Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Gerardo Ballabio]

Sam Hartman wrote:
> it clearly would be an abuse if some privileged category of people got to 
> choose the ballot options.

Hello Sam,
I'm struggling to understand your concern here.
Is it just an abstract concern or do you have in mind some specific
scenario in which that could happen?
As far as I can see, with respect to choosing ballot options, all DDs
are equal except the DPL, who can propose options without the need for
seconds, and the Secretary, who gets the final word on the ballot.
So I'm failing to see how any category of people could grab a
privilege on that. Could you please explain?
And if that's an actual risk, do you think there's any measure that
could be taken to prevent it?

Gerardo

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Sam Hartman]

> "Bdale" == Bdale Garbee  writes:

Bdale> Sam Hartman  writes:
>> The math certainly helps.  We can easily see that even if we
>> think that kind of strategic exploration is not an abuse, it
>> clearly would be an abuse if some privileged category of people
>> got to choose the ballot options.

Bdale> The sensitivity of preference-based voting systems to
Bdale> strategic influence would seem to be related to the number of
Bdale> active voters.  The typical Debian GR has enough valid votes
Bdale> that this isn't something I've ever actively worried about in
Bdale> the context of a GR.

Here, I think we're talking about the ballot options influencing the
vote rather than influence within the ballot.

Basically If I can create an option that might cause the voters to
discover a cycle were it on the ballot, I can potentially influence the
result.

It's not obvious to me how having more voters makes that harder to do.
In the last election, i think it is fairly obvious that a cycle is more
likely with the ballot we had than a simple up/down vote.  I don't think
it was particularly hard to guess that adding options to the ballot
increased the likelihood of a cycle.

I don't think the cycle became less likely as the number of voters
increased.  At least it's not obvious to me why that would be the case.


And yet, in this instance at least, I think that cycle accurately
reflects voter thinking.  If you force people to choose a simple yes/no
answer, you're likely to get a yes/no.  But if you allow them to express
something more complex you might well find that the preferences of the
community overall do not form enough of an ordering to have a clear
winner.

That almost happened to us.
And yet I don't think that asking a simple up/down answer would have
gotten us a more correct understanding of Debian's feeling on the issue.
It would have gotten us a  easier to interpret answer, but I think it
would have overlooked complexities important to the voters.

Sigh, I guess this turned into an opinions differ on the value of asking
simple questions message after all.  I didn't intend to write such a
message, and probably wouldn't have written such a message to you,
because I know we've discussed the issue and understand each other well.
I'm sending it, because at least for me, this message helps me capture
the proes and cons of asking simple questions vs having a lot of
overlapping ballot options better than I have previously.
I hope others find it useful too.  I'm definitely not trying to drag you
into a discussion we've had before.

I also recognize I probably have some unstated biases that cause me to
believe that the complex answer with the higher probability of cycles is
more reflectie of actual voter thinking.



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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Bdale Garbee]

Sam Hartman  writes:

> The math certainly helps.  We can easily see that even if we think that
> kind of strategic exploration is not an abuse, it clearly would be an
> abuse if some privileged category of people got to choose the ballot
> options.

The sensitivity of preference-based voting systems to strategic
influence would seem to be related to the number of active voters.  The
typical Debian GR has enough valid votes that this isn't something I've
ever actively worried about in the context of a GR.

I think it's a very different situation with small vote counts, like in
TC decisions.  That's one reason why as TC chair I always tried to keep
votes as "simple" as possible, attempting to avoid sets of choices that
conflated multiple issues.  Always thought it might be better to vote a
set of simple up/down questions than to try and combine them all into
some subset of a multi-dimensional matrix in one vote .. but I know
opinions on this differ.

Bdale


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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Sam Hartman]

> "Barak" == Barak A Pearlmutter  writes:

Barak> On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 at 16:57, Sam Hartman  
wrote:
>> That's a big jump, and I don't think I agree.  At least not when
>> you phrase it that way.  Why should my preference matter less
>> just because it's weaker?  It's still my preference and I'm
>> attached to it very much:-)

Barak> There are two ways to approach this kind of question.

Barak> First: we can use our intuitions. What makes sense? And we
Barak> can discuss that, explain why some things seem intuitively
Barak> fair and others don't.  We can make analogies. How does a
Barak> group decide on a restaurant? What do we think is fair? What
Barak> doesn't seem fair?

Barak> Second: we can get scientific about it. This means we define
Barak> some performance metrics for voting systems, then measure
Barak> their performance. Such measurements can be done
Barak> theoretically, or in simulation, or in practice. It can use
Barak> various assumptions about the environment, and even various
Barak> performance metrics. This might include difficulty of filling
Barak> out a ballot, or understandability of both the ballots and
Barak> the system as a whole, as part of the performance. When we
Barak> try it on real people, factors like what fraction of the
Barak> eligible voters actually bother to vote, or what fraction of
Barak> them can correctly answer questions about how the system
Barak> works, might be things to measure.

Thanks for bringing this up.  This was the one part of the conversation
 I didn't get to touch on in my last message, and I think it's the last
 lose loose end of the conversation.

I actually find that the scientific part of the conversation is not
helpful to me in determining what the requirements should be--what the
desirable properties are.

As an example, I am finding this conversation very difficult to follow,
because you are always phrasing things in terms of alpha, beta, and some
generic options.
I appreciate given the past few weeks why you're doing that--the
discussions have been charged.

While I find that our track record with intuition is bad, it's very easy
to get into the mathematical land with bad requirements and have high
confidence in a system that doesn't meet our needs.

Let's take an example of something you brought up early on: in our
voting system, the outcome can change when a ballot option is added.
If I think about that in terms of generics, it sounds like a horrible
property.

But as I start to think about that with specific analogies, I realize
that it's actually related to  situations that come up in consensus
decision making.
And when I restate it as something like  the following, it's much less
clear that it is an undesirable property.
Sometimes new information from the voters can influence the outcome of
the decision making process.  If we end up asking about an outcome that
fits into the middle of a cycle between other outcomes, we have more
information, and this information can change the result.

And once you look at things that way, it becomes  a lot less clear
to me at least whether that's an undesirable property.

And no, thinking about strategic abuses isn't going to help much.  Are
those really strategic abuses, or are we saying that people who can
introduce options that allow us to better determine the voter
preferences can successfully influence the election?
That is, is it strategic abuse, or strategic examination of the voters
desires?
The math has its place, and may even help us think about that question,
but it's not going to answer it for us.

The math certainly helps.  We can easily see that even if we think that
kind of strategic exploration is not an abuse, it clearly would be an
abuse if some privileged category of people got to choose the ballot
options.

So, for me, I've been finding participating in this discussion difficult
because of the mathematical emphasis.  It's not that I can't follow the
math.  It's that divorced from the analogies, I cannot reason about
whether our initial requirements are any good nor reason about trade
offs between them.

--Sam


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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Barak A. Pearlmutter]

On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 at 16:57, Sam Hartman  wrote:
> That's a big jump, and I don't think I agree.
> At least not when you phrase it that way.
> Why should my preference matter less just because it's weaker?  It's
> still my preference and I'm attached to it very much:-)

There are two ways to approach this kind of question.

First: we can use our intuitions. What makes sense? And we can discuss
that, explain why some things seem intuitively fair and others don't.
We can make analogies. How does a group decide on a restaurant? What
do we think is fair? What doesn't seem fair?

Second: we can get scientific about it. This means we define some
performance metrics for voting systems, then measure their
performance. Such measurements can be done theoretically, or in
simulation, or in practice. It can use various assumptions about the
environment, and even various performance metrics. This might include
difficulty of filling out a ballot, or understandability of both the
ballots and the system as a whole, as part of the performance. When we
try it on real people, factors like what fraction of the eligible
voters actually bother to vote, or what fraction of them can correctly
answer questions about how the system works, might be things to
measure.

You're making an argument in the "intuition" class. That's fine, but
it requires trying to understand everybody's intuition. Like, if one
person ranks A>B>C>D>E and another ranks A>E>B>C>D, maybe the voting
system should treat the first person's preference for A>E as stronger
than the second person's? If we were deciding on a restaurant, I think
that's how things would work.

But at the end of the day, after people have hashed around about their
intuitions, it seems crucial to drop down to the hard
science/math/engineering approach and put our intuitions aside and let
the data speak. Because our intuitions about stuff like this has a
pretty crappy track record. Like, "you can vote for exactly one
presidential candidate" apparently seems reasonable to a large
fraction of the public in the USA, but it's a terrible voting system.
The night sky sure *looks* like a big black dome with some holes poked
in it. We are mere humans, and the way we overcome our poor intuitions
is to be scientific, to ruthlessly question our own assumptions.

--Barak.

