Re: Community Team - where we want to go

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:

    Charles> Le Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 10:55:41PM +0000, Martina Ferrari a
    Charles> écrit :
    >> 
    >> A short reply in a personal capacity..

    Charles> Hi Martina and everybody,

    Charles> I have always found replies “in a personal capacity” or
    Charles> “with [the team's] hat off” very confusing; probably
    Charles> because I rarely see this communication style outside
    Charles> Debian.  Especially when coming from teams that have quite
    Charles> some power, I think that it would be better for us to
    Charles> receive statements that reflect the consensus of the team,
    Charles> if necessary with some kind of addendum explaining the
    Charles> minority's point of view when the opinions of the team
    Charles> members are split in a way that it is hard to resolve.

I think there are significant problems when you try and consolidate
opinions in a consensus discussion.

When we as an entire community are trying to figure things out, it's
really hard to do that if some of us are speaking as individuals and
some of us are speaking as groups.

Put another way, consensus decision making requires that everyone
involved in building the consensus be reasonably open to listening to
others, considering how their comments affect the consensus, and being
open about those changes as the discussion progresses.  When some of the
stakeholders need to go off and have an internal discussion, it means it
is harder for a consensus facilitator (or anyone else) to see if
concerns have been raised.
It tends to create some unfortunate power imbalances.

So, I at least find it useful especially in consensus forming
discussions if people are willing to comment as individual members of
teams.