I definitely agree with #1. Still pondering #2.
On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 1:58 PM, Christopher <[email protected]> wrote: > Devs, > > As something that came out of the vote thread about EOL'ing 1.4, I was > thinking: > > The purpose of a majority vote seems to be when we've already > discussed and planned, and we just need things to come down to a final > vote. Things like releasing, for example, occur after discussions, > planning, and aren't a surprise in any way. It seems to me that there > are two main points I want to make: > > 1) Prior discussion/planning should be a prerequisite for things which > are majority vote. > 2) The default for any ambiguous or arbitrary vote item that does not > fall into a predetermined type, should require consensus. > > The problem with majority votes without discussion is that there may > be serious concerns a minority of persons voting have about something, > that could be resolved with compromise.... where there is plenty of > room for gathering consensus. Coming together as a community to move > forward with a mutually agreed upon path should always be preferred > where possible. In some cases, differences are irreconcilable and > action just needs to be taken to move forward (releasing, for > instance) on a majority decision, but even here, there is up front > discussion about those differences (code development, release > planning, etc.) prior to such a vote. > > Binding actions to a majority vote that has insufficient prior > discussion, especially when there is no mechanism to extend a vote, or > sane way to alter the contents of the majority vote while in progress, > leads to actions that don't have the consensus of the community, even > in circumstances where consensus was possible to achieve. > > I think our bylaws should be updated to reflect the two ideas above. > I'm not sure the exact wording needed *(please submit proposals in > response to this), but I think it should declare that any voting that > does not clearly fall into a vote category explicitly enumerated, or > if there's any doubt, should default to consensus. Before we had > bylaws, this appeared to be the precedent... as we often took great > care to respond to any objections, delaying, canceling, or extending > the vote to do so. We should continue to operate with that same sense > of community in future decisions as well, and I think consensus voting > whenever possible is the way to do that. > > It was also discussed that it may be helpful to enumerate end of life > procedures in the bylaws as well. I'm not sure this is as important of > an issue if we agree that the default should be consensus... but I'm > willing to entertain that discussion in this thread as well. > > Thanks for your time and input. > > -- > Christopher L Tubbs II > http://gravatar.com/ctubbsii >
