Re: Social Committee proposal text (diff)

[Josip Rodin <joy@entuzijast.net>]

On Tue, Feb 13, 2007 at 11:59:06PM +0100, gregor herrmann wrote:
> > > > Do you think it's likely for it to go on for more than one repetition?
> > > I've no real idea but it might lead to a dead end. And having
> > > infinite nominations/elections because there are e.g. "only" 10 and
> > > not 16 persons seems to defeat the whole idea.
> > (Just a note - my S2 boundary isn't really arbitrary, it's basically a
> > function of the quorum.)
> 
> (Point taken but it's still a deliberate decision to say
> count($members_of_soc_ctte)=round(Q).)

(I was just correcting the adjective used - "arbitrary" isn't the same as
"deliberate" :)

> > I have pondered this previously, but I decided to have a try like that
> > still. If we allow the bar to be dropped arbitrarily down from the
> > quorum-based quota, then how do we decide how many are sufficient and
> > how many are not?
> 
> I don't have an answer ready but IMO S2 (or Q) is not more magical
> then 5 or 13 or 42.
> 
> I guess at the end the size of the committee should:
> * depend on its goals and tasks
> * allow the group to work as a _group_
> 
> (The other question is of course what happens if there are not enough
> candidates/winners. Maybe an (equally arbitrary) minimum size for a
> second round could be defined?)

I've discussed in the previous thread why I thought 1000->16 or 2000->23
were decent; but that was more in light of an upper limit, rather than a
lower limit. Only when I started writing the exact rule into the
constitution text did I realize that there lower limit needs to be
thought about :)

If there is a serious doubt whether we would be able to elect that many
people in less than two rounds of elections (a second round would be
bearable; a third would be a real bother) then I would have to be leaning
towards either:
* Allowing a variable number of members, to a point. I was originally
  thinking that a fixed size needs to be set in order to have a clear
  understanding of what the membership in the ctte means; also adding
  variability adds more nuance into the constitution definition so it's
  harder to write.
* Or cutting the fixed size further down, but that sounds like a workaround.

-- 
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.