Bug#210879: revise odd language in 'constitution.txt' -- "K Developers" ... "not integers"
D. Burrows says:
> I'm completely lost on this thread, and I suspect a lot of other
> people are.
"Suspect"? The record proves the existence of those completely lost readers beyond a
shadow of a doubt.
> I never entirely understood what your initial problem was,
You'll never walk alone.
> and the subsequent bickering is getting ridiculous. (not to mention
> that it's going nowhere)
Yeah well, I think it's going somewhere, it's just going slower than some have patience
for. Perhaps the nature of the issue, (constitutional pride and math pride), is such
that it has to go slow. Given the subject I'm sorry that the thread isn't even more
ridiculous -- some guys checked their sense of humor at the door, then left in a huff
forgetting to retrieve it. Maybe if we threw pies.
> I would like to politely request that you state your problem clearly
> (I don't see "Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim" anywhere in the Constitution)
> or kill this thread and bug now.
I'd say the sad thing is that the problem was already clearly stated, and most of the
replies so far serve to further illustrate it, along with contingent problems. By
"contingent" I mean that besides the typo or bad prose itself, there's the poor reading
skills which miss it, (or skills unused due to too much coffee or whatnot), then there's
the steely pride in said underfed skills, then there's the "pigpile" atmosphere of this
thread in particular, as if prose quality were a matter of popularity and peer pressure.
On your polite request... while I wouldn't like to concede my post unclear to begin with,
I'd be happy to RE-state it so it's clearer, or painfully obvious:
%less -N /usr/share/doc/debian/constitution.txt
'K' first shows up here:
99 and sponsored by at least K other Developers, or if proposed by
Reader thinks, "hmm, what's this 'K'?" (I thought 'Kilobyte' myself.). "A variable?
It's applied to developers, probably must be a whole number then. 'at least'... guess
they want more than that number." Familiar examples:
Q: How many apples should I buy?
A: At least 5.
(Meaning 5 or more apples. Bringing back 5 & 1/2 would be wrong, because
"apple" means a whole apple. Just as developer means a whole person. Here's
an experiment anyone can try: the next few times when somebody who is not a
mathematician asks you a "how many apples" type question, add an inappropriate
".35" to whatever the answer is, or subtract that much if they should
round up, and see how well they understand you.)
Q: How many more miles till we get there?
A: At least 5 miles.
(Meaning 5 or more miles. 5 & 1/2 would fit, because miles are often
approximate. We're always going half miles and quarter miles.)
'K's second appearance:
105 2. If such a resolution is sponsored by at least 2K Developers,
I was thinking, "two Kilobytes", or else "twice as many Developers as on line #99, or
more. A whole number again."
'K' next shows up here:
111 Technical Committee, then only K Developers need to sponsor
Reader thinks, "only K Developers, OK. 'K's a whole number alright."
The common usage of the word "only" is so common that I'm afraid folks will be bored and
insulted to hear something explained they already know well. So I'm hesitant to explain,
but others claim they're puzzled, therefore bombs away...
When people say "only ___<number or variable>___ <plural noun>." They mean that the
number in question is counting the plural noun in whatever system appropriately counts
that noun. Familiar examples:
Q: How many apples should I buy?
A: Only 5.
(Meaning 5 apples, no more, no less. Bringing back 5 & 1/2 would be wrong, because
"apple" means a WHOLE apple, and "only" means "no more than".)
Q: How many more miles till we get there?
A: Only 5 miles.
(5.5 would be pushing it, but 4.5 would be OK.)
Q: How many more guys do we need for the baseball team?
A: We only need 5.
(More than 5 guys would be OK, as substitutes maybe, but "5.5" is out of the
question.)
The question is what class of number does the plural noun being counted belong to?
Apples, baseball players and developers are whole numbers. Miles need not be. The
plural noun decides.
'K' takes its last bow here:
139 K is Q or 5, whichever is the smaller. Q and K need not be
140 integers and are not rounded.
"OooohKaaaaay...." thinks the reader, "now if K was a square root, and is not rounded,
then they might have to break up some developers." Ahh, in hindsight, it's too bad I
used the adjective "fractional" in the bug description, instead of "irrational".
And what's Q? It's used twice, in #139 above, and #130:
130 vote. There is a quorum of 3Q.
For quorums, which must be of course whole numbers of developers again, and defined here:
138 7. Q is half of the square root of the number of current Developers.
(Why multiply a variable that only shows up on its own once? Might as well be 'Q' in
#130, and in #138 Q could be 3/2 of current D.'s, and K <= Q/3, or 5. And why have a
variable 'Q' when the word "quorum" means just that.)
I could add a story of how a mathematician reads it... as soon as he sees 'K' in line #99
he's racing down to the definition like a human C compiler, saying Eureka, and then
hopping back to #99, and so on, which is probably what the other posters did. But math
pride doesn't change the misuse of "only", the turgidity of needless forward references,
the equivocal rounding, and the inappropriateness of algebraic quorum formulas.
---
Another molehill like aspect of all this is that unless we're expecting the current
number of Debian developers to plummet below 100**, (scared away by this bug, mayhap),
then 'K' is always 5 and the text can be cleaned up like so:
(** sqrt(100) is 10, half of ten is 5.)
Before:
99 and sponsored by at least K other Developers, or if proposed by
105 2. If such a resolution is sponsored by at least 2K Developers,
111 Technical Committee, then only K Developers need to sponsor
130 vote. There is a quorum of 3Q.
138 7. Q is half of the square root of the number of current Developers.
139 K is Q or 5, whichever is the smaller. Q and K need not be
140 integers and are not rounded.
After:
99 and sponsored by at least five other Developers, or if proposed by
105 2. If such a resolution is sponsored by at least ten Developers,
111 Technical Committee, then only five Developers need to sponsor
130 vote. There is a quorum of half of three times the square root of the
number of
130a developers, rounded up to the nearest whole number.
138-40 (deleted, there'd be no need.)
Easier on the reader, isn't it?
> I might add that you will probably get a less frosty reception if you
> avoid grandstanding about how Debian developers are clueless
> programmers who don't know how to write. Regardless of whether you
> believe it to be true, attacks (or percieved attacks) on your audience
> are pretty much at the top of the list of ways to get yourself ignored.
I wouldn't deny that some developers are pretty clueless about many things, but that's
only human. Or perhaps you mean Tarrio -- I admire somebody who can write in a third
language as well as he manages, (I'm sure I'd be worse in his language), but though he
might be a King in Spain, or wherever, he's a plebe here.
Second, being ignored by most posters (so far) would be a welcome boon, and more
efficient to boot... To this end: OH PLEASE IGNORE ME! PLEASE! PAY LESS ATTENTION
PLEASE TO THIS BUG AND ITS RIDICULOUS AUTHOR. Thanks!
Third, if people were interested in fixing bugs more than practicing electronic S&M, then
it shouldn't matter whether a bug reporter had Tourette's Syndrome just so long as the
bug existed. In the same way, the "perceived attacks" I suppose I've been getting are
just as irrelevant. But why bother with boring facts when there's motives to impugn and
friendly warnings to suggest.
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