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Sam Hartman]

> "Barak" == Barak A Pearlmutter  writes:

Barak> On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 at 16:35, Sam Hartman  
wrote:
>> I think we need voting reform around how the amendment process
>> works and managing discussion time ...  ...  Preferences can be
>> of different strengths.    Which is to say that the gaps
>> between preferences might be relatively weak.

Barak> Sam, you make an excellent point about gaps between options,
Barak> and that a ranking does not show the strength of
Barak> preferences. Like, I might prefer ALPHA >>> BETA > GAMMA
Barak> while you prefer ALPHA > BETA >>> GAMMA.

We agree so far.

>So if it's down to
Barak> ALPHA vs BETA, my vote should shift things more than yours,
Barak> while if it's down to BETA vs GAMMA, your vote should shift
Barak> things more than mine. And

That's a big jump, and I don't think I agree.
At least not when you phrase it that way.
Why should my preference matter less just because it's weaker?  It's
still my preference and I'm attached to it very much:-)
You then later talked about a voting system in which we somehow assigned
numerical scores to the result.  I'll admit that as a theoretical
exercise I'd love to explore something like that.
I think it would be years before it could be debugged, and reviewed, and
all the weaknesses explored enough that I'd want to consider it for
Debian.

I was actually trying to say something different.
I think we're debating about what properties our voting system should
have now.
I think we've left the math behind a while ago, and are debating what's
desirable.
My claim is that  our voting system seems to do the following:

1) Ignoring super majorities, if there is a winner of the pairwise
elections, we choose that as the winner of the election.  I think no one
has disputed this as a desirable property.  People have argued about
whether they'd be willing to give up this property to get something
else,  but I think at least in this discussion this has not been
controversial as something we desire.

2) We let voters indicate whether they consider an option acceptable.
That is we let them decide whether they would prefer that option be
selected or whether they would prefer the decision making process
continue.  We never select an option if most voters would prefer to
continue the decision making process  to selecting that option.

3) If there are options that   a sufficient number of voters (often a
simple majority) prefer  to continuing the decision making process, we
will pick one of those options.  There are several points in the process
where the desire to pick an option if there is one that defeats FD is
strongly encoded.

4) No really, we're quite serious about wanting to be done if there is
something that a majority of the voters consider acceptable.  So much so
that there are situations where we'll pick a less preferred option just
to be done because the more preferred option  requires a supermajority
it didn't meet.  As an example, we might pick a simple statement over a
constitutional amendment even if more people prefer the constitutional
amendment.  This is only interesting if a majority of voters consider
both the constitutional amendment and the simple statement acceptable.
The simple statement gets picked rather than the constitutional
amendment if it was not preferred by a sufficient super majority of
voters.

And yes, I have high confidence that the above were intentional
decisions.  We may disagree; we may change our minds.  But this has all
been debated time and time again, and for the most part on these aspects
of the voting system people were aware.
And certainly by the time we considered revising the voting system (I
think that was around 2003) we were very aware of these issues.

My take away is that the voting system is designed with an implication
that there is a huge preference gap between acceptable and unacceptable
options, and that by the time the GR procedure is called into play, it's
better to have a decision if that is at all possible.

That certainly mirrors my experience as a voter.
I generally find I am able to find a line of acceptability on most of
our ballots.
And I find that above that line I really would be  able to  accept any
outcome.
Yes, I want my vote to be counted.
And if there is a pairwise winner, I want that.
But if there is a cycle, well, okay, pick something.

We have a strong history of being able to get "no statement" options on
the ballot when we need them.
People aren't afraid to vote for them.
This is at least the second election where such an option won.


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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Simon Richter]

Hi Bdale,

On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 11:35:21AM -0600, Bdale Garbee wrote:

> I admit to having really mixed feelings about whether Debian should
> *ever* make broad public statements about anything.  So, no problem in
> my  mind with making it harder for the project to do so.

One of the purposes of the project is to clear obstacles to the development
of free software, and making broad public statements is one of many tools
we can use to do that.

We have, for example, sent out a press release on the patent situation
surrounding Microsoft Sender ID[1], and also published a position
statement[2] on software patents.

We have also lobbied hard for changes in US export regulations surrounding
cryptography[3], and exerted a lot of pressure on the FSF concerning the
GFDL license, including a press release[4] following a GR[5].

> But then, I've also been around a *long* time, and am often wistful
> about the days when it at least seemed that most of our discussions were
> about making technical improvements in Debian.

None of the things above are technical improvements, but concern the legal
and political environment in which technical contributions are made.

The debate we're having here is whether the *social* environment in which
contributions happen is also our concern, as this, too, can present an
obstacle for people who want to contribute that is neither technical nor
political.

Ironically, the opponents of taking a public stand on social issues are
claiming that this would introduce a political angle -- but we have never
shied away from politics.

   Simon

[1] https://www.debian.org/News/2004/20040904
[2] https://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120219
[3] https://www.debian.org/legal/cryptoinmain
[4] https://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060316
[5] https://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Pierre-Elliott Bécue]

Le mardi 20 avril 2021 à 15:12:16+0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter a écrit :
> Maybe looking at options 7/8 wasn't the best example, both because of
> perceived differences and because FD plays a special role.
> But with all the ballots we can find a bunch of votes that do seem to
> not use the full power of the ballot in ways that do seem a bit
> counterintuitive.
> Have a look for yourself, it's a fun exercise.
> A large number of voters stop ranking when they get to FD. I'm not
> sure why, but in many cases this renders their ballot pretty much
> powerless because options with a chance of winning are not ranked.
> 
> The details are very interesting, but any discussion of the actual
> options leads back to discussing the topic of the GR proper, so I
> really don't want to go there.

I really think we should not try to "fix" a system because wewant to
believe it's broken because other people whom we didn't ask their
opinion have done some thing we would not have done ourselves.

My personal vote was -221--35 and except for the fact I set FD to 5 and
not 4 out of a typo (which has no impact on my vote as I have not ranked
anything 4, everything here was intentional.

-- 
Pierre-Elliott Bécue
GPG: 9AE0 4D98 6400 E3B6 7528  F493 0D44 2664 1949 74E2
It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.


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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Bdale Garbee]

Timo Röhling  writes:

> * Roberto C. Sánchez  [2021-04-18 16:10]:
>>3:1 majority
> That would put a public statement on par with a change in the
> Constitution, which is a political statement in itself.

I admit to having really mixed feelings about whether Debian should
*ever* make broad public statements about anything.  So, no problem in
my  mind with making it harder for the project to do so.

But then, I've also been around a *long* time, and am often wistful
about the days when it at least seemed that most of our discussions were
about making technical improvements in Debian.

Bdale


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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 07:20:48PM +0200, Bernd Zeimetz wrote:
> 
> I did not want to spend time on figuring out if voting --- in
> our voting system is the same as not voting at all

Ranking all options the same has no effect on the result. It does
not have an effect on the quorum or majority. The only effect it has
is that more people voted.


Kurt

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Bernd Zeimetz]

On 2021-04-20 18:12, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:

Bernd, sometimes the devil is in the details, and that's certainly the
case with voting systems.


Why should I rank options if there is only a limited number of
options I care about, and the others are just equally bad
choices imho?


I feel like we're sort of belaboring a point.

If someone voted
1---
does it really seem plausible that they actually thought Option 2 was
exactly as bad as Option 5? So if Option 1 were removed from the
table, and they personally would pick which remaining option would be
chosen, they'd be just as happy with any of Options 2-8?


Basically my vote was like

12---

with 2 being FD, but 1- would also have been fine for me,
although I wanted to have FD higher than the other options in this
case. So if 1 would have been removed, I'd most likely have voted
2--, with --- also being an option

Which is also even in democratic/political voting systems something
you can express with your vote (at least in Germany).

I did not want to spend time on figuring out if voting --- in
our voting system is the same as not voting at all, but in
political votes it actually makes a difference. Also I think
voting "I don't care about the outcome, all is fine for me" is
better than not voting at all, even in Debian.

--
 Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer
 http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org
 GPG Fingerprint: ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485  DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F

Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Barak A. Pearlmutter]

Bernd, sometimes the devil is in the details, and that's certainly the
case with voting systems.

> Why should I rank options if there is only a limited number of
> options I care about, and the others are just equally bad
> choices imho?

I feel like we're sort of belaboring a point.

If someone voted
1---
does it really seem plausible that they actually thought Option 2 was
exactly as bad as Option 5? So if Option 1 were removed from the
table, and they personally would pick which remaining option would be
chosen, they'd be just as happy with any of Options 2-8?

It seems much more likely that they thought this was a way of
expressing maximum support for Option 1, and that ranking anything
else diluted that support.

Cheers,

--Barak.

