Re: Bug#741573: #741573: Menu Policy and Consensus
>>>>> "Josselin" == Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org> writes:
Josselin> Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> wrote: Bill, in his role
Josselin> of policy editor said that he believed there was not a
Josselin> consensus. He cited a specific set of messages that he
Josselin> believes were not properly addressed.
>> From the beginning, I have been puzzled by your approach to this
>> issue.
Josselin> With this paragraph, I think I’m beginning to understand
Josselin> how you want to treat the issue. And I can’t say I think
Josselin> it is constructive.
Josselin> Bill used his position as a policy editor to reject a
Josselin> change, not because it was against consensus or against
Josselin> the policy process, but because it was against his own
Josselin> opinion. Not as policy editor, but as menu maintainer.
First, I definitely understand your frustration with the process. It
sounds like you expect to have confidence that policy
editors follow the community's needs and do not allow their personal
biases to influence their decisions. It sounds like you're frustrated
because you don't see that happening here.
I strongly value building robust processes. When we treat matters as
confrontations between people, we build frustration, we drive people
away, and we poison the atmosphere of the community. However, it's also
important that we address peoples frustrations. I hope we can get to a
point where we all believe that if there were a similar issue in the
future, it would be resolved much more quickly.
We all have biases. So, before focusing on blaming people or deciding
they are not acting in good faith, I'd like to focus on looking at what
we can do to have reasonable results even in the case of biases and bad
decisions from time to time. I think we would all be less frustrated if this
issue had been quickly resolved in a couple of weeks even if Bill had
displayed some bias in his initial call.
When I read Bill's message, he was claiming to act as a policy editor
*not* as a menu maintainer. So, yes I'll start by assuming that he is
doing what he said he's doing and discard that assumption very
reluctantly.
Now, does Bill have biases?
Almost certainly.
Bill did state his own objections early in the discussion; one of the
messages he pointed to that he claims was not addressed was his own
message.
Would bill have focused so much on finding objections if he didn't
dislike the proposal so much? Probably not. Would Bill have been more
willing to decide that objections were handled if he liked the proposal
better? Many people would be more sympathetic to proposals they liked.
Should Bill have recused?
Your current process does not describe when policy editors should
recuse.
One thing we may learn here is that we need to be more clear about how
we handle recusals.
Again, my hope is that we can work on our processes and our
understanding of how we address issues like this. I think that we could
get to a place where it takes a couple of weeks to resolve these sorts
of disagreements in most cases.
I think we can also do a better job of understanding what we expect.
However, I also recognize that it's possible we'll find ourselves in a
situation where a member of the community is not meeting the
expectations we've jointly agreed. I think in such cases that the
discussion about that member should be with the DPL.
I also think separating the discussion of how to handle the issue from
discussions of specific members of the community is valuable. As a TC
member I'm going to focus on the process and the specific technical
proposal, *not* on the personalities.
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