I feel like this is pretty telling that out of the four members of the SC that were elected for a 2-year term, two of them quit after a year or less. In the initial announcement of his departure, fpletz did not directly attribute the reasons to the SC itself, but now in his post above, he does say that “it [the SC] burned [him] out pretty good”, which is an interesting phrasing, given that Gabriella also said earlier that she “burned out on Steering Committee work”.
Some of the other things described in Gabriella’s blog are also easier to interpret with the additional context now, especially the mention of “filibusters”.
As others above, I observe that out of the initial 7 elected members of the SC, only 3 of them are clinging to their positions by refusing a full re-election (and by being candidate again, for the one that has his position ending at this cycle), while 4 are stepping down and/or not running again, but given that fpletz has already stepped down, the outcome is a tie and no full re-election is possible.
Now, I really wonder why it is important for these 3 to cling so hard to their positions to the point of letting go a more technical position and some of the respect that we had for them. Is it really just because they felt like they did nothing wrong that would justify ending their mandate early? Is it because they think it is essential to have some continuity on the SC (which could still happen if some of its members were re-elected)? Or is it about giving a larger share of the SC to the part of the community that still feels represented by them?