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Sam Hartman]

> "Jonas" == Jonas Smedegaard  writes:

Jonas> Quoting Barak A. Pearlmutter (2021-04-20 16:12:16)

Jonas> Maybe it makes sense to e.g. add a friendly notice in the
Jonas> voting confirmation email when not all voting power is used.
Jonas> But there is already a lot of text surrounding a vote, so
Jonas> such noticemight commonly be missed.

I support this and thank Adrian for convincing me of the value.
I don't support going as far as Adrian appears to want to go and
rejecting ballots that fail to rank all choices.

--Sam

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 04:41:46PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> Quoting Barak A. Pearlmutter (2021-04-20 16:12:16)
> > Maybe looking at options 7/8 wasn't the best example, both because of
> > perceived differences and because FD plays a special role.
> > But with all the ballots we can find a bunch of votes that do seem to
> > not use the full power of the ballot in ways that do seem a bit
> > counterintuitive.
> > Have a look for yourself, it's a fun exercise.
> > A large number of voters stop ranking when they get to FD. I'm not
> > sure why, but in many cases this renders their ballot pretty much
> > powerless because options with a chance of winning are not ranked.
> > 
> > The details are very interesting, but any discussion of the actual
> > options leads back to discussing the topic of the GR proper, so I
> > really don't want to go there.
> 
> I appreciate this topic being brought up - it has affected my voting 
> style: Previously I thought that my voting powers stopped at FD.
> 
> I don't think it makes sense to change the system to mandate use of all 
> voting power.
>...

Noone has suggested to remove any intentional way of voting.

--12 and 8812 are equivalent when determining the result.

--12 might be intentional or not knowing that voting below FD can
decide the outcome.

8812 makes it clear that this is an intentional "Debian should stay 
out of politics" vote, with all other options considered equally bad.

>  - Jonas

cu
Adrian

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Bernd Zeimetz]

On 2021-04-20 16:12, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:

Maybe looking at options 7/8 wasn't the best example, both because of
perceived differences and because FD plays a special role.
But with all the ballots we can find a bunch of votes that do seem to
not use the full power of the ballot in ways that do seem a bit
counterintuitive.
Have a look for yourself, it's a fun exercise.
A large number of voters stop ranking when they get to FD. I'm not
sure why, but in many cases this renders their ballot pretty much
powerless because options with a chance of winning are not ranked.


There eare two options:
- people don't understand how it works
- people understand how it works, and not ranking options is what
  they want - because it actually ranks these options equally low.

The announcement mails state:

Unranked choices are considered equally the least desired
choices, and ranked below all ranked choices.

So - not ranking options is an way to save time. I've written
a bunch of 8 instead, but the result is the same.

Why should I rank options if there is only a limited number of
options I care about, and the others are just equally bad
choices imho?


--
 Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer
 http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org
 GPG Fingerprint: ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485  DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Barak A. Pearlmutter (2021-04-20 16:12:16)
> Maybe looking at options 7/8 wasn't the best example, both because of
> perceived differences and because FD plays a special role.
> But with all the ballots we can find a bunch of votes that do seem to
> not use the full power of the ballot in ways that do seem a bit
> counterintuitive.
> Have a look for yourself, it's a fun exercise.
> A large number of voters stop ranking when they get to FD. I'm not
> sure why, but in many cases this renders their ballot pretty much
> powerless because options with a chance of winning are not ranked.
> 
> The details are very interesting, but any discussion of the actual
> options leads back to discussing the topic of the GR proper, so I
> really don't want to go there.

I appreciate this topic being brought up - it has affected my voting 
style: Previously I thought that my voting powers stopped at FD.

I don't think it makes sense to change the system to mandate use of all 
voting power.

Maybe it makes sense to e.g. add a friendly notice in the voting 
confirmation email when not all voting power is used.  But there is 
already a lot of text surrounding a vote, so such noticemight commonly 
be missed.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

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Re: Thanks and Decision making working group (was Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result)

[Pierre-Elliott Bécue]

Le mardi 20 avril 2021 à 12:50:25+0200, Jonas Smedegaard a écrit :
> Quoting Philip Hands (2021-04-20 11:57:58)
> > Adrian Bunk  writes:
> > 
> > > On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 01:04:21PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > >>...
> > >> * The length of the discussion period is ill-defined in multiple ways,
> > >>   which has repeatedly caused conflicts.  It only resets on accepted
> > >>   amendments but not new ballot options, which makes little logical sense
> > >>   and constantly confuses people.  There's no maximum discussion period
> > >>   defined, which means fixes for that risk introducing a filibuster.
> > >> 
> > >> * Calling for votes is defined as a separate action from the end of the
> > >>   discussion period, but in practice the constitution allows any 
> > >> developer
> > >>   to call for a GR vote via an abuse of process that probably wasn't
> > >>   intended, and even apart from that, the set of people who can call for 
> > >> a
> > >>   vote is strange and not very defensible.
> > >>...
> > >
> > > The process to shorten the discussion period is also suboptimal.
> > >
> > > In the latest GR the way the discussion period was shortened was 
> > > perceived by many as an anti-democratic attempt to suppress discussions 
> > > about the contents and alternative ballot options.
> > >
> > > And there was plenty left to discuss (including wording of ballot 
> > > options and secrecy of the vote) when the minimum discussion period
> > > ended and the vote was called.
> > >
> > > I would suggest to replace the option of shortening the discussion 
> > > period with the possibility of early calling for a vote after a week 
> > > that can be vetoed by any developer within 24 hours. This would ensure 
> > > that shorter discussion periods would only happen when there is 
> > > consensus that nothing is left to be discussed.
> > 
> > Would you expect a different result if that had been done in this case?
> 
> I genuinely think that more time preparing the ballot would have led to 
> fewer more well-written options on the ballot, and consequently a higher 
> likelihood that Debian would have decided to make a (more well-written) 
> statement instead of the current outcome of not making a statement.

History tends to show as far as we are concerned that the longer the
discussion, the more look-alike options come and the less the ballots
are easy to digest and fill in.

Regards,

-- 
Pierre-Elliott Bécue
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It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.


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Re: Thanks and Decision making working group (was Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result)

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Bernd Zeimetz (2021-04-20 15:26:06)
> On 2021-04-20 12:50, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > 
> > I genuinely think that more time preparing the ballot would have led 
> > to fewer more well-written options on the ballot, and consequently a 
> > higher likelihood that Debian would have decided to make a (more 
> > well-written) statement instead of the current outcome of not making 
> > a statement.
> 
> On th other hand this leads to even more discussion, more flame-wars 
> and maybe some other ballots that come in in a short time before the 
> voting peropd starts - which might have the same issues you've just 
> described. But without a defined time on when a vote starts, the 
> discussion will never end.
> 
> No idea on how to fix that, though. Personally I think having fixed 
> and known dates is still the best option.

I think a sensible step in the direction towards fixing the issue you 
describe is to not assume that "more discussion" necessarily leads to 
"the discussion will never end". ;-)

For my own part, by "more time preparing" I did only imply "the ordinary 
2 weeks", not "all the time in the World".


 - Jonas

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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Robert Brockway]

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:


That's a very interesting idea. I wonder if we could elaborate upon it
to build a more expressive, and more robust, voting system.


Voting systems are heavily subject to the law of unintended consequences. 
As someone who has studied voting systems as an amateur (and enjoyed many 
discussions with David Graham on the same topic) I'd recommend being very 
careful about altering the existing system beyond established and studied 
systems.


Cheers,

Rob

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Barak A. Pearlmutter]

Maybe looking at options 7/8 wasn't the best example, both because of
perceived differences and because FD plays a special role.
But with all the ballots we can find a bunch of votes that do seem to
not use the full power of the ballot in ways that do seem a bit
counterintuitive.
Have a look for yourself, it's a fun exercise.
A large number of voters stop ranking when they get to FD. I'm not
sure why, but in many cases this renders their ballot pretty much
powerless because options with a chance of winning are not ranked.

The details are very interesting, but any discussion of the actual
options leads back to discussing the topic of the GR proper, so I
really don't want to go there.

--Barak.

Re: Thanks and Decision making working group (was Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result)

[Bernd Zeimetz]

On 2021-04-20 12:50, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:


I genuinely think that more time preparing the ballot would have led to
fewer more well-written options on the ballot, and consequently a 
higher

likelihood that Debian would have decided to make a (more well-written)
statement instead of the current outcome of not making a statement.


On th other hand this leads to even more discussion, more flame-wars
and maybe some other ballots that come in in a short time before the
voting peropd starts - which might have the same issues you've just
described. But without a defined time on when a vote starts,
the discussion will never end.

No idea on how to fix that, though. Personally I think having fixed
and known dates is still the best option.

--
 Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer
 http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org
 GPG Fingerprint: ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485  DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Bernd Zeimetz]

On 2021-04-18 23:18, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:

If we look at the actual ballots, it's really interesting. Options 7
and 8 were semantically pretty much equivalent. It's hard to see any
reason for someone to rank them very differently.


