replacements, or can nominations come from anyone in the THATCamp community? I prefer coming from anyone, as the 7 members could easily miss emerging THATCamp leadership, given how many THATCamps are going on. In that case, would it be the responsibility of the chair, or of the outgoing Council as a whole, to do things like confirm eligibility and that they accept the nomination?

* I’m hesitant about a Council member being automatically removed if they miss 2 consecutive scheduled meetings. Say meeting 1 takes place, and member A cannot attend. 然后, would the chair have a special responsibility to make sure the next meeting is scheduled at a time that member A can attend, even at the expense of greater meeting attendance? Shenanigans potential for a Chair to boot someone off by scheduling two meetings when one person can’t attend. Not collegial, and such a chair should certainly be booted subsequently, but still, the mechanisms seem to allow for that. Speaking of which, whatever the removal mechanism(小号) might be…..

* What to do with midterm vacant seats (either by booting or by retirement, whatever)? I’d say mostly like regular elections, but seat must be filled within 1 month of the seat becoming vacant. If it’s the chair who leaves/gets booted, same thing, but upon election within 1 week the Council meets to choose its new chair

* Is there something about how soon after election the Council has its first meeting? I’d say 1 周, as it’s the shortest notice for a meeting, though that could make scheduling an issue as, really everyone should be at the first meeting. Outgoing chair would schedule that.

* Hopefully last thing — if the Chair casts a tie-breaking vote, does the Chair usually vote? that is, does the chair only vote in the event of a tie, or does the chair vote on everything, but their vote counts double when there is a tie?

I kid, but it is actually a problem, though not much of one. If we want to limit voting to “the THATCamp community,” the most obvious thing to do is to tie it to “people who have an account on thatcamp.org.” Anyone can register for an account on thatcamp.org, so it’s a fairly mild requirement, but it’s one I’d like to keep. The YOP Polls plugin I’ve installed doesn’t do ranked votes. But see comment above on the “部分集体投票” method I’ve proposed: wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Bloc_voting

If someone calls for a vote on an issue, that seems to imply a call for a meeting at which to vote. In that case, the chair has to post the agenda a week in advance, so calling for the vote really means calling for a meeting, and the absolute soonest time a vote could happen is one week after that person calls for the meeting.

Unless, that is, Council members can vote on things without there being a meeting. I’m wildly not in favor of that, but if that’s what we’re looking at it needs to be spelled out, with clear rules what the difference is, circumstances where non-meeting votes are or are not appropriate, notification times and mechanisms for non-meeting voting, and probably more. (Did I mention I’m not in favor of that option?)

(This also hits of the voting mechanism for the Council comment above

The technology and mechanisms for the voting to elect the entire council is tricky, but if Council meetings define a quorum, that’s not an issue.

I was literally writing a sentence that said that if there’s any disagreement about voting mechanisms the Council would have to vote on the voting mechanism, but I came to my senses. Hilarious high point of the day.

所以, in short, I’m going to take that line out altogether, and I’m glad you brought it up. Dave Lester suggested a very concrete thing where if you stop attending meetings you get thrown off the council, and that along with the “collegial” line should suffice.

And in re diversity, the poll plugin I’ve installed lets me specify how many options each voter can pick, so I’ve told it to limit choices to 4. I like that method, because it means people have in essence *one* vote for *which* four people they want to be on the first Council this year along with me, 帕特里克, and Tom. That means that voters won’t be voting for individuals, but for an entire slate of 4 people to be on the Council. I’ll put in some language somewhere reminding people to think about both diversity and merit when they pick those 4 people.

A copy-edit: Duplicate “该” in final bullet under structure.

Great work and excellent thoughts from all.

P.S. 帕特里克, don’t we use [] around () in US English?…. whatever….

表决: There are definitely ways to vote once per candidate while choosing more than one. And run-offs: should only be between the candidates who have tied.

Nominations: “Council must nominate a slate of at least 10 potential Council members.”
Would it be possible to accept nominations from the community or self-nominations?

Terms: I’d also suggest having alternating terms so that not everyone is always running. Perhaps terms could be 2 years long. The first Council might need half of the members to agree to a 1-year term and others for a 2-year term, to create the alternating cycles.

RRCHNM representative: It might be good to address this in the Charter. Would that person also serve a term of the same time period as others, and then be chosen by an election at RRCHNM concurrent to the general Council election?

