Re: Logo swap vote is bogus

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

> Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> writes:
> 
> > I'll leave you with a fairly simple question:
> 
> >   I like the swirl logo, and want it to be widely used.
> >   I don't like the bottle logo, and don't want it as our official logo.
> > 
> >   How should I vote ?
> 
> AH!  Now I understand where you're coming from.  And I sympathize, I
> do, but the time for that option was during the main logo vote.  The
> Modified Swirl did NOT win, and I'm afraid you may just have to learn
> to live with that.

Well, quite.  If people had left it alone, I probably would have too, at least 
until last weekend when I found myself explaining to several people that I 
couldn't sell them a swirl T-Shirt, because they were licensed in a way that 
probably meant that only developers, on official business can wear them :-(
(we were giving away CDs at the time, which seems sort of official)

> (I don't know if the details should be discussed publicly, but I can
> tell you that I have strong reason to believe that the bottle may not
> be used much if it *does* become the official logo.  So you may *well*
> get your wish *if* the swap passes.)

Here's my problem.  Subverting the process by proposing something that is 
tangential to ones aims seems plain wrong to me.  We're not sneaky politicians 
here, so why are we acting like them ?

You went on on to say two other things:

  1) the logo swap was aired during the vote.
  2) the Modified swirl lost, so should be discounted

Where was the swap discussed?

Let me guess: On debian-vote prior to it being published on the archive pages? 
 Would that also be the hiding place that was found for the definition of 
``Modified Swirl'' ?

Is anyone else feeling just a little disenfranchised here?

To quote one of the messages that did actually make it onto the web pages 
(after I'd voted BTW), written by Darren O. Benham:

<http://www.uk.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-vote-9905/msg00010.html>

  On Fri, May 28, 1999 at 07:06:15PM +0100, Julian Gilbey wrote:
  > [an explanation of what Modified Switl was, deleted for brevity]
  ...
  > I have no idea how many developers understood this when voting -- I
  > certainly didn't without checking the -vote archives.
  Actually, I was told before the vote took place that the pages were being
  archived so I was relying on that for clarification.  I wasn't aware until
  recently that the archives WERENOT up.  That has been fixed.  I saw some
  may archives today.

That pretty neatly describes the situation I was in at the time.

I've had a couple of mails today from people who were unaware that a vote was 
on, until I started making waves on -devel.  This really isn't good.

Swirl had pretty much won when I voted IIRC (which looking at my mail was 28 
May 1999) whereas the description of what Modified Swirl was didn't appear on 
the vote page until some time later.  How can you draw any conclusion from the 
fact that Swirl got more votes in these circumstances?

As it happens, I voted for Swirl over Modified Swirl at the time, and didn't 
bother to change it because I couldn't imagine that anyone was going to try to 
use the relative ordering as significant, given the cock-up of the vote page 
for the bulk of the voting period.

<sarcasm>
Interestingly, the fact that we were voting on a swapable bottle when we voted 
swirl, is still not mentioned on that page.  Perhaps someone should add this 
now in order to legitimise the latest vote.
</sarcasm>

To reinforce that point, a quote from joey on the same day:

  Looking at the current state, the logos named SWIRL will win, but
  these are two logos x 2, so we have four.  Err, which swirl is
  will it be?  Or do we need to vote again if bottle only or not, if
  swirl plus bottle, or swirl only.

  Or am I going crazy?

  Regards,

        Joey

BTW Please don't accuse me of trying to restart the logo vote.  I'm pretty 
certain there is a consensus for the swirl, and I don't want that to change.

What I don't think we have a consensus on is how precisely that logo is to be 
deployed, or whether there should be two licenses, or whether one of them 
should include a bottle.

Looking at the voting record, only 21 people listed both Swirl and Dual as 1.  
These are the only people you can claim definitely wanted the bottle for some 
purpose, and some of them may have actually wanted it the way it is, not 
swapped.

In fact there is a much stronger case for suggesting that we agreed that there 
should be two licenses, since at least it was completely clear what that vote 
was about, and yet this latest vote seems likely to put one of those licenses 
out to pasture, along with the bottle that will never be used.

Is this the hidden agenda that I was smelling ?

Cheers, Phil.