Just because two votes are semantically equivalent it doesn't mean
that people rate them equally. Our voting system luckily allows
similar options, so you can decide based on wordings and maybe even
the feeling you have when you read the text.

Imagine we'd have a GR over the pantone colours of the Debian logo.

- PANTONE Rubine Red 2X CVC
- PANTONE Strong Red C
- PANTONE Rubine Red C
- PANTONE 199 C

(from https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLogo)

Basically all options are red, actually very similar red colours.
If you see one colour alone, you'd be completely happy with it.
If you are actually able to compare them, you might notice that
one is a bit more pink and you hate pink and the other one doesn't
fit to the stickers on you laptop.
So it makes a lot of sense to be able to decide on such minor
differences. You might even hate pink so much, that you'd rate
that option below FD.

I've done the same in GRs in the past: ranked basically equal
options completely different due to their wordings.

Its a good thing that you can do that in Debian, and imho it makes
a lot of sense to allow to choose on such minor differences.

The voting system works as designed, even if some people don't
understand the outcome or are not happy with it.


--
 Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer
 http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org
 GPG Fingerprint: ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485  DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F

Re: Thanks and Decision making working group (was Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result)

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Philip Hands (2021-04-20 11:57:58)
> Adrian Bunk  writes:
> 
> > On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 01:04:21PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> >>...
> >> * The length of the discussion period is ill-defined in multiple ways,
> >>   which has repeatedly caused conflicts.  It only resets on accepted
> >>   amendments but not new ballot options, which makes little logical sense
> >>   and constantly confuses people.  There's no maximum discussion period
> >>   defined, which means fixes for that risk introducing a filibuster.
> >> 
> >> * Calling for votes is defined as a separate action from the end of the
> >>   discussion period, but in practice the constitution allows any developer
> >>   to call for a GR vote via an abuse of process that probably wasn't
> >>   intended, and even apart from that, the set of people who can call for a
> >>   vote is strange and not very defensible.
> >>...
> >
> > The process to shorten the discussion period is also suboptimal.
> >
> > In the latest GR the way the discussion period was shortened was 
> > perceived by many as an anti-democratic attempt to suppress discussions 
> > about the contents and alternative ballot options.
> >
> > And there was plenty left to discuss (including wording of ballot 
> > options and secrecy of the vote) when the minimum discussion period
> > ended and the vote was called.
> >
> > I would suggest to replace the option of shortening the discussion 
> > period with the possibility of early calling for a vote after a week 
> > that can be vetoed by any developer within 24 hours. This would ensure 
> > that shorter discussion periods would only happen when there is 
> > consensus that nothing is left to be discussed.
> 
> Would you expect a different result if that had been done in this case?

I genuinely think that more time preparing the ballot would have led to 
fewer more well-written options on the ballot, and consequently a higher 
likelihood that Debian would have decided to make a (more well-written) 
statement instead of the current outcome of not making a statement.

I know that my own contribution in the process felt rushed, and that I 
thought at the time I seconded options 2 and 3 and 4 that I would have 
much preferred to instead have the time to discuss eventual merger of 
them instead of worrying that all of those views were presented at all 
on the ballot.  Flaws of ambiguity in at least one of the texts were 
pointed out without having time to address it.

For the record I don't say this as someone grumpy over the actual result 
in this vote: On the contrary the winning option was my first choice.

Also, I *do* understand that for this specific vote there was a sense of 
urgency (especially for those introducing the vote).  My point here is 
not that the concrete vote by all means should have not been rushed, but 
that I do believe that taking the current vote as a concrete example the 
time to prepare the ballot had a real effect on the outcome.


> I don't think that one can automatically assume that more discussion 
> is better.

I agree.


 - Jonas

-- 
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Re: Thanks and Decision making working group (was Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result)

[Philip Hands]

Adrian Bunk  writes:

> On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 01:04:21PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>>...
>> * The length of the discussion period is ill-defined in multiple ways,
>>   which has repeatedly caused conflicts.  It only resets on accepted
>>   amendments but not new ballot options, which makes little logical sense
>>   and constantly confuses people.  There's no maximum discussion period
>>   defined, which means fixes for that risk introducing a filibuster.
>> 
>> * Calling for votes is defined as a separate action from the end of the
>>   discussion period, but in practice the constitution allows any developer
>>   to call for a GR vote via an abuse of process that probably wasn't
>>   intended, and even apart from that, the set of people who can call for a
>>   vote is strange and not very defensible.
>>...
>
> The process to shorten the discussion period is also suboptimal.
>
> In the latest GR the way the discussion period was shortened was 
> perceived by many as an anti-democratic attempt to suppress discussions 
> about the contents and alternative ballot options.
>
> And there was plenty left to discuss (including wording of ballot 
> options and secrecy of the vote) when the minimum discussion period
> ended and the vote was called.
>
> I would suggest to replace the option of shortening the discussion 
> period with the possibility of early calling for a vote after a week 
> that can be vetoed by any developer within 24 hours. This would ensure 
> that shorter discussion periods would only happen when there is 
> consensus that nothing is left to be discussed.

Would you expect a different result if that had been done in this case?

There were certainly people objecting to things, but it seems to me that
their views were correctly reflected in the vote results, in which case
I'm wondering what would have been added by discussing it further.

It's possible that there were people who were on holiday or some such,
and thus missed the whole thing, but on the other hand it's also pretty
clear that some people were at the end of their endurance ... perhaps
they would have been driven to ignore the continuing discussion if it
had gone on longer, and thus been disenfranchised.

I don't think that one can automatically assume that more discussion is
better.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands  [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]  HANDS.COM Ltd.
|-|  http://www.hands.com/http://ftp.uk.debian.org/
|(|  Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34,   21075 Hamburg,GERMANY


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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Felix Lechner (2021-04-20 00:55:19)
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 2:40 PM Pierre-Elliott Bécue  
> wrote:
> >
> > I don't understand how you semantically see 7 and 8 as comparable.
> 
> Aside from Bdale's reason for ranking unwanted options below FD—which 
> were motivated by the voting system—I do: GRs do not decide a matter 
> with prejudice, even though the weight to bring them again may be 
> substantial. Therefore, doing nothing is very similar to doing nothing 
> but talking more.
> 
> As we all heal from this divisive issue, I furthermore find it 
> meaningful that proponents of a shortened discussion, who were at 
> times accused of pushing the resolution, were actually aligned with 
> voters: By a narrow margin, people did not want to discuss the matter 
> at all.

I am one of those feeling the process happened too fast, and at the same 
time I voted 7 as my first choice.

I disagree with your conclusion.  Seems it is directly tied to your 
interpretation that 7 somewhat equals 8, which I also don't share:

I can only read 7 as "We shall not formally act as organisation on this 
topic, only defer action to individuals", and 8 as "We shall do 
something else than presented on this ballot".

I. e. to me 7 and 8 are quite different: Only 7 is a closure, and only 8 
is an indication of "we ned more time".

Or rephrased: Wanting more time to prepare ballot options is to me quite 
different from rejecting all closure options presented on the ballot by 
voting for the non-closure option.


 - Jonas

-- 
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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Philip Hands]

Felix Lechner  writes:

> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 2:40 PM Pierre-Elliott Bécue  wrote:
>>
>> I don't understand how you semantically see 7 and 8 as comparable.
>
> Aside from Bdale's reason for ranking unwanted options below FD—which
> were motivated by the voting system—I do: GRs do not decide a matter
> with prejudice, even though the weight to bring them again may be
> substantial. Therefore, doing nothing is very similar to doing nothing
> but talking more.

While I see what you're saying, I think it is missing a very important
point, which is that the bulk of the voters apparently disagree.

FD came quite close to the bottom of the ranking, whereas not issuing a
statement came top -- if the voters as a group have distinguished
between these two options so significantly it seems quite odd to pretend
that they are equivalent.

The two things also send quite different messages in the result.

If the FSF have paid attention to this vote (which I'd hope they did)
they'll have seen that deciding not to issue a statement won by a single
vote.  All other options that achieved majority were critical of the FSF.

I think they would have (rightly) interpreted FD winning as a completely
different result.

> As we all heal from this divisive issue, I furthermore find it
> meaningful that proponents of a shortened discussion, who were at
> times accused of pushing the resolution, were actually aligned with
> voters: By a narrow margin, people did not want to discuss the matter
> at all.

or (given how low down the order FD came) by a wide margin they didn't
want to talk about it any more -- either way, I agree with you on that.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Pierre-Elliott Bécue]

Le lundi 19 avril 2021 à 15:55:19-0700, Felix Lechner a écrit :
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 2:40 PM Pierre-Elliott Bécue  wrote:
> >
> > I don't understand how you semantically see 7 and 8 as comparable.
> 
> Aside from Bdale's reason for ranking unwanted options below FD—which
> were motivated by the voting system—I do: GRs do not decide a matter
> with prejudice, even though the weight to bring them again may be
> substantial. Therefore, doing nothing is very similar to doing nothing
> but talking more.

