Re: Social Committee proposal text (diff)

[Josip Rodin <joy@entuzijast.net>]

On Mon, Feb 12, 2007 at 10:49:51AM +0200, Kalle Kivimaa wrote:
> > +    <p>The Social Committee may ask a Developer to take a particular
> > +    social course of action even if the Developer does not wish to;
> > +    this requires a 3:1 majority.</p>
> 
> OK, what happens if the Developer doesn't take the required course of
> action? With the ctte it is easy, somebody does an NMU, but I don't
> see how you can do something similar in social situations.

Well, the short answer is, we deal with it the way we deal with it right
now, just with some official approval.

But, this is a reiteration of the desire for examples, which is
understandable. Here's one that I can think of - soc-ctte could be asked to
rule on whether some developer should be gentler on bug report submitters
without closing bugs immediately, or without yelling at them, or something
like that. In that case, the overriding mechanism would be for people to
reopen such bugs, but the committee could still issue a formal request that
the said developer refrains from being trigger-happy, and perhaps authorize
the BTS admins to freely lock out the 'close' function for that person if
they transgress.

I could also imagine how a similar dispute would be handled with regard to
mailing list abuse - someone could petition the soc-ctte to have a couple of
conflicting developers take a never-ending flamewar off-list.

> > +  <li>At least one third of all elected candidates should have been
> > +  members of the project for at least Y/2 years, where Y is the age
> > +  of the Project in years. If fewer than one third of candidates meet
> > +  this requirement, the election process is repeated.</li>
> 
> Like Lars already said, this becomes an impossible requirement sooner
> or later.

(Replying to both) Right. I didn't remember to consider that.

Maybe change to:

+  <li>PY is the age of the Project in years. SY is PY/2 or 10,
+  whichever is smaller.
+  At least one third of all elected candidates should have been
+  members of the project for at least SY years.
+  If fewer than one third of candidates meet this requirement,
+  the election process is repeated.</li>

> A five year rule would be better, but even then this rule may result in an
> impasse, if we don't have enough qualified candidates who fullfil the
> requirement.

I pondered this a bit. In the current setting, it would require six out
of sixteen seats to be filled that way. I don't think it should become a
problem, but if you think it will, maybe the ratio should be reduced to 25%
or something like that.

I actually think that getting 16 candidates over 'none of the above' marker
might be a bigger problem :)

-- 
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.