>>>>> "Wouter" == Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> writes: Wouter> I hear and agree with the argument against such a procedure; Wouter> having a way to delay the vote which everyone can trigger Wouter> opens the system up to abuse, which could allow the vote to Wouter> be delayed indefinitely if formulated badly. I believe the Wouter> answer to that is not to remove the option to delay the vote Wouter> entirely, but to restrict the conditions under which such a Wouter> delay can be invoked; only provide it to the DPL, or provide Wouter> only a limited number of delays, or allow a majority of Wouter> people who proposed options that are already on the ballot Wouter> to object, or something along those lines. The goal should Wouter> be to end up with a procedure where *can* extend the Wouter> discussion period if discussions are actually still Wouter> happening and we believe it is valid, without allowing Wouter> people who want to avoid any vote from happening entirely to Wouter> delay things indefinitely. Wouter> Additionally, this proposal does not remedy what I think is Wouter> another issue we have with our procedure, which I have been Wouter> wanting to resolve one way or the other for quite a while Wouter> but have no idea how to do so; the "I want to create a Wouter> ballot with all possible options" antipattern. We had a few Wouter> cases of this over the years (at least two that I can Wouter> remember), usually by well-intentioned people who want to Wouter> get things to a vote quickly, but I honestly believe it Wouter> creates more problems than it attempts to solve. Wouter> Writing an option that does not represent your own personal Wouter> opinion is extremely difficult at best, and is probably not Wouter> even possible at all. This means you'll get proposals from Wouter> people who actually hold an opinion very close to what you Wouter> wrote down that you'll then need to evaluate to decide Wouter> whether this improves the ballot option, or whether it Wouter> changes the option into something different entirely and Wouter> thus should be a separate ballot option instead. To deal Wouter> with such a proposal from the point of view of someone who Wouter> feels one of the options is almost-but-not-quite something Wouter> you can vote for can be very frustrating, as I experienced Wouter> first-hand in Wouter> https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2019/11/msg00032.html . Wouter> I also believe that a ballot with options that were written Wouter> by people who do not support that option will usually result Wouter> in a cluttered ballot, with various options that are almost Wouter> but not quite the same thing, and options that are Wouter> irrelevant noise and which will never win. I think this Wouter> behavior should be discouraged if not outright forbidden Wouter> (although, again, I'm not sure how to forbid them), and Wouter> would note that adding a strict time limit seems more likely Wouter> to create private discussions (as I've explained above) and Wouter> therefore to me seems more likely to result in this Wouter> antipattern. Wouter> I'm not submitting a formal draft to go against yours at Wouter> this point (although I do have the beginnings of one), Wouter> because I would like to see whether I'm alone in this Wouter> opinion or not, where only in the latter case it would make Wouter> sense to continue down this path. Wouter> Thanks for your thoughts, Wouter> [1] In the case of 2006-003, I started a discussion on -vote Wouter> in order to start the debate before formally proposing a GR, Wouter> intending to explore the problem before starting to build Wouter> the ballot. The first follow-up to that mail however was a Wouter> formal GR proposal by Manoj, which then started the Wouter> procedure. It was not contentious vote though, and I think Wouter> technically the vote may have expired at least once, Wouter> although I'm not 100% sure about that -- it involved a few Wouter> amendments resetting the timer and the DPL extending the Wouter> minimum discussion period after one of them, so the details Wouter> are a bit muddy. [2] In 2006-005, Denis Barbier proposed a Wouter> vote to recall the project leader. The DPL then delegated Wouter> the authority to vary the discussion and voting periods to Wouter> him and Loïc Minier. Denis chose to not accept any Wouter> amendments and reduced the discussion time to the minimum, Wouter> and called for a vote while, in my opinion, the discussion Wouter> was still in full force. Wouter> -- w@uter.{be,co.za} wouter@{grep.be,fosdem.org,debian.org} I'm reluctant to engage here, because I disagree strongly with Wouter, and I don't think we're going to find consensus, and so at some level, I think if Wouter finds enough support he should craft a ballot option and I should vote it below other options. However there is one area of agreement, and I'll focus there. I agree that if a sufficient part of the project wants to continue the discussion, we should be able to do that. I just don't see how to accomplish that in a way that is better than what Russ proposes without being open to abuse. There is an easy way to extend discussion in Russ's proposal. If all ballot option proposers agree to withdraw their option, the vote ends and discussion can continue. Note that because in Russ's system proposers are different than sponsors, you only need to convince a small number of people that discussion needs to continue. If you cannot convince one of the proposers, you can try to convince their sponsors to withdraw. If a GR process ends, the DPL's power can be used to shorten the minimum discussion period, and if you have everyone lined up to re-propose options and sponsor them again once things are refined, the delay is only a week or two. (And if you need to delay discussion, you ought to be willing to accept that delay). This can work quite well in cases where the community strongly agrees discussion needs to be delayed. But the bar for delaying discussion is high. I don't know how to lower that bar without increasing the level of abuse beyond what I'm comfortable with. Giving the power to the DPL puts the DPL in a horrible position. No matter what they do people are going to be screaming that the DPL has abused the system. I think giving the DPL more power than in the current system to affect vote timing will end up with situations where people claim that the process is unfair, even when the DPL tries to be careful. Giving the power to the majority of ballot option proponents is open to abuse; by stuffing the ballot some minority can delay the vote. The counter of having people who hold other positions also stuff the ballot so they have a majority seems highly undesirable. In particular, it has the effect of ballot option proliferation which Wouter wants to avoid. Also, it gives power to the people who can be most vocal--getting the most number of ballot options and most sponsors. I think that will add flames to discussions rather than rationality. I think it will encourage the voting discussions to be even more heated than they are today, and so I don't think that is a good option. One thing I've considered is to provide a quick way of running web polls for procedural votes, like a vote to extend discussion. I'm imagining a 48 or 72 hour poll to extend discussion; if a majority of people who vote in the poll (open only to developers of course) vote to extend discussion, then discussion would be extended. That would be a significant change over how we do things. I personally don't think it is worth the complexity, but if we adopted such a system I think it would not be open to unreasonable levels of abuse.
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