Stating "I shall not make a statement" isn't, to me, doing nothing. It's
far the opposite actually, it's expressing the idea that the matter is
outside our scope. While FD here just means maybe in some future we'll
express some opinion on it, but first we have to discuss it more.

As for the meaning of the vote itself, I will not risk any coin on it.

-- 
Pierre-Elliott Bécue
GPG: 9AE0 4D98 6400 E3B6 7528  F493 0D44 2664 1949 74E2
It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.


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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Felix Lechner]

Hi,

On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 2:40 PM Pierre-Elliott Bécue  wrote:
>
> I don't understand how you semantically see 7 and 8 as comparable.

Aside from Bdale's reason for ranking unwanted options below FD—which
were motivated by the voting system—I do: GRs do not decide a matter
with prejudice, even though the weight to bring them again may be
substantial. Therefore, doing nothing is very similar to doing nothing
but talking more.

As we all heal from this divisive issue, I furthermore find it
meaningful that proponents of a shortened discussion, who were at
times accused of pushing the resolution, were actually aligned with
voters: By a narrow margin, people did not want to discuss the matter
at all.

Kind regards
Felix Lechner

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Pierre-Elliott Bécue]

Le lundi 19 avril 2021 à 12:46:38-0700, Russ Allbery a écrit :
> "Barak A. Pearlmutter"  writes:
> 
> > Sam, you make an excellent point about gaps between options, and that
> > a ranking does not show the strength of preferences. Like, I might
> > prefer ALPHA >>> BETA > GAMMA while you prefer ALPHA > BETA >>> GAMMA.
> > So if it's down to ALPHA vs BETA, my vote should shift things  more
> > than yours, while if it's down to BETA vs GAMMA, your vote should
> > shift things more than mine. And if we do sorta-maybe try to encode
> > this with where FD is in the ranking, it does not actually have this
> > effect.
> 
> > If we wanted to encode this information more fully, we would have to
> > go with some system where people give numeric strengths to each gap in
> > their preferences. And to avoid people just pegging them all to
> > maximum strength, we'd have to put a limit on the total strength in a
> > single ballot.
> 
> I think it's worth observing that this discussion started with "our voting
> system is too complicated and I think some people are making nonsense
> votes because of it" and has now arrived at "we should make our voting
> system considerably more complicated to improve its expressive power."
> 
> This all seems extremely speculative.  Is there some GR whose result you
> think did not accurately represent the correct outcome given the
> preferences of the people who voted?  Precisely what problem are you
> trying to solve here?

I think we are good ad nitpicking and this is some of it. :p

(more seriously, I think our system does quite correclty what it is
designed to do)

-- 
Pierre-Elliott Bécue
GPG: 9AE0 4D98 6400 E3B6 7528  F493 0D44 2664 1949 74E2
It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.


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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Pierre-Elliott Bécue]

Le dimanche 18 avril 2021 à 22:18:22+0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter a écrit :
> The Schwartz set resolution algorithm is absolutely best of breed. But
> there's an old saying in computer science: garbage in, garbage out.
> 
> If we look at the actual ballots, it's really interesting. Options 7
> and 8 were semantically pretty much equivalent. It's hard to see any
> reason for someone to rank them very differently. So if the voters are
> rational, we'd think that nearly all ballots would have options 7 and
> 8 ranking either the same or adjacent. And that if one is ranked the
> same as other options, then they should both be. Yet many of the
> ballots rank one but not the other, or rank them very differently.
> Some voters ranked either option 7 or 8 as "1" and allowed everything
> else to default. It's very difficult to imagine someone who actually
> preferred option 7 being equally satisfied with any of options 1-6 and
> 8.
>
> We tend to assume that the DD electorate is highly sophisticated and
> rational and understand how to correctly express their preferences,
> and how ranking works. But a quick perusal of the actual ballots has
> disabused me of that notion.
> 
> The usual reaction to this sort of thing is to alter the voter
> instructions. But people have intuitions for how voting works, and
> blurbs might not be very effective at changing their behaviour.

Hi,

I don't understand how you semantically see 7 and 8 as comparable.

Regards,

-- 
Pierre-Elliott Bécue
GPG: 9AE0 4D98 6400 E3B6 7528  F493 0D44 2664 1949 74E2
It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.


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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Russ Allbery]

"Barak A. Pearlmutter"  writes:

> Sam, you make an excellent point about gaps between options, and that
> a ranking does not show the strength of preferences. Like, I might
> prefer ALPHA >>> BETA > GAMMA while you prefer ALPHA > BETA >>> GAMMA.
> So if it's down to ALPHA vs BETA, my vote should shift things  more
> than yours, while if it's down to BETA vs GAMMA, your vote should
> shift things more than mine. And if we do sorta-maybe try to encode
> this with where FD is in the ranking, it does not actually have this
> effect.

> If we wanted to encode this information more fully, we would have to
> go with some system where people give numeric strengths to each gap in
> their preferences. And to avoid people just pegging them all to
> maximum strength, we'd have to put a limit on the total strength in a
> single ballot.

I think it's worth observing that this discussion started with "our voting
system is too complicated and I think some people are making nonsense
votes because of it" and has now arrived at "we should make our voting
system considerably more complicated to improve its expressive power."

This all seems extremely speculative.  Is there some GR whose result you
think did not accurately represent the correct outcome given the
preferences of the people who voted?  Precisely what problem are you
trying to solve here?

> To go back to your restaurant situation, imagine there is one person
> who's deathly allergic to seafood, so really doesn't want to go to the
> dim sum place. Many others do like dim sum (perhaps even a majority),
> but it's just a mild preference, they be happy with many of the
> restaurant options and okay with all of them.

Thankfully, our voting system is not an ideal mathematical model in which
communication is limited to only the votes that one casts.  Someone can
stand up and say "hey, I'm deathly allergic to seafood," and the rest of
us can take that as input into what decisions we want the project to take.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)  

Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 05:32:40PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:
> Sam Hartman writes:
> > For me though, even there, notice that we'd be choosing between options
> > that the voters considered acceptable.
> > Because of that, I am not bothered by the cycle.
> 
> If the decision doesn't really matter but a non-FD option must be
> chosen (like a hungry group picking a restaurant) then sure, whatever.
> 
> But for something important, I think we *should* be bothered by a cycle.
> 
> Let me give an example. Let's say we end up with ALPHA, BETA, and
> GAMMA in a cycle: ALPHA>BETA, BETA>GAMMA, GAMMA>ALPHA. So we run our
> resolution algorithm, and it picks ALPHA. Well that's nice. But note
> that if we had not had BETA as an option on the ballot, then GAMMA
> would have been the winner, without anyone changing their votes.

You might want to read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_irrelevant_alternatives#Criticism_of_IIA

> Not
> only is that odd, but it means that it would be reasonable for a
> die-hard ALPHA supporter, seeing that GAMMA is going to beat ALPHA,
> would propose adding BETA to the ballot. This means that we are
> vulnerable to strategic (rather than honest) behaviour throughout the
> process, including in proposing ballot options.

So that would be:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_nomination

If the option is similar to an existing option, it should not
have an effect for the Schulze method we use:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_clones_criterion

No voting system is perfect.


Kurt

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Barak A. Pearlmutter]

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 at 16:35, Sam Hartman  wrote:
> I think we need voting reform around how the amendment process works and
> managing discussion time ...
> ...
> Preferences can be of different strengths.
> 
> Which is to say that the gaps between preferences might be relatively
> weak.

Sam, you make an excellent point about gaps between options, and that
a ranking does not show the strength of preferences. Like, I might
prefer ALPHA >>> BETA > GAMMA while you prefer ALPHA > BETA >>> GAMMA.
So if it's down to ALPHA vs BETA, my vote should shift things  more
than yours, while if it's down to BETA vs GAMMA, your vote should
shift things more than mine. And if we do sorta-maybe try to encode
this with where FD is in the ranking, it does not actually have this
effect.

If we wanted to encode this information more fully, we would have to
go with some system where people give numeric strengths to each gap in
their preferences. And to avoid people just pegging them all to
maximum strength, we'd have to put a limit on the total strength in a
single ballot.

That's a very interesting idea. I wonder if we could elaborate upon it
to build a more expressive, and more robust, voting system.

