On 03/07/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think
perhaps this might be a rather sensible thing to try and do
from the outset, next time, on as many projects as practical. It
allows a much less ambiguous explanation than one line in sitenotice -
it's almost impossible to have a good succinct explanation there which
doesn't provide scope for misunderstanding or make it look like
*everyone* is eligible.
Yes. Exactly. This is my thought, and it was one of my recommendations
after last year. ... although at the time I didn't quite appreciate
how much of a turnout problem we had. Nor did I have any idea how
much good it would do then, but I know now.
For effectiveness, if we were to do this, we would probably want to do
it mid election rather than at the beginning. We need to give people
enough time to consider the options, but I fear that if you give
people two weeks notice they might well forget.
Yeah, that's what I envisaged. "At the outset" meant have it ready to
go, not send it on day one :-)
Generate a list of eligibles at the outset, then run a script to
eliminate "voted" each day, and then send the reminders at the
half-way mark or 1/3 turnout, which ever comes first. I have no basis
for those figures, but they sound reasonable.
We could possibly supplement an early delivered email
which will reach
people who do not log in every day, with a dynamic notice that appears
on a non-cached page, such as watchlists, which says "You are eligible
to vote in the board election, but you have not done so yet." I think
the biggest complication with that will be making it not show when
someone has voted from another project... I guess this will just be
something else we put off while waiting for SUL.
How much hackery would this need? A dynamic notice for specific users
does seem a bit tough, without some kind of weird whitelist display
trick.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk