On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 02:29:56PM +0300, Panu Kalliokoski wrote: > On Sat, Apr 22, 2006 at 10:15:20PM -0500, Peter Samuelson wrote: > > Besides, there is no value in a wide-open voting system. This is > > called an "Internet poll" and the results generally reflect whatever > > websites or blogs happen to publicise it. > > Not if those people have to be properly identified via their PGP keys. > Such a simple requirement will already cut off the "casual Joes" that > only vote once because they saw the announcement somewhere. It also > prevents most ways of abuse. Yes, but was this Peter's point? There is already an inherent unfairness in Debian's voting system when the vote of a relatively modest contributor and less-than-one-year DD like me counts exactly as much as each of the votes of Javier Fernandez-Sanguino Pen~a, Christian Perrier, Manoj Srivastava, Ian Jackson or Joey Schulze (to name a few examples)---each of whom is tenfold voteworthy next to me. What salutary effect, what benefit to our users and free software, would opening Debian's official voting rolls even wider bring? The fallacy in the argument, in my view, is in the implicit proposition that votes build productive communities. This simply is not so. You and I could go and open an Internet poll right now, inviting those properly identified by PGP keys to participate. Would a productive community somehow result? If one did, it would be the first such in history to my knowledge. What votes accomplish---and it is all they accomplish---is to afford existing productive communities a way of making the most important of their communal decisions, in such a manner that productive members who find themselves in the minority feel minimal discontent and maximal desire to abide. Except inasmuch as the new voter has contributed a substantial new share to the Debian commons, Debian voting is a zero-sum game---for the voters no less than for the voted. You cannot bestow the vote on one, except by fractionally taking it away from those who already hold it. Putting the vote in the wrong hands would be the death of the Project. -- Thaddeus H. Black 508 Nellie's Cave Road Blacksburg, Virginia 24060, USA +1 540 961 0920, t@b-tk.org, thb@debian.org
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