Re: What does FD Mean
* Sam Hartman: " What does FD Mean" (Fri, 02 Apr 2021 16:57:28 -0400):
> >>>>> "Mathias" == Mathias Behrle <mbehrle@debian.org> writes:
>
> Mathias> I don't get that. Is this really common sense that FD
> Mathias> means/meant "preserve status quo"? For me voting this
> Mathias> option definitely should mean that further discussion on
> Mathias> the topic is needed.
>
>
> So, that is the denotation--that's what it literally means.
> In cases where things are thoroughly discussed to death, especially
> where it appears like all the options are on the table, it may well be
> that there is not momentum for further discussion, and FD acts a lot
> more like "no".
> It's a kind of no that allows someone to try and find a future option.
> It's more like "no not this moment," than "no and it would be rude to
> try and discuss more."
>
> But for a two option situation, option A do the thing and option B FD,
> FD probably does map to no fairly well.
I would really like to avoid this situation, where FD is expected to leave room
for such wide interpretations, especially if it is avoidable as easy as to
put at least some of the alternative options on the ballot. A ballot with only
'yes' and 'FD' should IMO just not happen.
As an example really to avoid I would like to give political votes in Germany.
There is not an option that says 'None of the above'. If I want to vote in this
direction I have two possibilities: to vote not at all or to vote with an
invalid ballot. Both options are completely unsatisfying and do not express my
intention. We can and should do better in Debian.
> In this situation, I think we'd have to look for the spread of votes.
> FD winning would probably either mean that we actually need to have
> further discussion (if a majority of people seemed to prefer one of the
> options to others, even though they ranked it below FD), or the project
> is too split to decide (if there were major splits below FD).
>
> In the first situation, I'd interpret it to mean that there was one
> direction that most people tended toward but that the specific option
> presented was not good enough.
> And so if there were energy, it would make sense to refine that option.
>
> But in the second situation where there were significant splits in
> support below FD, probably we ought conclude we don't have support for a
> common direction.
>
> So, yeah, FD is complicated:-)
Yes, there are a lot of assumptions ('probably', 'seemed to', 'interpret', 'we
ought to') in your text. Those could be at least partly avoided by putting
concise options on the ballot. FD as a fallback for all sort of missing options
falls back on us in the way that we do not know about our real intentions.
Let's make FD less complicated, please...;)
--
Mathias Behrle ✧ Debian Developer
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