To go back to your restaurant situation, imagine there is one person
who's deathly allergic to seafood, so really doesn't want to go to the
dim sum place. Many others do like dim sum (perhaps even a majority),
but it's just a mild preference, they be happy with many of the
restaurant options and okay with all of them. It would be nice if the
allergic person were able to express that in a ballot. Right now,
they'd put everything-else>FD>DIMSUM, but that doesn't really have the
expressive power we'd like, which is that this one voter could put
*all* their expressive power against DIMSUM instead of being forced to
distribute it between all their preferences even though their
preferences between the other restaurants are, by comparison, very
small---and not doing so just wastes the power. What we need is for
people to be able to express mild preferences
SUSHI>DIMSUM>ITALIAN>TAI>..., but the one person who really cares to
be able to go {SUSHI,ITALIAN,TAI}>>>DIMSUM so they can really move the
meter on DIMSUM, at the expense of their ability to express other
preferences.

In an informal group setting this happens naturally. That's why we
discuss which restaurant to go to, rather than voting. We want to
gauge the strength of people's preferences and take that into account.

--Barak.

Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Bdale Garbee]

FWIW, I didn't consider 7 and 8 at all similar.  

After watching the strain the pre-vote discussion introduced, I decided making 
no statement as a project was the best outcome.  But if the project were to 
make a statement, I wanted to express preference between the acceptable to me 
statements, then put the unacceptable to me options below FD.  

Bdale

On April 18, 2021 3:18:22 PM MDT, "Barak A. Pearlmutter" 
 wrote:
>The Schwartz set resolution algorithm is absolutely best of breed. But
>there's an old saying in computer science: garbage in, garbage out.
>
>If we look at the actual ballots, it's really interesting. Options 7
>and 8 were semantically pretty much equivalent. It's hard to see any
>reason for someone to rank them very differently. So if the voters are
>rational, we'd think that nearly all ballots would have options 7 and
>8 ranking either the same or adjacent. And that if one is ranked the
>same as other options, then they should both be. Yet many of the
>ballots rank one but not the other, or rank them very differently.
>Some voters ranked either option 7 or 8 as "1" and allowed everything
>else to default. It's very difficult to imagine someone who actually
>preferred option 7 being equally satisfied with any of options 1-6 and
>8.
>
>We tend to assume that the DD electorate is highly sophisticated and
>rational and understand how to correctly express their preferences,
>and how ranking works. But a quick perusal of the actual ballots has
>disabused me of that notion.
>
>The usual reaction to this sort of thing is to alter the voter
>instructions. But people have intuitions for how voting works, and
>blurbs might not be very effective at changing their behaviour.
>
>--Barak.

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Barak A. Pearlmutter]

Sam Hartman writes:
> For me though, even there, notice that we'd be choosing between options
> that the voters considered acceptable.
> Because of that, I am not bothered by the cycle.

If the decision doesn't really matter but a non-FD option must be
chosen (like a hungry group picking a restaurant) then sure, whatever.

But for something important, I think we *should* be bothered by a cycle.

Let me give an example. Let's say we end up with ALPHA, BETA, and
GAMMA in a cycle: ALPHA>BETA, BETA>GAMMA, GAMMA>ALPHA. So we run our
resolution algorithm, and it picks ALPHA. Well that's nice. But note
that if we had not had BETA as an option on the ballot, then GAMMA
would have been the winner, without anyone changing their votes. Not
only is that odd, but it means that it would be reasonable for a
die-hard ALPHA supporter, seeing that GAMMA is going to beat ALPHA,
would propose adding BETA to the ballot. This means that we are
vulnerable to strategic (rather than honest) behaviour throughout the
process, including in proposing ballot options.

If ALPHA, BETA, and GAMMA are restaurants, then it doesn't matter. But
if they're different directions for the future of the project, or
otherwise of great importance to people, then it becomes a big deal.
And if it calls the legitimacy of the voting process into question,
then it becomes an even bigger deal. Like "hey, who proposed BETA, and
were they actually an ALPHA supporter? I call shenanigans!"

In the RMS GR, people proposed or seconded ballot options that they
themselves did not support, as a way of ensuring fairness and coverage
of opinions. I think that was very healthy and considerate, and I'd
like to thank the people involved for trying to make the process
inclusive and be sure everyone had an option that they could stand
behind. But if we had a cycle, it could be misconstrued, and I think
that would be a shame.

--Barak.

Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Sam Hartman]

> "Barak" == Barak A Pearlmutter  writes:

Barak> The Schwartz set resolution algorithm is absolutely best of
Barak> breed. But there's an old saying in computer science: garbage
Barak> in, garbage out.

Barak> If we look at the actual ballots, it's really
Barak> interesting. Options 7 and 8 were semantically pretty much
Barak> equivalent. It's hard to see any reason for someone to rank
Barak> them very differently. So if the voters are rational, we'd
Barak> think that nearly all ballots would have options 7 and 8
Barak> ranking either the same or adjacent. And that if one is
Barak> ranked the same as other options, then they should both
Barak> be. Yet many of the ballots rank one but not the other, or
Barak> rank them very differently.  Some voters ranked either option
Barak> 7 or 8 as "1" and allowed everything else to default. It's
Barak> very difficult to imagine someone who actually preferred
Barak> option 7 being equally satisfied with any of options 1-6 and
Barak> 8.


In my mind the ballot options are not similar.  First, things above FD
are things I don't mind being in a cycle.  If it's ranked above FD, I'd
rather be done with a decisdiscussion and have that option win even if
it is not my preferred option.  Options below FD are options I'd prefer
not make their way into a cycle.

Second, FD implies that the question is still open.  I might be able to
convince people to choose something more aligned with my option in the
following discussion.
In contrast, option 7 is final; we've made a decision.

So, in filling out my ballot I rank:

1) Options that I like--where I'd be okay with any of those options
getting chosen.

2) fd

3) Options that are in the general direction I like, but are weak enough
that I'd rather have an opportunity to ask people to do something
stronger than choose those options.

4) no statement

5) options that are in a direction I disagree with.

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Sam Hartman]

I'm writing to present an alternate interpretation--the one under which
I think our voting system is doing a good job of choosing among complex
ballots in the last couple elections.
I think we need voting reform around how the amendment process works and
managing discussion time, but I am very happy with how the actual voting
mechanism  has worked.
That's true even though my preferred option didn't win in either the rms
election or the systemd election.

> "Barak" == Barak A Pearlmutter  writes:

Barak> If the winning option in an election is part of a preference
Barak> cycle, then it (by definition) has the property that there
Barak> exists some other option that a majority of the voters
Barak> preferred. In some elections that is unavoidable: we need to
Barak> pick one DPL, and if they're in a cycle so be it; if there's
Barak> a tie we can just toss a coin. But in others, like the RMS
Barak> GR, it seems like it would be a rather bad property and we'd
Barak> be better off treating it as FD and trying again later.

Barak

Preferences can be of different strengths.
Imagine we were using the Debian voting system to decide where to go to
dinner before a conference in six weeks.
It might well be that we had five or six options that were generally
acceptable to most people (and perhaps a couple options that were
unacceptable that got dropped).
We don't have to go to dinner, and we don't even have to use the voting
system to make our decision.
So, unlike the DPL election, a decision is not necessary.
And yet, I suspect many people might well prefer to be done with things
and to have a decision even if there is an option that a majority of
voters prefer  to the selected option.
Which is to say that the gaps between preferences might be relatively
weak.

I think we've tried to encode that in our voting system with the
majority requirement.
We never select options that the voters consider unacceptable.
And among the options that the voters do consider acceptable (if any),
we'd prefer to make a decision than not to make a decision.

Consider for example if we had a cycle between options 2, 3 and 4.
That would be a clear desire to make some sort of statement, and the
debate would be over how strong of a statement to make.
I don't think we would be well served in such a situation to make no
statement at all.

It gets more complex when you add option 7 (the no statement option)
into the cycle.

For me though, even there, notice that we'd be choosing between options
that the voters considered acceptable.
Because of that, I am not bothered by the cycle.



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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Don Armstrong (2021-04-19 00:39:12)
> On Sun, 18 Apr 2021, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:
> > If we look at the actual ballots, it's really interesting. Options 7 
> > and 8 were semantically pretty much equivalent. It's hard to see any 
> > reason for someone to rank them very differently.
> 
> 7 was a decision to not issue a statement ["There's no statement on 
> this issue that I want Debian to issue"]. 8 was a decision for further 
> discussion ["There may be statement on this issue that I'd want Debian 
> to issue, but it's not here."]
> 
> When there isn't an explicit "no decision" option on the ballot, 
> further discussion encompass both, but that is not the case here.
> 
> > It's very difficult to imagine someone who actually preferred option 
> > 7 being equally satisfied with any of options 1-6 and 8.
> 
> Here's an example thought process that works: "I want Debian to stop 
> discussing this issue and anything more that Debian does on this issue 
> is equally bad."
> 
> Or another one: "I know that I prefer this option, but I'm not 
> comfortable with the rest of the options to decide what the project 
> should do, so I'll defer to the project's judgement."
> 
> Not to say that there aren't voters who are confused, but you should 
> contact them to figure out why they voted the way they did before 
> assuming that they didn't know what they were doing.

