Re: Poor wording of vote results
William Ono <wmono@debian.org> writes:
> "FOR logo swap" does not have a Quorum so "FURTHER Discussion" wins.
> OK, that's great. The vote "does not have a Quorum", it says, and my
> interpretation of that was "there is no quorum necessary".
Well, technically, I think it's the vote as a whole, not "FOR" that
doesn't have a quorum. But "does not have a quorum" is correct. If
it didn't need a quorum, then it should have said "does not need a
quorum."
>From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Quorum \Quo"rum\, n. [L., of whom, gen. pl. of qui who]
Such a number of the officers or members of any body as is
competent by law or constitution to transact business; as, a
quorum of the House of Representatives; a constitutional
quorum was not present.
> The correct wording of the final line might be along the lines of:
> "FOR logo swap" does not meet quorum, so "FURTHER Discussion" wins.
I'm not even sure what that means. Since we're voting by email, we
don't actually have to meet, y'know. :-)
> Perhaps just removing the word 'a' is helpful, resulting in:
> "FOR logo swap" does not have Quorum so "FURTHER Discussion" wins.
This is simply ungrammatical. A quorum is a specific thing (to wit, a
sufficiently large group of people), not a property or attribute of
something.
> Is it just too late in the day for me to think clearly
That sounds like a reasonable excuse. :-)
I *do* think it would be more clear if it said "This vote does not
have a quorum, so FURTHER Discussion wins by default," or words to
that effect. In particular, the "by default" part might help others
who are vague on (or too tired to remember) the exact meaning of the
word.
cheers
--
Chris Waters xtifr@dsp.net | I have a truly elegant proof of the
or xtifr@debian.org | above, but it is too long to fit into
http://www.dsp.net/xtifr | this .signature file.
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