On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 12:08:45PM +0200, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
> Hi,
>
> during the last DPL voting period, a question [1] about the current
> length of the DPL period came up. This topic was also discussed during
> recent DebConf11.
So here's a wild idea I came up this morning while taking a shower. This
is wild and not very much thought through yet, so I expect many people
to show me the errors in my ways. That's fine, go right ahead. I
wouldn't want to push this through unexamined.
I think most of us are in agreement that the DPL term is too short. At
the same time, most of us will also acknowledge that lengthening the DPL
term by too much would be a bad idea, since inactive DPLs don't
contribute anything useful to the project, and having active DPLs in
their place would be much better.
So what would happen if we changed the procedure to say that DPLs
essentially need to resign when they believe they're no longer useful?
This would solve some problems:
- the DPL term could not be too short or too long by much, as a DPL
would step down when he[1] feels he's done everything he wanted to do,
or when he feels he's got no time left to do useful DPL work (because
life caught up with him).
- Currently, I believe DPLs feel reluctant to resign when they should,
as it might reflect bad on them. If we changed things so that DPLs
would be _expected_ to resign, then no such reluctancy would exist.
This would be a good thing, as a DPL who believes he's not doing a
good job really should resign.
Of course, this wouldn't /really/ be 'serve until resign'; it would
instead be 'serve until resign or recalled'. After all, there's a recall
procedure in the constitution, and it would be unwise to try to remove
that.
Perhaps we should even go further than that. Starting a recall vote is
something very open and confrontational, which might dissuade people
from proposing a recall vote. This could theoretically result in a DPL
holding on to the post, essentially unopposed, until it's far too late.
So let's make recalling the DPL a bit easier: let's say that after X
time, there will be an automatic recall vote, rather than an election.
Only if the DPL fails to win the recall vote do we start a new election.
Voting 'no' in a recall vote, which is anonymous, would not be as
confrontational as proposing one -- which should still be possible --
and would therefore be possible for a DPL who's done a good job in the
past but has now started to slack.
Perhaps this could also be the 'easy way out' that people have been
talking about: a DPL could short out the recall vote by resigning
before the vote happens.
Oh my, now I'm arguing against my original position. Perhaps it's time
to stop now.
[1] I feel justified not squeezing myself in ways to find gender-neutral
phrasing here because we've not had a female DPL yet. That doesn't
mean I think we shouldn't have a female DPL -- on the contrary.
--
The volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z can be described by
the following formula:
pi zz a
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