Community: Create app for holding Steering elections using only github auth

[jberkus]

There are two extremely labor intensive and data-error-prone portions of the current Steering Elections process:

1. pulling the list of eligible voters
2. getting everyone's ballots to them by email

The latter is by far the worst, because it takes 2 days of solid time for the elections committee, and requires technical skills on their part. It is also frustrating for members who do not receive their ballots due to spam filters and other problems.

That said, we like the elections logic of CIVS, our current tool. We just want it to work differently. We would also prefer a tool written in a programming language that expertise exists for within test-infra group.

As such, we would like to mentor an intern (either via Community Bridge, or Outreachy) to develop a web application that would allow voting, with authentication to be handled via Github Oauth. This would remove email as the failure link in the chain to voting. The application would have the following requirements:

• support configurable external Oauth sources (with Github being the requirement/default)
• support multiple elections, even concurrently, with each election to have a start and end date, and its own list of valid voters and candidates
• follow all CIVS voting logic that we use (randomization of candidates, Concordet/Schultze preference voting)
• validate voters against an administrator-supplied list
• create list of candidates from an administrator-supplied list
• allow voters to check their own vote via login
• affiliate votes with obfuscated/encrypted logins to prevent casual administrator examination of individual votes
• supply on-demand statistics for the administrator (number of voters/votes cast)
• output a final preference ranking of candidates when the election is "closed"
• be written in Go, Python, or Javascript (due to community's ability to support) (somewhat negotiable)

We anticipate this application would be desired by many OSS projects once completed. As such, we would plan to suggest it to the CNCF/LF as a service once the app is written, and distribute it as an independant OSS project.

Mentors for this project would be Jaice, Josh, and Marky

/sig contributor-experience
/committee steering
cc @jdumars @idvoretskyi @markyjackson-taulia @nikhita @parispittman

[jdumars]

I strongly support this effort.

[markyjackson-taulia]

+1 to @jdumars this will help a lot and I would love to help mentor this along with @jberkus and @jdumars

[Oghenebrume50]

Hi @jberkus @jdumars @markyjackson-taulia I would love to take this up, I am comfortable with JavaScript and Ruby, plus I am currently learning Go, please what is the proper communication medium to follow up with this?

[kunal-kushwaha]

Looking forward to contributing to it for the upcoming community bridge program! 🚀

[jberkus]

@Oghenebrume50 @kunal-kushwaha Projects will be accepted for Community Bridge on Sept 21st. After that we will announce the project and tell you were to apply (assuming we get accepted).

[Oghenebrume50]

Alright noted, looking forward to it :slightly_smiling_face:

[ehashman]

+1000

This is what I saw after casting my ballot:

Seeing that last poll does not surprise me, as the platform lacks mechanisms to address abuse: a particular individual has been using CIVS to harass the Debian project for months.

[jberkus]

@Oghenebrume50 @kunal-kushwaha please apply for the Community Bridge program here. We've been selected!

https://www.cncf.io/blog/2020/09/21/calling-all-mentees-cncf-communitybridge-projects-for-the-fall-2020-program/

[jberkus]

@SergeyKanzhelev we're going to be refining the spec for this application; I'll ping you for your input.

[jberkus]

@Oghenebrume50 @kunal-kushwaha let me apologize, we are delayed in accepting applications because of problems with the CommunityBridge platform.

[jberkus]

This effort has been re-consituted as a "new" project under CommunityBridge. Applications will be open for the next 10 days, and the timeline is extended. Please apply here.

Yes, this will mean re-submitting materials, but you can copy & paste from your previous application.

@Oghenebrume50 @kunal-kushwaha

[Oghenebrume50]

Hi @jberkus the google-docs file under the "Full-specification" does not open, I think there is a mistake in the URL

[markyjackson-taulia]

@Oghenebrume50 I just tried it using copy and paste and it works. Try this

[Oghenebrume50]

@Oghenebrume50 I just tried it using copy and paste and it works. Try this

@markyjackson-taulia thank you, the link here works, I don't know why that did not work.

[shivam-51]

@jberkus @markyjackson-taulia Hi, I would like to work on this project through Community Bridge. I hope its not too late.

[markyjackson-taulia]

@jberkus @markyjackson-taulia Hi, I would like to work on this project through Community Bridge. I hope its not too late.

@shivam-51
Hello. No, it is not too late. You can review the specs and apply here: https://people.communitybridge.org/project/953e5f12-460b-4bf1-80b3-5171c2044462

[shivam-51]

@markyjackson-taulia Thank You

[DiptoChakrabarty]

Hey I am interested in this , can I know the exact duration of this program . Thanks.

[SergeyKanzhelev]

Hey I am interested in this , can I know the exact duration of this program . Thanks.

https://github.com/cncf/mentoring/tree/master/communitybridge/2020/q3-q4#timeline

for this project timeline is shifted for a week I think because of issues with the registration

[jberkus]

It's shifted my more than a week; we're pretty sure this project will take extra time. See spec, linked above.

[rahul799]

Hello mentors,
I have applied for Community-bridge. Just curious to know that when the results will be declared?

[jberkus]

At the end of this week.

[jberkus]

@Oghenebrume50 hey, reminder: you only have 24 hours left to complete your CommunityBridge application for this project, if you are going to.

[Abhishek-Dev09-zz]

@jberkus Is am late or CommunityBridge still accepting the application for this project ?

[jberkus]

@Abhishek-Dev09 yes, you were too late. Sorry.

[ghost]

@jberkus when the results are going to be released?

[jberkus]

We have selected @kalkayan as the mentee for this project. Thanks everyone for your interest! There may be a follow-up project in the spring; we'll see.

[nikhita]

Related - https://github.com/kubernetes/community/issues/4586. We will also be using this app for SIG elections whenever needed.

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[SergeyKanzhelev]

should this be closed as there is https://elekto.io/ now?

[mrbobbytables]

I believe so, @jberkus are there any other follow up items at this time?

[nikhita]

@jberkus :wave: do you think this can be closed?