[Foundation-l] Fairness

Fri May 28 07:15:00 UTC 2004

Anthere-
> I was notified my candidacy statement was unfair.

By whom?

I'm only aware of a general discussion about normalizing the length of  
candidate profiles which does not single out any specific user. In fact my  
own profile exceeded the allowed length, although only slightly, until I  
abridged it, and yours is only the second longest. Nobody is alleging that  
anyone acted in bad faith.

Just imagine a situation where this election wouldn't be done on a  
website, but orally, and each candidate would be given 5 minutes to  
introduce themselves. Now, would it be fair if some candidates were  
allowed to talk for 8, 10, 12 minutes, while others struggled to fit  
everything into 5, even though the limit had been clearly defined at the  
onset? Of course it wouldn't be fair. You would have someone with a  
stopwatch, or at least someone checking his wristwatch, who says "Time's  
up". Or you would give people some advance notice that the time limit has  
been increased.

This may be a smaller issue of fairness compared to others, that doesn't  
mean it doesn't matter. Given that the solution is so simple and obvious,  
what is petty is not trying to fix the problem, but arguing about whether  
we should fix it.

Regards,

Erik