F44 Council Interview Questions (due: 21 May 2026) #565
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Summary
Approve or amend the interview questions for the Fedora Linux 44 election cycle by 21 May
Background
It is that time of year where we prepare for the next Fedora Council election round. The Fedora Council needs to review the questions in our interview template and either approve them again, or offer amendments. The deadline is 21 May 2026.
Details
Here are the current questions:
Summary
Updated questions that reflect priorities and points of consideration for the voting members of the Fedora community
I would like to see on the list of questions:
a: A freeform biography section, where the candidate can write about themself and experiences.
b: A question on what governence experience the candidate has.
F44 Council Interview Questionsto F44 Council Interview Questions (due: 21 May 2026)Discussed in 2026-05-06 Fedora Council meeting.
The Council discussed updating the F44 interview questions, noting they currently feel stale, outdated, and too numerous. Inspired by FESCo's approach of limiting their questionnaire to three targeted questions, the Council decided to collaboratively trim our list down to three critical questions via a shared document. Asynchronous feedback is requested from all members before the next meeting, where a formal ticket-driven vote will take place.
Follow-up Items:
Decisions:
!agreedDeadline for feedback is by 19 May 2026, preceding the next Council meeting. On the 20 May 2026 meeting, we take a formal ticket-driven vote.So Im late to the party but I agree that the current set of questions are definitely 'stale' (I like that description :) ). From a workshopping document shared with other council members, proposed questions are as follows in the attached screenshot. I will add another comment summarizing the current proposed questions then.
Summary of proposed new questions for council interview currently:
Set Questions:
Proposed Questions:
As agreed, the Fedora Council will select three questions for the interview from the proposed questions section. If there are other questions folks would like to propose for the interview, or would like to reword any existing proposals, please reply to this ticket.
The Council will review and discuss all feedback during our next meeting, Wednesday May 20 2026.
May I suggest the governence question be
As governance translates well across different project types.
I like the question about how a candidate sees Fedora's future. I don't find it hand wavey. I would see that as one of the primary reasons to run for Council.
I feel like proposed questions are still very neutral and bland.
They evaluate a nominated person as a Fedora contributor, so that community can choose who is the most trustworthy and most relevant. As if a seat on the council is an award from the community. But they don't let community people to express their support to certain specific ideas which the people might represent.
It is a safer choice, but I wonder do we want to play safe?
Should we become more spicy and ask things like: what's you opinion on AI, or on a Flatpak?
I admit, it is a bit scary to write a political platform statement instead of the interview, but I wonder what other folks think about it.
@bookwar
you have picked the two issues with the higest rate of contention, but in general, it would be good to know what potential councillors agendas will be.
I reckon an open ended question would be better, and that question about Fedora's Future could cover it. In that question, there could be examples of talking points listed.
Im inclined to agree with @theprogram and maybe we should phrase it like:
'What would be your strategic vision for Fedoras future' or something like that. Id like it to give the nominee a chance to express their opinions on things like AI and Flatpaks and similar, if they see them in Fedoras future.
I also like the question to share their experiences in governance and leadership bodies, so +1 to that suggestion from me.
Has it been decided already? Or can we let the candidate to choose three questions from the list rather than us to prescribe them?
Sorry, I am completely missing the context here. If that option has already been discussed and decided, I don't want to restart the conversation.
@jflory7 wrote in #565 (comment):
This is what I was referencing. I assumed it was agreed that three is the number.
(The number being three. Four is too much, and two is too little. Six is right out)
From the document, the following questions were added - I am adding these at the bottom here atop @amoloney's screenshot.
And that, @bookwar, was the essence of the proposal. That is, to be as open ended as possible and instead let the nominees decide for themselves just how they want to approach the question. Say, for instance, if they decide to approach it either aggressively or safely, and if these choices, lead to their victory or defeat, then they would only have themselves to blame or credit, not our picks.
Albeit, we could ask people to be as opinionated as they can be with their answers to help us know more about them without having to push them to a certain direction, and possibly introducing a bias in the process. I get it, Open Source is inherently political and we are talking about elections here, but with the fires being everywhere, we got to be careful that we do not start one ourselves.
The number? Yes, sure. If I remember correctly, it came in the previous meeting before I got tasked to work on the workshop document. What the questions would be though - that is something that we still have the time to discuss about. And yes, let us discuss it over here and have a single point of conversations, now that the contents of the document has been moved here.
I am -1 to the scenario of letting the nominees pick any three from the questionnaire that we provide, because even though the choice of question could be used to determine the competence of a participant, it just makes it difficult for the community to evaluate all the participants on a equally leveled playing field. We would not want to inadvertently make the voting harder.
We agreed to go trouh the Google Doc and provide feedback there. I did. And when the agreed deadline passed (or is near?), suddenly we are discussing completely different proposals. I am not very happy about how this went.
Even ignoring that, I prefer the 3 questions from the document. As a nominee, I should have the ability to choose my own topics I want to cover in the answers, instead of being scrutinized about whatever is the hot take at the moment.
Letting the candidates choose the actual questions is also not good, as said by @t0xic0der.
I am +1 to selecting 3 set questions.
I am -1 to allowing candidates choose from a selection of questions to answer 3 from.
I am +1 to a non-technical-specific question about what the candidate would see as strategically important/beneficial for Fedoras future and allow them the opportunity to answer without asking a leading question.
I am also +1 to a question around how would a candidate help drive community initiatives/policies, etc.
And I would also be +1 to an 'experience' question - what is their experience in Fedora and/or other open source projects, do they have any experience in leadership/governance groups, etc.
To deviate from the questions discussion quickly to address the disconnect between google doc and ticket:
The discussion has not changed. The location has. AIUI, the google doc had questions proposed in it, and council were to provide feedback and edits. The same is being done here, with the same questions from the google doc, plus some other suggestions on questions. We are discussing what are suitable questions to ask in the council election interview, and people are giving their feedback.
I have seen that council has had to go to great lengths recently to explain the use of private tickets on occasion. While a google doc is not a private ticket, and I understand the only reason it was likely suggested was because it is a little easier to use for async discussion, it should not have been used for this task. This ticket is more than sufficient to discuss and agree on questions to ask candidates at election time. It is also appropriate to have this discussion public. I, as the elections manager, am moving this discussion here before the deadline so that there is time to have this discussion openly.
The deadline is still in effect for feedback (May 21), and the topic is still the same - propose questions, provide feedback.
Ack. It's just confusing to me that we agreed on using the Google Doc with the deadline on the 19th, and now we don't do that. But let's not dwell on that. Public discussions are better anyway, I agree with that :)
And I do apologize for that confusion too :)
Version 2.10:
Q1: What kind of experience you have which might be relevant for the role (for ex. in governance)
Q2: What do you see as potential opportunities and risks for the Fedora Project in its future
Q3: What brought you to Fedora?
Version 2.10.1:
Q1: What kind of experience you have which might be relevant for the role (for ex. in governance or leadership roles)?
Q2: What do you see as potential opportunities and risks for the Fedora Project?
Q3: What brought you to Fedora?
Removed the "in the future" as requested by @churchyard
I don't see much difference personally, so both would work equally for me, and I'd leave this cosmetic choice to @amoloney as a welcoming gift :)
As agreed at the meeting there was/is a tiny window for a last minute concern, but if you are not raising it right now, we are done.
Going with Version 2.10.1.
Once I have had time to integrate the elections repo properly with Fedora Forge I will update the questions template to reflect our agreed changes.
Thanks all for your input.