The 'Shroom talk:Issue 159/Poll Chairperson Election

Election Process
This page is where members of the community may make nominations and vote for candidates to oversee the Poll Committee for the next year. The rules for the election process may be viewed on the election rules article.

Voting starts on Saturday, June 27th, 2020 at 00:01 GMT.

Hooded Pitohui
Hello, all of you readers of The 'Shroom! I'm, and I'd like to launch my campaign for the position of Chairperson of the Eleventh Poll Committee. This year, I'm running with as my pick for Vice-Chairperson. Our plans are simple, and I'll try and keep this brief (for once). We'd like to keep this tradition going strong as the Poll Committee moves into its eleventh term, and, to that end, our biggest priority is shoring up activity on the committee. Before we get into our plans, please, allow us to present our credentials.


 * Hooded Pitohui
 * Strategy Wing Director (October 2018 - present)
 * Director of The 'Shroom (February 2020 - present)
 * Member of the 9th Poll Committee (July 2018 to June 2019)
 * Awards Committee Member (2019 and 2020)


 * Power Flotzo
 * Member of the 10th Poll Committee
 * Awards Committee Member (2020)

As you can see, we both bring experiences with the Poll Committee to the table, so we know how this process works rather well. I have experience leading other community projects with a small and focused team, and what I've seen from Power Flotzo leads me to believe he'll take up the role with ease.

Now, as to our actual plans, we'd rather see this term focus on internal changes to increase activity within the Poll Committee than on large external projects. To that end, we're not going to plan out anything large like this term's Feedback Survey. Instead, we have one large internal project we'd like to focus on, and a few smaller internal changes we'd like to make to go along with that. We'll get to those topics momentarily, though. First, let's run through our basic plans.


 * Poll Committee Size - I think that the eight member committees of the past terms have functioned effectively, not being so large as to have trouble working as a focused group but having enough members that one or two absences did not impede progress. That and the number of users we have in mind who we want to encourage to join the committee, leads us to conclude that the size of the committee should remain at eight members this term.


 * Continuing Bi-Weekly Polls - After reading the reflection offered by the previous Poll Committee, we'd like to continue with the new method of having bi-weekly polls, in order to continue to provide a working environment which does not lead to burn-out among our committee members. Of course, we'll also be keeping the new schedule for Poll Committee Analysis in Pipe Plaza as a part of this.

Now, with that said, the remainder of our plans require that we present the one big change we'd like to make this term, so allow us to explain our plan.


 * Implement a Rotating Leadership System to Encourage Continued Activity - Now, this might sound ambitious, and it might sound like a large change, but it's rather simple, and we're confident we can pull it off. In years past, Poll Committee activity has tended to drop off after Awards Analysis, and it's been difficult at times to get members to actively engage. Based on our experiences and our talks with other former members of the committee, with think that this stems from an assumption that other members will step up to do the work. To combat this mentality, we'd like to rotate responsibility for a given week's poll among the members of the committee. To elaborate further:
 * On a consistent, rotating basis, one member of the committee will be tasked with putting together a poll for the two-week period, and asked to get other members of the committee to contribute ideas and feedback. In effect, they'll be asked to serve as the Chairperson for a two-week period.
 * With all members of the committee knowing that they'll be called upon, at some point, to lead the team for a period, we hope this structure will encourage a mentality of cooperation. If you want to make sure your fellow committee members contribute when it's your two weeks in charge, you'll naturally want to contribute during others' weeks to help them out.
 * The other reason we'd like to experiment with this is because the Poll Committee often serves as an introductory experience for community members who are interested in taking up positions of leadership within community projects.
 * With this structure, Poll Committee members will have an opportunity to get experience leading a small, focused group of users while having a safety net. Ultimately, responsibility for the polls will still fall on the Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson, and they, not individual committee members, will be held accountable for making sure that polls get out on time and are well-crafted.
 * That said, committee members who consistently drop the ball, while not necessarily facing the judgement of the community, will certainly be judged by their fellow committee members! We hope that no one would join the committee with no intention of being inactive, but this should hopefully add a deterrent to that kind of behavior, and encourage members who are having problems to reach out to the Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson.


 * As an effect of this, we expect that the Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson will have more opportunities to engage with other members of the community and leaders of other projects in the community. With the rest of the committee handling the weekly polls most of the time, we'll have more opportunities to engage in a continual dialogue with The 'Shroom staff, Awards Committee members, editors on the Wiki, chat operators, and other parties and create opportunistically-timed, responsive and specific polls tailored to their needs.


 * To ease the Poll Committee into this new system, we'll first prioritize using the usual initial burst of activity to build up a backlog of polls and help new members learn the process by which polls are created. After getting through the Awards Analysis, we'll begin implementing our new system.

We understand that we're proposing some rather large changes, and you may have questions. We're happy to answer them, and we'll offer any clarification we can. Thank you for your time and consideration. Whatever happens, we'll look forward to helping to make the Eleventh Poll Committee productive however we can!

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