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Re: An ammendment (Re: Formal CFV: General Resolution to Abolish Non-Free)



On Jun 10, John Goerzen wrote:
> Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes:
> 
> > I wish to propose an ammendment to the proposed resolution as follows.
> 
> This is not really an amendment.

I believe an "amendment" under the Debian constitution is an
alternative that will be voted upon at the same time as the original
proposal.

For example, the original vote would have been

[ ] FOR the proposed action
[ ] AGAINST the proposed action (status quo)
[ ] FURTHER DISCUSSION

This amendment changes the vote to:

[ ] FOR the action proposed by John Goerzen at al.
[ ] FOR the action proposed by Anthony Towns et al.
[ ] AGAINST both actions
[ ] FURTHER DISCUSSION

Now follows a dissertation on the voting system:

Concordet voting is supposed to produce Pareto-optimal outcomes,
meaning outcomes in which no-one loses.  That assumes everyone
understands how to vote in the system, though, and I'm fairly sure
most Debian developers don't.  So instead of Pareto-optimality, we get
bizarre outcomes due to people thinking they're placing alternate vote
ballots.

A primer on Concordet: you should rank all options unless there is an
option you honestly don't care about.  Not voting for an option IS NOT
THE SAME as ranking it lower than another option.  For example, if you
like John's proposal on the second ballot shown above, and vote 1---
(- = no vote), you haven't really voted, because you haven't expressed
any relative preferences.  If you just vote 1--2, all you're saying is
you prefer John's proposal to further discussion; what you're NOT
saying is that you prefer John's proposal to Anthony's or no change.

To put it another way, 1--2 means:
  John ? Anthony
  John ? no change
  John > discussion
  Anthony ? no change
  Anthony ? discussion
  no change ? discussion

Concordet ignores the question marks.  So of the six possible votes on
your ballot, you've only voted one... and your ballot will only count
in deciding whether John's proposal dominates further discussion.


Chris
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