Bill Allombert wrote:
You misunderstood my second point: you already knew that Branden was running when drafting your plateform, so you could have incorporated this in your plateform instead of the rebuttal.
Well, no, that's not true: I knew Branden was considering running, but he didn't actually decide to run until about five hours before nominations closed and platforms were due. Personally, I view the "platform" as the "what I'm about" section, and the "rebuttal" as "any comments I have arising from the other candidates' platforms", and acted on that interpretation.
This way, you give achance to Branden to address it in his own rebuttal.
Branden's completely able to address those comments in posts to the list, if he so chooses.
Restricting rebuttals to what is in the plateforms of others candidates is a common practice in this kind of process, and I think Debian should adopt it.
Even if that were the case, like I said in the mail you're replying to, the focus of Branden's platform this year is his own character and abilities, and he specifically counted his contributions to SPI as part of that. So I can't see why it'd be inappropriate even with the rules you're talking about...
I note that you are not worried to harm SPI by using involvement in SPI as a negative point, thus discouraging people to get involved.
If talking about major problems SPI's had in public causes people to decided to work on other things instead, well, that's as it is. I don't think it's a valid reason to hide things, or that refusing to discuss important topics is really that helpful. I think I was fairly moderate in what I wrote.
Cheers, aj