In case anyone wants to pick a live brain on this, I volunteer:

At first I voted 7-8: I explicitly preferred Debian to *not* issue a 
statement.

Then, after reading the discussion on this list about the concern over 
people leaving options below FD "blank", I changed my vote to wade 
through all those options I did *not* want Debian to make and try rank 
the severity of their badness - while being worried that my vote is 
public so I expose my priority of evil thoughts to the World.


 - Jonas


P.S.

This is *not* an invitation to rehash a debate over which ballot options 
are or are not sane. My offer is that if you have trouble understanding 
why someone deliberately choose to vote by the two _patterns_ described 
above then I am willing to reflect on that.  Perhaps you even manage to 
point out to me that I am a fool and did what I did for the wrong 
reasons.

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Jonathan Carter]

On 2021/04/18 23:36, Bernd Zeimetz wrote:
> Complaining about the
> voting system because you don't like the outcome or because you could
> announce the outcome in an awkward way is not helpful.

Who complained about the voting system because they didn't like the
outcome of this particular vote? I've literally not seen one instance of
that.

-Jonathan

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Don Armstrong]

On Sun, 18 Apr 2021, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:
> If we look at the actual ballots, it's really interesting. Options 7
> and 8 were semantically pretty much equivalent. It's hard to see any
> reason for someone to rank them very differently.

7 was a decision to not issue a statement ["There's no statement on this
issue that I want Debian to issue"]. 8 was a decision for further
discussion ["There may be statement on this issue that I'd want Debian
to issue, but it's not here."]

When there isn't an explicit "no decision" option on the ballot, further
discussion encompass both, but that is not the case here.

> It's very difficult to imagine someone who actually preferred option 7
> being equally satisfied with any of options 1-6 and 8.

Here's an example thought process that works: "I want Debian to stop
discussing this issue and anything more that Debian does on this issue
is equally bad."

Or another one: "I know that I prefer this option, but I'm not
comfortable with the rest of the options to decide what the project
should do, so I'll defer to the project's judgement."

Not to say that there aren't voters who are confused, but you should
contact them to figure out why they voted the way they did before
assuming that they didn't know what they were doing.

-- 
Don Armstrong  https://www.donarmstrong.com

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that
you do it.
 -- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Re: Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Barak A. Pearlmutter]

Bernd Zeimetz  write:

> Then don't say that.
> We have a defined method of voting, and if people don't like the results:
> there are procedures to change the voting method, the constitution and other
> things. After that you could even start a new GR. Complaining about the
> voting system because you don't like the outcome or because you could
> announce the outcome in an awkward way is not helpful.

> There are awkward voting systems all over the world (ever voted for the US
> president? or in Germany?), so Debian is not special.

I'm sorry Bernd, but I'm having trouble following your logic there.

Are you saying groups should never post-mortem the performance of
their voting systems, with an eye towards identifying flaws and
perhaps even remediating them? Surely the examples you give suggest
otherwise: we'd all be better off if the USA had a better-performing
presidential election system!

As it happens, I'm personally extremely pleased with the result of the
RMS GR election. That's not the point. Just as we examine the
performance of, and try to identify issues with, our computer systems,
we should examine the performance of, and try to identify issues with,
our social structures. Including in particular the way we make group
decisions. That includes how we formulate them, how we deliberate
about them, and how we ultimately come to a decision.

The actual voting system is a part of that, but there are other moving
parts. To take one example, I don't think anyone was particularly
pleased with the performance of our ballot-option-selection process.

--Barak.

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Christoph Biedl]

Neil McGovern wrote...

> For info, we use cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping to resolve
> these ties. The simple version is that we work out the cycle, and then
> drop the lowest margin, in this case the 1, so "Debian will not issue a
> pubilc statement" would still win.
>
> A full description is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method

Even if there are these articles about the electoral system used in
Debian votings, I still think it was a good idea to do a presentation
about this topic at some future (Mini)DebConf. Including discussion of
some what-if scenarios from past votings like this one.

Any volunteers?

Chri- "Else I might do that" stop



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Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Bernd Zeimetz]

On Sun, 2021-04-18 at 20:30 +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:
> 
> But from a Press Release point of view, it would be pretty darn
> awkward to say "The Debian Project has voted and chosen OPTION ALPHA.
> It is true that a majority of the voters actually preferred OPTION
> BETA to OPTION ALPHA. But don't worry about that, because  technical stuff involving graph theory and seemingly-irrelevant
> options gamma and delta>."

Then don't say that.
We have a defined method of voting, and if people don't like the results:
there are procedures to change the voting method, the constitution and other
things. After that you could even start a new GR. Complaining about the
voting system because you don't like the outcome or because you could
announce the outcome in an awkward way is not helpful.

There are awkward voting systems all over the world (ever voted for the US
president? or in Germany?), so Debian is not special.




-- 
 Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer
 http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org
 GPG Fingerprint: ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485  DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F

Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Barak A. Pearlmutter]

The Schwartz set resolution algorithm is absolutely best of breed. But
there's an old saying in computer science: garbage in, garbage out.

If we look at the actual ballots, it's really interesting. Options 7
and 8 were semantically pretty much equivalent. It's hard to see any
reason for someone to rank them very differently. So if the voters are
rational, we'd think that nearly all ballots would have options 7 and
8 ranking either the same or adjacent. And that if one is ranked the
same as other options, then they should both be. Yet many of the
ballots rank one but not the other, or rank them very differently.
Some voters ranked either option 7 or 8 as "1" and allowed everything
else to default. It's very difficult to imagine someone who actually
preferred option 7 being equally satisfied with any of options 1-6 and
8.

We tend to assume that the DD electorate is highly sophisticated and
rational and understand how to correctly express their preferences,
and how ranking works. But a quick perusal of the actual ballots has
disabused me of that notion.

The usual reaction to this sort of thing is to alter the voter
instructions. But people have intuitions for how voting works, and
blurbs might not be very effective at changing their behaviour.

--Barak.

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Timo Röhling]

* Roberto C. Sánchez  [2021-04-18 16:10]:

3:1 majority

That would put a public statement on par with a change in the
Constitution, which is a political statement in itself.


--
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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Roberto C . Sánchez]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 11:13:15PM +0200, Timo Röhling wrote:
> * Roberto C. Sánchez  [2021-04-18 16:10]:
> > However, that seems likely to only work if there is a method for
> > drafting the statement first and then simply having an up or down vote.
> No, because we have a ranking vote, where the majority is defined as the
> ratio of voters who prefer an option to the default versus those who
> do not.
> 
> As you can see in the DPL election, both candidates achieved 4:1 majority,
> which would be impossible with a simple plurality vote.
> 
Thanks for the explanation (and also to Adrian).

Election systems are not my area of expertise and I wrongly assumed that
some form of super-majority would require a binary decision rather than
a ranking.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Timo Röhling]

* Roberto C. Sánchez  [2021-04-18 16:10]:

However, that seems likely to only work if there is a method for
drafting the statement first and then simply having an up or down vote.

No, because we have a ranking vote, where the majority is defined as the
ratio of voters who prefer an option to the default versus those who
do not.

As you can see in the DPL election, both candidates achieved 4:1 majority,
which would be impossible with a simple plurality vote.

Cheers
Timo

--
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀   ╭╮
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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Adrian Bunk]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 04:10:42PM -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 10:02:46PM +0200, Timo Röhling wrote:
> > * Barak A. Pearlmutter  [2021-04-18 20:30]:
> > > I'm suggesting that, since we came within a razor (just ONE BALLOT, as
> > > Adrian Bunk pointed out) of that situation actually occurring, we get
> > > in front of things, think about it, and figure out something proactive
> > > to prevent it from ever actually happening: to prevent us from ever
> > > having to make such an embarrassing press release.
> > Maybe a public statement in the name of all developers should require
> > more than a simple 1:1 majority?
> 
> Something like a 3:1 majority would ensure that the measure had a very
> broad consensus behind it.  I would like to think that it would result
> in more constructive discussions.
> 
> However, that seems likely to only work if there is a method for
> drafting the statement first and then simply having an up or down vote.
> The up or down vote is what Steve tried to accomplish by proposing the
> GR to essentially adopt the text of the open leter.  However, things
> rapidly shifted as more options were added to the ballot.  Whether a
> "special" sort of GR is needed (one that doesn't allow for adding more
> options) or an entirely different mechanism may need to be discussed.
> 
> It isn't clear how all of it would work in practice.

