* Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> [2021-11-11 08:26]:
Once a proposal has been sponsored and added to the ballot, we, as a general social convention, stop sponsoring it unless it feels particularly important to be listed as a sponsor. That means that any given option currently on the ballot usually has "hidden" support in the form of Developers who intend to vote for it but haven't sponsored it. It seems likely that in some situations those Developers may think "okay, the opinion I really cared about is on the ballot so I can vote the way I want" and then may tune out the subsequent discussion. In other words, I think once a ballot option makes it onto the ballot, the rules are attempting to capture the sense that it no longer belongs just to its proposer, but now represents some unknown number of people who want to vote for it. Given that, if the proposer changes their mind and wants to propose a substantially different ballot option, I think the default should be that the proposer do that as a separate ballot option and get sponsors for that new ballot option (and possibly withdraw as the proposer for the original ballot option). This reflects the fact that just because the proposer changed their mind, that doesn't mean that other supporters of that ballot option also changed their minds. As Sam says, the ability to make substantive changes if all sponsors agree is essentially an optimization. It's tedious to propose a new option, have everyone sponsor it again, withdraw as proposer of the old option, and confirm that no one else is stepping forward, so for changes that everyone agrees make the ballot option better, we should have a way to allow those to be made more easily. But we want some sort of check that this is really true and not just take the proposer's word for it, so we in essence draft the sponsors of the ballot option as referees to decide whether this change does make sense in the context in which they originally supported that option.
I must say I find your reasoning convincing. A certain stability of ballot options is desirable, and as our voting scheme does not suffer from spoiler effects, we can afford to keep the odd stale option. Besides, as you pointed out, the original proposer can always formally withdraw and ask their sponsors to do the same; if there is hidden support, it will either materialize or the option will be discarded; no additional procedural rules required. Cheers Timo -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ │ Timo Röhling │ ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ │ 9B03 EBB9 8300 DF97 C2B1 23BF CC8C 6BDD 1403 F4CA │ ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ ╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature