Sorry, I wasn’t clear. It isn’t whether the nominee is perceived as an obstructionist, it is whether one or two of the voters is perceived as an obstructions.
There are communities where everyone gets along, and there are communities where there is a person one can construe as a ‘difficult person’. See this article [1], if you haven’t already. [1] http://producingoss.com/en/difficult-people.html The fact is, both consensus approval and majority approval are subject to abuse. In consensus, a single individual can misuse the power of the veto. In majority approval, a faction can rule over a smaller faction. IMO, you should have a goal to get consensus and put in a good faith effort to get there, but it sounds like your project may need to switch to majority approval if someone is being unreasonable. But again, be careful: When voting in people, these people have to work together “forever” so selecting the wrong person, or ignoring the wishes of too many people may end up causing more problems in the end. There is no one right answer, but there is probably a “best" answer for your project and it may not be what other projects do. -Alex On 3/21/15, 4:00 AM, "Pierre Smits" <pierre.sm...@gmail.com> wrote: >If the majority perceives that a nominee is an obstructionist then it will >be reflected in the voting result. But if the minority - or even only one >voter - perceives that and others don't, then a veto would be a show >stopper for innovation, expansion and merit recognition c.q. privilege >awarding. > >I wonder how it can be that democracy is perceived worse than any other >cracy when it comes to people in open source projects in general and ASF >projects in particular. Mature projects shouldn't need to have such a >mechanism when it comes to people. And it doesn't seem to fit in he Apache >Way. > >Best regards > > > >Pierre Smits > >*ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>* >Services & Solutions for Cloud- >Based Manufacturing, Professional >Services and Retail & Trade >http://www.orrtiz.com > >On Sat, Mar 21, 2015 at 5:24 AM, Alex Harui <aha...@adobe.com> wrote: > >> Consensus Approval works great until you have someone who others rightly >> or wrongly perceive as an obstructionist. Then it just makes the whole >> project the loser. >> >> At least one project uses majority approval for new members, but a >>serious >> attempt is made to make sure that the vote is unanimous anyway. Those >>in >> opposition deserve to be listened to, but if there are only one or two >> against and lots more in favor, then majority approval avoids long >>threads >> trying to persuade the one or two. Sure discussing more to achieve >> Consensus can be better, but you can also lose momentum of the committer >> candidate and momentum of the rest of the community. >> >> The -1 vote is an alluring drug. It can be misused by individuals who, >> consciously or not, cannot avoid the temptation to have control rather >> than to collaborate. But really make sure you listen. History is full >>of >> disasters caused by not listening to that one person. >> >> -Alex >> >>
