Re: What your ballot should look like if you're in favor of releasing sarge

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@grep.be>]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 06:31:22PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 23:48:58 +0200, Wouter Verhelst <wouter@grep.be> said: 
> 
> > On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 03:25:12PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >> And how else would you characterize people who ignore a message
> >> sent to them thrice that showed exactly what was being proposed to
> >> be new SC, and then turn around an whine that they did not know
> >> what the changes proposed were, and that the title selected by the
> >> secretary was deceiving?
> 
> > The ballot did indeed contain the full "new" SC, but it did not
> > contain the text of the old SC (for comparison), nor did it contain
> > a diff. On top of that, it made a judgement about what type of
> > changes were being made (that they were editorial), a judgement that
> > seems to have led some people to not investigate what was being
> > voted upon ("oh, it's editorial, it won't be important then").
> 
> > You could explain that as being "apathic". Others explain it as
> > "receiving incomplete information, leading to some people making an
> > incorrect decision" -- or, to put it otherwise, "being mislead".
> 
> 	If you are a DD, and do not know how to get to the current
>  social contract, or you do not know how to compare two documents, I
>  think you should consider resigning.

The point is not about knowing how one needs to do something.

> 	Every vote, especially vote regarding changes to foundation
>  documents, require a modicum of due diligence on the part of the
>  electorate. People too lazy to put in the effort required to compare
>  two documents, and who want to be spoon fed predigested pap are not
>  those whose opinion ought to matter.

I don't think it's about lazyness.

If a voting ballot entitled "editorial changes" comes up out of the blue
(and I'm sure this has happened for some who do not read all
mailinglists), people's first impression may be that this is something
"unimportant", even if they wouldn't think so when they'd only have a
look at the changes.

It's not about lazyness; it's about properly informing people. I'm not
saying you should spoon-feed people all the available information;
however, you should take care that the first impression people get when
the ballot appears in their mailbox is a correct one. If you don't do
that, people might not (immediately?) understand the importance of a
given vote.

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