Is there anything that the Council will not do? 例如, do you want to state that a Council member cannot be present at every THATCamp.

Council duties: should each Council member be required to participate in at least one THATCamp during their term?

I was thinking about the tie situation. Maybe a middle ground is to have maximum two rounds of runoffs, and if ties are still there the outgoing council decides?

Another twist I’m thinking of is that, since multiple seats would be open for each election, would the runoffs be among all the highest votes, or just the people who are in a tie. I’m imagining a situation like this:

3 spots open, and the top votes come out like this:
Person A: 10 票
Person B: 8 票
Person C: 5 票
Person D: 5 票
Person E: 2 票

E is right out, but would the runoff be between A, B, C, and D (the top 3 vote totals for the 3 open positions), or just C and D?

The first option allows greater chance for people to redistribute their votes around, while the second option seems more likely to quickly resolve the tie.

I’ll echo the calls for two-year staggered terms (though I’m okay with people staying on for multiple terms if re-elected) and each member of the voting public only being able to vote for each candidate once.

Run-offs are cumbersome, but they are better than a selection from ties by the council that would be open to critique. Another possibility is Condorcet voting which allows people to rank order their votes so that if their first choice is not competitive, that there second (and third) choices can be identified as well.

I also want to follow up on this section:
“如果有任何委员会成员错过一排两班理事会会议, that member will lose his or her place on the Council.”

I don’t have a problem with this, but I’d like to find a way to ensure that people in other time zones don’t get left out. [“良好, I would have made the meeting, but it was at 4 AM for me….”] Maybe the plan is that this can be addressed by having some kind of asynchronous participation or it’s understood that meetings will be scheduled when everyone can be there, but I’d like to hear if others think this is a problem.

I do, 但, have a couple of questions/clarifications/suggestions regarding the meetings of the council.

1.) Since the THATCamp community will have the right to observe and comment upon the council’s meeting agenda in advance of its meeting, I’d like the charter to spell out how far in advance the meeting time and agenda should be posted. A month? Two weeks? Forty-eight hours?

2.) Is the required open council meeting mentioned in bullet point number two in addition to the two meetings required of the council spelled out in bullet point number one? 否则, I suggest changing “The Council will hold at least one online meeting or conference call each year that is open to the whole THATCamp community” 对 “At least one of the Council’s annual meetings must be either online or via conference call and be open to the whole THATCamp community.”

I lean toward having at least one run-off, 虽然, as it would give the community a chance to redistribute their votes among the remaining candidates.

“Remaining candidates” could go two different ways, 虽然. One way is that it’s only the people, with greatest number of votes and also in a tie. The other way is 大家 with the top N number of votes, where N is the number of open positions.
所以, say there are 3 open positions. A has 10 票, B has 8 票, C and D both have 5 票, and E has 2 票 (total of 30 votes cast). In the first way, the runoff would only be between C and D. In the second way, the runoff would be between A, B, C, and D — 10, 8, 和 5 being the three highest vote totals for the three open positions.

First way gets to faster decisions, second way encourages more redistribution of votes from the whole community?

Is there a political theorist in the house?

As for ties, a run-off vote would be cumbersome. Could the existing council act to settle any ties? Or would that be too much like the presidential elections of 1876 和 2000?

Also makes me wonder what to do in the case of ties. That could get sticky — what happens if there are 3 open positions, person A has 50 票, and persons B, C, ð, E, F, G all have 40?

As several commenters have pointed out there needs to be a way to bootstrap the first council. In addition to Amanda, 该, and Patrick being on the council automatically, how about something like this. Eligibility for the first council should be the same as for later councils, 即, having organized a THATCamp. Anyone who is nominated or self-nominated to the first council by contacting 我nfo@吨hatcamp.oŗg can stand for election. The top 4 candidates who receive the most votes will be elected.

One further suggestion: in the elections section, it’s not clear how many votes each person in the THATCamp community gets. Do they get one vote, or do they get as many votes as there are positions to be filled? I suggest that later option.

Right now, the one-year structure with an unlimited number of terms makes it unclear whether the Council would be constantly rotating or more of a fixed body with occasional turnover. Who decides if a member continues for the next year?

I agree that there should be a separate section describing how the initial election will be administered.

Might also want to include a bullet under responsibilities about “Developing and maintaining governance documents to support the THATCamp community.”

This is an exciting transition.