I think you're right. Hopefully the next election will include all members of tmo who have the requisite karma, even if they don't have a maemo.org account. (There's something of an issue if someone has a maemo.org account and a tmo account, and they're not linked. Tricky).

But the council aren't governing or administering anything either. However, is this solely an example of poor communication; demonstrating that you think the council didn't do a good enough job of advertising the election on ITT at the time?

The elections and the changes to the forum have no causal relationship; so this is what makes me thing you're solely pointing to the communication problems perceived by you & penguinbait (and others)?

If so, I ask again - and I'm trying not to be defensive of this council, the previous, or any of the members - how would you have advertised such things differently?

There is an obvious answer: email everyone's tmo account's email address notifying them about the changes. Perhaps that - as a one time thing - would have been worthwhile? Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing; and emailing thousands and thousands of people could have been viewed as spam. A tricky balance, and I can't immediately think of any time in the future when it would be as relevant as a communication mechanism.

I'm snipping this out - largely out of context - but I believe it is important; the silent majority is typically a happy majority.