[ secretary: question for you at the end ] On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 12:21:42PM -0800, Don Armstrong wrote: > Maybe this: [ I've addressed this in https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/11/msg00165.html ] > Also, one of the things that would also be nice to fix is to make the > max number of CTTE members 9 instead of 8, to avoid the casting vote > problem when the CTTE is full. I've mixed feelings about the "tie breaking" matter in the ctte. On the one hand, voting is not mandatory (and it is not majority voting anyhow), so there is no silver bullet rule that can guarantee the absence of ties, no matter the size of the ctte. On the other hand, one might try to minimize the chances that a tie will arise, and an odd-sized ctte will probably do that. But I don't think this matter is completely independent from the turn-over rule we are introducing. For instance, I suspect that if we were to introduce the term limit, on average it will be less likely for the ctte to be fully staffed (due to the expiries and the fact that the overall energy spent in periodically restaffing the ctte will be higher). The latter argument questions both increasing the maximum size to 9 (rather than, say, reducing it to 7) and the overall usefulness of a *maximum* odd size. Which made me think exactly at what you wrote next: > I don't believe that we should force the CTTE to have an odd number, > because that is complicated, and may not be worth the effort, either. Things would indeed be different if we were to fiddle with appointments, so that after each appointment the ctte has an odd number of members. You're certainly right it would be complicated. > But if this is at all controversial, then we can put this forward later. I don't think it's necessarily controversial. But my take home message from the above discussion is that this proposal is less ready thank the term limit one. That alone might warrant postponing. Even if it were as ready, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to have a separate GR. Voting once instead of twice is nice for everyone, but conflating two separate decisions in a single GR has been proven to be unwise in the past. And I'm especially wary of doing so with a constitutional change. Secretary: can you share your thoughts on this last point with us, what would be best from the ballot preparation POV? Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Former Debian Project Leader . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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