Clarify various aspects of EC elections and the Union of Councils.

[jasongrout]

This PR incorporates suggestions from the discussions at #251 and jupyter-governance/ec-team-compass#23. Thanks to everyone involved in those discussions.

[ivanov]

Thanks for this, Jason.

One unincorporated suggestion from jupyter-governance/ec-team-compass#23 that I think should be considered came from @mwcraig

In the Leadership Directory, for each person on the EC

1. list when their term expires
2. state whether they were elected by the UoC or by the EC or neither

I think particularly point 2 is necessary in order to meet the "the cumulative total number of seats filled by the UoC is equal to, or one more than, the number filled by the EC" in the event of, for example, early resignations.

[willingc]

I recommend adding more clarity to Union of Council section.

[willingc]

The last paragraph is unclear. Perhaps split the sentence and/or clarify. My interpretation:

• leadership of Subproject Councils, Standing Committees, and Working Groups compose the Union of Councils.
• nominees for an Executive Council must be members of the UoC.
• UoC members vote for Executive Council positions that represent the UoC.

[choldgraf]

Hey all - I hope that this is OK (and apologies if not @jasongrout , feel free to revert), but I just pushed c18d1b3 to try and clarify things a bit given @willingc 's comments. Here's a summary of what I did:

• Split out the "elections" information into sub-sections. This makes it much easier to "glance at" the information, and quickly get the answers to questions. It also lets us attach MyST labels to the sections, so that we can cross-reference them elsewhere.
• As part of that, tried to clarify, make explicit, and de-duplicate as much information as I could.
• In the section on "Union of Councils", I tried to remove duplicate information about the election process and membership requirements, and instead cross-linked the new sections in the elections page.

My rationale for this is that our governance documentation is basically "reference documentation" for the inner-workings of the structure and decision making of Jupyter. As such, it should be as concise and to-the-point as possible so that things aren't unclear or under-specified, and so that it's easy for someone to quickly refer back to it. It should also have a clear "source of truth" for information so that things aren't duplicated in a way that they might diverge. By having many different pieces of information embedded in the same paragraph, it's harder to parse and identify what you're looking for. So I split things up to be easier to track in general.

I hope that is helpful!

[jasongrout]

One unincorporated suggestion from jupyter-governance/ec-team-compass#23 that I think should be considered came from @mwcraig

Sorry, I should have pointed out that I made changes to the list of people in a separate PR (#253) because I knew we were independently updating that file for the new EC members, and I didn't want the two PRs conflicting, and I didn't want to hold up the updated EC list for discussion on this PR.

In #253, I incorporated the first suggestion (listing terms), but not the second (listing whether that person was elected by the UoC or the EC). I know there have been different opinions about that, so I think it deserves a separate discussion. I'll open a separate issue for that discussion so it doesn't impede either PR.

Update: I've opened #255

[jasongrout]

@choldgraf - thanks for taking a crack at rewording things. I was hoping to do a surgical smaller change that made it clear that the intent and meaning was not changing, but hey, I'm also up for a more drastic reorganization if it makes things a lot more clear.

I'm still carefully reading your changes, but one thing that stood out. The top of the overview.md document says:

This document provides a brief informational summary of the Project Jupyter governance model. In case of any substantive discrepancy with the official descriptions of each body, the underlying governance documents should be considered as the source of truth, and we will update this overview as needed.

As such, I think the overview document should not be the only place the UoC should be defined - I think the UoC should continue to be defined in the EC document as the source of truth.

[jasongrout]

I think particularly point 2 is necessary in order to meet the "the cumulative total number of seats filled by the UoC is equal to, or one more than, the number filled by the EC" in the event of, for example, early resignations.

@ivanov, I don't think it is necessary to know the people that were elected by each method to deal with early resignations, given the process for appointing replacements. But let's please take that discussion up at #255.

[choldgraf]

Fair point @jasongrout - I've pushed a commit that moves the "definition" of the UoC to the executive council page, and then references that page from "overview"