Re: Logo swap vote is bogus

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

Chris Waters <xtifr@dsp.net> writes:
> Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> writes:
> > Where was the swap discussed?
> On -devel.  (I wasn't even subscribed to -vote until last night.)

Oh, I saw Brenden's comment that he might propose a swap (but didn't want to 
talk about it), I just failed to realise that the constitution said that we 
should assume that the terms of the vote were changed by him saying that ;-)

> >  Would that also be the hiding place that was found for the definition of 
> > ``Modified Swirl'' ?
> 
> I don't know -- I didn't vote for any logos.  I'm not even sure what
> all the candidates were.  I know nothing about "Modified Swirl" except
> that I noticed the name on the ballot, before I deleted the ballot.

The reason you know nothing about Modified Swirl is that it was only mentioned 
on debian-vote, to which few people were subscribed at the time.

> > Is anyone else feeling just a little disenfranchised here?
> 
> What on earth are you talking about?  It's not like it was hard to
> find this info.  I wasn't subscribed to -vote, I only skim -devel and
> -private -- the only lists that I read carefully all the time are
> -devel-announce and -news.  Yet somehow, I, a disinterested skimmer,
> managed to find all this information that you, who care so
> passionately and deeply about all this, managed to overlook?

Well no actually.  You didn't find out about Modified Swirl, as I would guess 
is true of the majority of the developers.  Despite that, the fact that 
Modified Swirl got a limited number of votes is being touted as a significant 
data point, in order to give credence to the idea that there is any mandate 
for swapping the logos.

[ Just in case anyone else is still in the dark about Modified Swirl, it
  was to have the plain swirl for both logos, with the official one having
  the word ``official'' tacked onto it. ]

> Is it a
> matter of being "disenfranchised," or just NOT PAYING ATTENTION?

I was paying attention as it happens, I even wasted about an hour before 
voting, looking for a definition of Modified Swirl.

> I just think it would be nice to have an image to stick on my pathetic
> little web page, and then I'll get back to coding.

Generally, I agree with you, and I could have just voted for the swap, and got what I want as a result.

So why am I still ranting ?

Because next time the voting system is abused in this way, it might be on an important issue.

Also, my ranting is not delaying the completion of the vote (it continues regardless), and could actually be speeding a conclusion, since I've managed to inform a few people that a vote was on, which could help the vote achieve quorum.

Also, discussing this now means we can shake out the arguments a little. If the logo4 vote fails to reach quorum, this should actually save time on logo5 (which I think we can expect to pop out of the woodwork immediately).

I'm sorry if my ranting is pissing you off, but it might just raise the level of credibility of either this vote, or the next one (if we have to endure another), which should result in a quicker conclusion than would otherwise have been achieved.

You clearly don't care about our voting system, whereas I care about it because I can see it being used to justify decisions supposedly taken in the names of the developers, when less than a quarter of the electorate currently vote (well less than a sixth in this vote)

Do we even know what proportion of the developers are subscribed to this list?
(a rapidly diminishing number perhaps, as they get fed up with me.  Sorry)

Cheers, Phil.