One alternative to going for full-on majority voting is to recognize that a larger group is much more likely to have "noisy vetoes" by requiring that successful votes have n positive votes and m negative votes subject to some condition on n and m. Majority requires n > m, strict Apache consensus requires n >= 3 and m == 0. It is easy to imagine other conditions such as n >= 4 and m <= 2 which still have some of the flavor of consensus in that a minority can block a decision, but allow forward progress even with constant naysayers or occasional random vetoes.
On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 9:02 PM, Christian Grobmeier <grobme...@gmail.com>wrote: > Hi, > > following a thread on private@, I would like to bring the discussion > on how we vote on nominated IPMC members. > > We had the case were one person was nominated and received three +1. > Another voter had concerns an voted -1. The vote has been marked as > failed, because no consensus could be found. > > Now this was my understanding and I was surprised that the vote failed: > > "Votes on procedural issues follow the common format of majority rule > unless otherwise stated." > http://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.html > > Joe brought this up before around 14 months: > http://s.apache.org/majorityinipmc > > We have not found a consens, but one might highlight Roy Fieldings e-mail: > http://s.apache.org/royCommitterVeto > > I still think like Joe and feel that consensus should not apply in the > IPMC. We are way to different to normal PMCs. As IPMC members we have > no code which we can veto. Its all about accepting podlings, > discussing rules and mentoring. > > We also have 172 IPMC members to date (according committer index). > Most of the people are not seen often; we have many awol mentors. > Currently becoming an IPMC member is necessary to become a Mentor. It > always felt wrong to me. I think one should be able to become a Mentor > and finally be able to join the IPMC and discuss rules, when he has > shown merit. > > With an IPMC of that size it becomes more and more easy to get a -1. > > Personally I would like to see the IPMC separating IPMC-ship and > Mentor-ship. I have proposed this already, but it seems nobody else > except me wants that. So I am proposing now to reconsider Joes > original proposal and change our community voting to a majority voting > unless we restructure the IPMC. > > I am sorry to bring this lengthy discussion up again, but from the > original thread I have learned a couple of other IPMC members are > thinking similar on majority / consensus. > > I would also like to suggest that this time we finish the discussion > with a vote. > > Cheers > Christian > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > >
