Re: Opposing strict time limits
Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@lease-up.com> writes:
> The question did not have an answer. [1] To avoid pain, the project
> prefers shorter discussions on controversial topics. It is the opposite
> of what you wrote.
I think the detail that you may be missing is that under Wouter's system
for extending the discussion period, it doesn't matter what the project as
a whole wants. The extension is not decided by vote; opposition is not
counted. Rather, any six (K+1) Developers can extend the discussion
period, regardless of anyone else's opinion of whether that's a good idea.
What I wrote, which kicked off this subthread, was:
This preserves the same minimum discussion period (1 week), but makes
it very easy to extend it to two weeks and moderately easy to extend
it to three weeks. This will probably happen for all but the most
urgent and uncontroversial GRs.
I believe it is correct to say that, should we adopt a system such as that
modification of Wouter's proposal, one will be able to find at least 6
Developers to extend the discussion period two two weeks for all but the
most urgent and uncontroversial GRs, and that it is highly likely that one
will be able to find 12 Developers to extend it to three weeks. It's a
very low bar of support: about 3% of the voting membership to extend to
three weeks. As we've seen in the discussion, some folks believe the
discussion period should be longer for (nearly) all votes as a matter of
principle, and would presumably routinely support such an extension.
That proposed system may still be a bad idea, to be clear. I think it
provides a rather dramatic simplification of the discussion period length
over either my proposal or Wouter's original proposal (and over the
existing constitution), which has a lot of appeal at least to me. (All
things being equal, I think simpler systems are better than more complex
systems.) But it does place a burden on people to propose an extension
for any GR whose discussion period should be longer than a week, which may
not be desirable.
If your point is, instead, that Wouter's general system is undesirable
because it allows the discussion period to be extended longer than the
project as a whole may wish discussion periods extended, since the project
as a whole may prefer shorter discussions on controversial topics, well,
yes, I largely agree, which the root of why I prefer my original proposal
over Wouter's.
To add some more detail to that, I think there is a trade-off. Longer
discussion periods do produce better proposals and a richer variety of
options, plus are simply better from a democratic perspective since they
give people more time to become aware of the proposal and to think about
it in detail. But I think we can all agree that there is a point of
diminishing returns (although we may disagree about where that point is).
For example, making the discussion period of every GR take a minimum of
one year would probably produce better-crafted final results (I do know of
one organization whose bylaws work this way), but I don't think that's
what we want. It sacrifices timeliness and it requires anyone who wants
to make a change sign up for an extended effort.
Also, for Debian, the other aspect of the trade-off is that, for
controversial GRs, the pattern has been that the discussion gets more
heated and divisive as it goes on. People start repeating themselves,
they get angrier that no one is changing their mind, the messages get more
personal, and I felt like I could watch people's views become more
entrenched and less generous to those with whom they disagreed. So I
believe there is also some harm that is done by extended discussion
periods, and we have to balance that against the benefit achieved by
having better proposals and more time for people to absorb the proposal.
My proposal (not the modification of Wouter's but the one that I'm
bringing to GR) chooses to strike that balance by putting it at roughly
the same place the balance lies today with the existing system (the
current minimum is two weeks and for recent controversial GRs we've gone
three weeks), but making that timing more predictable so that people have
clear deadlines to work towards and the timing of the vote isn't as
susceptible to strategic maneuvering. It's not a very ambitious change;
it probably shortens the formal discussion period a bit on average, but
not a lot.
My theory is that we're probably not too far off from the right balancing
point in that trade-off right now, and the DPL retains the ability to vary
things by a week in either direction if, for a given GR, they believe that
the balance isn't quite right. My theory is also that three weeks is a
sufficiently long time to absorb a proposal and come up with a
counter-proposal if everyone knows there is a deadline, so that the
original GR proposer doesn't have an unfair advantage.
One certainly may disagree with those theories! I believe Wouter does,
and hence his alternate proposal, which addresses this trade-off in a
different way.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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