Nothing prevents more than one option with a 3:1 majority when there are 
several options that are widely considered acceptable on the ballot.

In the current DPL election both candidates had a 4:1 majority.

The 2019 DPL election had 4 candidates, every single candidate had
at least a 6:1 majority.

To make an example of a 3:1 majority requirement for public statements:

Option 1: kittens are super cute
Option 2: kittens are cute
Option 3: kittens are not cute

If option 1 has a 3:1 majority:
- option 2 might also have a 3:1 majority,
- but option 3 would be unlikely to have a 3:1 majority

> Regards,
> 
> -Roberto

cu
Adrian

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Philip Hands]

Adrian Bunk  writes:

> On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 06:58:49PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:
>>...
>>...
>> If that arrow had been reversed (which
>> could be done by switching the order of two adjacent options on TWO
>> BALLOTS)
>>...
>
> On one ballot.
>
> Which brings us back to my suggestion that we should make ranking all 
> options mandatory

I'm really struggling to understand how you can think that it's
important enough to try to start a discussion now about forcing everyone
to rank everything when you didn't bother to rank 4 of the options in
the GR ballot.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands  [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]  HANDS.COM Ltd.
|-|  http://www.hands.com/http://ftp.uk.debian.org/
|(|  Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34,   21075 Hamburg,GERMANY


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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Roberto C . Sánchez]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 10:02:46PM +0200, Timo Röhling wrote:
> * Barak A. Pearlmutter  [2021-04-18 20:30]:
> > I'm suggesting that, since we came within a razor (just ONE BALLOT, as
> > Adrian Bunk pointed out) of that situation actually occurring, we get
> > in front of things, think about it, and figure out something proactive
> > to prevent it from ever actually happening: to prevent us from ever
> > having to make such an embarrassing press release.
> Maybe a public statement in the name of all developers should require
> more than a simple 1:1 majority?
> 

Something like a 3:1 majority would ensure that the measure had a very
broad consensus behind it.  I would like to think that it would result
in more constructive discussions.

However, that seems likely to only work if there is a method for
drafting the statement first and then simply having an up or down vote.
The up or down vote is what Steve tried to accomplish by proposing the
GR to essentially adopt the text of the open leter.  However, things
rapidly shifted as more options were added to the ballot.  Whether a
"special" sort of GR is needed (one that doesn't allow for adding more
options) or an entirely different mechanism may need to be discussed.

It isn't clear how all of it would work in practice.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Timo Röhling]

* Barak A. Pearlmutter  [2021-04-18 20:30]:

I'm suggesting that, since we came within a razor (just ONE BALLOT, as
Adrian Bunk pointed out) of that situation actually occurring, we get
in front of things, think about it, and figure out something proactive
to prevent it from ever actually happening: to prevent us from ever
having to make such an embarrassing press release.

Maybe a public statement in the name of all developers should require
more than a simple 1:1 majority?

Cheers
Timo

--
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Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Barak A. Pearlmutter]

Sure, if an element of a cycle must be picked then our voting system
does have a way of picking one, unless there's a perfect tie. (And the
details are really interesting if, like me, you're into that sort of
thing.)

But from a Press Release point of view, it would be pretty darn
awkward to say "The Debian Project has voted and chosen OPTION ALPHA.
It is true that a majority of the voters actually preferred OPTION
BETA to OPTION ALPHA. But don't worry about that, because ."

That kind of thing is fine for electing a DPL, when presumably
candidates ALPHA and BETA and GAMMA are all reasonable choices, given
that they're in a winning cycle. Plus we don't really need to justify
that decision externally. But for other decisions---and the RMS GR is
a poster boy for this---that logic really doesn't fly, and such a
situation would be quite problematic.

I'm suggesting that, since we came within a razor (just ONE BALLOT, as
Adrian Bunk pointed out) of that situation actually occurring, we get
in front of things, think about it, and figure out something proactive
to prevent it from ever actually happening: to prevent us from ever
having to make such an embarrassing press release.

--Barak A. Pearlmutter

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Adrian Bunk]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 06:58:49PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:
>...
>...
> If that arrow had been reversed (which
> could be done by switching the order of two adjacent options on TWO
> BALLOTS)
>...

On one ballot.

Which brings us back to my suggestion that we should make ranking all 
options mandatory (with intentional equal ranking allowed) if we decide 
to continue using Condorcet, since this kind of decision of the whole 
vote can happen between the 7th and 8th choice on a ballot and the 
winner in the latest systemd vote was also decided between 7th and 8th 
choice.

cu
Adrian

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 07:17:18PM +0100, Neil McGovern wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 06:58:49PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:
> > If the winning option in an election is part of a preference cycle,
> > then it (by definition) has the property that there exists some other
> > option that a majority of the voters preferred. In some elections that
> > is unavoidable: we need to pick one DPL, and if they're in a cycle so
> > be it; if there's a tie we can just toss a coin. But in others, like
> > the RMS GR, it seems like it would be a rather bad property and we'd
> > be better off treating it as FD and trying again later.
> > 
> 
> For info, we use cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping to resolve
> these ties. The simple version is that we work out the cycle, and then
> drop the lowest margin, in this case the 1, so "Debian will not issue a
> pubilc statement" would still win. 
> 
> A full description is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method

We drop the weakest defeat, not margin. My understanding is that
the weakest defeat is the one with the lowest number for the first
value in the defeats below (137, 139, ...)

If the assume option 4 beats option 7 instead of the other way
around, as far as I know, we would end up with the following defeats
being removed:

  Option 2 defeats Option 1 by ( 137 -  113) =   24 votes.

Which doesn't drop an option from the Schwartz set

  Option 1 defeats Option 3 by ( 139 -  131) =8 votes.

Which has as effect that option 1 is no longer in the Schwartz set

  Option 3 defeats Option 4 by ( 150 -  140) =   10 votes.

Which has as effect that option 3 is no longer in the Schwartz set

  Option 2 defeats Option 4 by ( 165 -  132) =   33 votes.

Which leaves only option 4 in the Schwartz set.


Note that the following defeat is not removed in the sequence
above:
  Option 4 defeats Option 1 by ( 156 -  146) =   10 votes.

Since at that time option 1 is no longer in the Schwartz set,
and so that defeat is no longer relevant.


Kurt

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Neil McGovern]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 06:58:49PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:
> If the winning option in an election is part of a preference cycle,
> then it (by definition) has the property that there exists some other
> option that a majority of the voters preferred. In some elections that
> is unavoidable: we need to pick one DPL, and if they're in a cycle so
> be it; if there's a tie we can just toss a coin. But in others, like
> the RMS GR, it seems like it would be a rather bad property and we'd
> be better off treating it as FD and trying again later.
> 

For info, we use cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping to resolve
these ties. The simple version is that we work out the cycle, and then
drop the lowest margin, in this case the 1, so "Debian will not issue a
pubilc statement" would still win. 

A full description is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method

Neil


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Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 06:58:49PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:
> I hope it is on-topic here to note that options 1, 3, and 4 formed a
> Condorcet preference cycle. So these *do* occur in the wild! And not
> for low-ranked obscure options either.
> 
> The winning option 7 has an arrow with a 1 on it to option 4, which is
> as razor-thin as you can get. If that arrow had been reversed (which
> could be done by switching the order of two adjacent options on TWO
> BALLOTS) the winning option would have been in an enormous preference
> cycle of FIVE (5) options!

The most likely winner in that case would option 4.


Kurt

Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Barak A. Pearlmutter]

I hope it is on-topic here to note that options 1, 3, and 4 formed a
Condorcet preference cycle. So these *do* occur in the wild! And not
for low-ranked obscure options either.

The winning option 7 has an arrow with a 1 on it to option 4, which is
as razor-thin as you can get. If that arrow had been reversed (which
could be done by switching the order of two adjacent options on TWO
BALLOTS) the winning option would have been in an enormous preference
cycle of FIVE (5) options!

If the winning option in an election is part of a preference cycle,
then it (by definition) has the property that there exists some other
option that a majority of the voters preferred. In some elections that
is unavoidable: we need to pick one DPL, and if they're in a cycle so
be it; if there's a tie we can just toss a coin. But in others, like
the RMS GR, it seems like it would be a rather bad property and we'd
be better off treating it as FD and trying again later.

If we're going to stick with Condorcet (and this election certainly
suggests taking a fresh look at our voting system) I think we might
want to consider giving the Secretary the power to declare some
elections as winner-in-cycle-means-FD before the election is held,
presumably based on some set of reasonable criteria.

--Barak A. Pearlmutter

General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Debian Project Secretary - Kurt Roeckx]

Hi,

The results of the General Resolution is:
Option 7 "Debian will not issue a public statement on this issue"

The details of the results are available at:
https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/vote_002


Kurt Roeckx
Debian Project Secretary



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