On Tue, Mar 01, 2022 at 11:13:03PM -0500, Harlan Lieberman-Berg wrote: > Hello everyone, > > I propose the following ballot option for the current GR: > > Rationale > ======== > While I agree that there are some votes which, due to their nature, > may be so controversial that the potential for a person's votes to be > publicly revealed may cause them to change their vote (or opt out of > the election), even among divisive GRs, few rise to that level of > controversy: the RMS GR and the systemd GR being two recent examples > which have provoked ire. > > There is something which fundamentally distinguishes the kind of > voting that Debian does from that of a private institution or group, > where minutes and votes are typically kept out of public view: Debian > serves a larger community than the members of the institution. In > that sense, we are more similar to a public body than a private > membership. > > Our Social Contract makes this distinction clear: when it says that we > will not hide problems, it immediately emphasizes that the bug > database will be open for public view at all times. Taking the step > to make a particular vote secret should require us to stop and > carefully weigh the costs to the larger community. > > I hope this option better strikes the balance between the aspirations > of public visibility and the occasional, pragmatic need for secrecy.
I have argued against this notion that private votes in some way contradicts our principles of transparency¹, but that got no replies whatsoever. ¹ https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/yg+tfywh09xmp...@debian.org I think that is a reasonable concern, but I'm not sure how exactly we are losing transparency here. Let's see; if we were to decide that all votes are public, then: - the discussion of the GR itself, the formulation of ballot options, and the debate about them, is still public and transparent; or at least as public and transparent as they currently are. - the final ballot and the call for votes are still public. - the positions of all the people who participated in the public discussions is still public. - the only change is that after the vote, you cannot see how exactly each individual voted. I understand the argument that Debian decisions are of public interest. But how exactly being able to know how each of us voted helps with that? Are we harvesting peoples votes to be able to throw stuff in their faces stuff like "You say that now, but back in the day when we voted on XXX you favored YYY? You are part of the problem!". I get that knowing what people you like/respect/admire/collaborate think about an issue can be useful to form your own opinion, but that's only really useful if done before the vote, not after. And for that you would need to ask them explicitly anyway. I cannot see how having a complete audit trail of how every individual voted helps with anything. At all. I think that's even a bit creepy. (and with that I am in no way implying that the fellow project members who are in favor of keeping votes public have creepy intentions)
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