Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)
Raphael Hertzog writes ("Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)"):
> On Tue, 06 Jan 2009, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > - The Secretary should explicitly have the power to delay a GR
> > vote by up to (say) two weeks for the purposes of
> > - running related votes concurrently
> > - assisting drafters as above
> > unless the DPL objects, and may delay it by a further two weeks
> > if given explicit permission by the DPL.
>
> The secretary probably delayed several votes without this explicit
> authorization but it's probably nice to make it explicit.
Quite so.
> > - To help voters choose, the following people should be able to
> > require the Secretary to quote on each GR ballot form a URL
> > of their choice, to be used by them for disseminating their vews on
> > the vote:
> > The Proposer of each resolution or amendment
> > The Project Leader
> > Each Delegate or group of Delegate(s) named or overruled
> > A nominee of the Technical Committee
> > A nominee of each Trusted organisation designated according to 9.3
>
> I agree with the intent but I don't agree with the list of persons you
> selected. I would restrict it to:
> - The proposer of each resolution or amendment
> - The seconders of each resolution or amendment
The point of this is to allow voters who do not wish to review
thousand-message mailing list threads to get a clear summary of the
issues from all of the relevant sides. That means that everybody
relevant must be able to get their statement referenced but also that
the number of such statements should be kept reasonably small.
Anyone can make themselves a seconder simply by seconding something.
So in principle this means that anyone who wants to can get their
position statement referenced. Surely that can't be what you meant ?
Why did I list the Leader, named or overruled Delegates, the TC, and
the Trusted organisations ? Because it might be that their decisions
are being overruled or preempted. That means that they must have a
right to be heard, alongside their `accusers' as it were.
In theory we could write it so that (for example) a Trusted
organisation only has this right when it is property that they hold in
trust for Debian which is at stake. However, in practice none the
people I list are likely to abuse this privilege - and all except the
TC are subject to the normal political will of the Project so if they
make a nuisance of themselves we can just disempower them.
Also, writing it this way means that we don't have to have someone
adjudicating whether the Trusted organisation's input is relevant or
not.
> The GR ballot should only give the URL on vote.debian.org where you would
> find links behind each proposer/seconder. Ideally those links point
> directly to the debian-vote archive so that it lets people jump into
> discussions directly and form their own opinion.
No, I would like the ballot paper to contain links to web pages
controlled by each of the relevant people. A digested
hopefully-coherent position paper, with references and other
supporting material as the relevant people think appropriate, allows
each side to do the best job it can of being convincing. That's quite
different from getting a link to the middle of some flamewar.
Also, it's important that the people putting out these position
statements can respond to each others' statements, improve them, and
so on. That's why what we specify to the Secretary is the URL and the
content is left to the nominees.
Ian.
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