Polling informally Debian Contributors

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

While discussing secret ballots over on debian-vote, we got a little off
topic and started discussing the value of a mechanism to express
agreement/disagreement with messages in a mailing list thread.


>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
    Russ> Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> writes:
    >> The bit that was supposed to be the conclusion of that was that
    >> it might be good if we had some mechanism for collecting opinions
    >> related to mailing-list mails/threads that was private, and
    >> didn't involve making (often already long) mailing list threads
    >> longer in order to express an opinion, but I think that's going
    >> OT so should be discussed elsewhere, probably after setting up a
    >> prototype.

    Russ> For the record, I like this, and in general I think there are
    Russ> multiple areas of Debian where we could benefit from being
    Russ> able to take a quick pulse of the mood of affected
    Russ> contributors without relying solely on what people are willing
    Russ> to write in (sometimes contentious) email threads.

Neil did set up a prototype of Discorse a while back.  It has good
facilities for this kind of informal polling as well as good facilities
for rearranging threads and that kind of thing.  It's a bit different
than our mailing list culture.

If I wanted to run such an informal poll today, I'd set up a salsa issue
for the discussion or at least for the parts where I wanted to get
thumbs up/down to various statements.

I too think that such informal mechanisms would be valuable.

--Sam