Re: Discussion: Possible GR: Enhance requirements for General Resolutions
Stephen Gran sg...@debian.org wrote: This one time, at band camp, MJ Ray said: Many DDs ignore -project and even most stuff on -vote unless/until it looks likely to get enough seconds, don't they? You're the one making the assertion, I think the onus is on you to prove it. Previously, I noted that fewer than 80 people participated in even the hotly disputed lenny blobs GR discussion. That suggests to me that lots of DDs aren't participating until the vote. It's hard to prove that a group is ignoring something, but disproof is simple: please could all DDs reading this email mjr-possiblegr at debian.org. I'll count with from -f possiblegr.mbox | wc -l in a week. The discussion so far on this topic has, to my mind, suggested the opposite reading. We've seen postings from several people who don't normally post to -vote (and they've been fairly uniformly in support of the ideas being proposed, at a glance), which suggests to me that we have more lurkers than you are assuming. Cross-checking names of posters to this thread on -project with an index of posters to -vote finds *no* new participants. That comes down to how one defines normal in normally post to -vote. Here's a summary list of concerns I mentioned in other emails:- 1. 2Q is unjustified and excessive; [...] Why 30? Why not 130? Why not 300? The particular number is unjustified. I personally would be happy with a higher number, but 30 is a conservative first start. Would you be happier if the suggestion was 4Q or 10Q? Not if it's still unjustified. If we're groping in the dark, let's grope somewhere near to our current position, instead of leaping about the room and possibly slamming into a brick wall. If 10Q is ever seriously considered, it seems better to replace the SRP with a different, more consensual, voting system. I'm not good at interpreting complex constitutions, but [...] Yep, I got it wrong, thanks to the unusual meaning of quorum in the debian constitution - compare with http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2Database=*Query=quorum What about the other two concerns: the obvious spoiler effect; and defending proposals during the discussion period? The 'obvious' spoiler effect - is that the idea that proposals with no supporters probably won't make it to a GR? That's a feature. In short, it's the idea that you can keep a compromise amendment off of the ballot by proposing a similar-but-slightly-more-extreme one, then letting the compromise amendment fail due to seconder fatigue and the reluctance of some DDs to second multiple options. We currently have two examples where options which didn't exceed 2K seconds went on to win the vote. Does a higher seconding requirement risk of introducing something similar to the threshold effect from elections (such as the German and Turkish national elections) into getting onto a GR ballot? I think the ability to second multiple options (which Don Armstrong initially argued against) may reduce it, but I also suspect seconder fatigue (similar to voter fatigue) means it'll still exist. Why is defending an option you are proposing a problem, and how is it worsened by increasing the number of required seconds over the current situation? It is a problem because it encourages division rather than consensus-building. It's much harder to develop a compromise when many participants have already publicly announced their preferred solution. It is worsened by increasing the number of required seconds because that increases the probability of uncompromising defenders *before* many DDs are necessarily aware of the proposal. If anything, it seems like increasing the number of required seconds means an incentive to have a wider discussion before proposing the GR, which if anything will widen the opportunity to build consensus, and if consensus can't be reached, make it possible to create a few compromises that people could live with before pretending we can resolve our difference in 2 weeks with a vote looming. So no compromises can be found in two weeks? Does increasing the number of required seconds mean that some proportion of DDs will be probably spending even more time developing GRs and the rest of us will have to spend even more time watching them? How will the unannounced pre-proposal discussions be wider than the GR discussion period which is announced to all DDs? The 2 weeks is a minimum, not a requirement - but if the required discussion period is essentially useless and just for filtering out small errors, should it be shortened? Regards, -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Discussion: Possible GR: Enhance requirements for General Resolutions
MJ Ray m...@phonecoop.coop (07/01/2009): Previously, I noted that fewer than 80 people participated in even the hotly disputed lenny blobs GR discussion. That suggests to me that lots of DDs aren't participating until the vote. It's hard to prove that a group is ignoring something, but disproof is simple: please could all DDs reading this email mjr-possiblegr at debian.org. I'll count with from -f possiblegr.mbox | wc -l in a week. Even for people who might try and follow those lengthy so-called discussions, extra-long mails like Ron's or yours makes it likely that From→mark-as-read actions appear. I wouldn't call your hiding foo at bar in one of them a simple disproof of anything. Mraw, KiBi. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Discussion: Possible GR: Enhance requirements for General Resolutions
* MJ Ray [Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:04:50 +]: It's hard to prove that a group is ignoring something, but disproof is simple: please could all DDs reading this email mjr-possiblegr at debian.org. I'll count with from -f possiblegr.mbox | wc -l in a week. o/` I am speechless, speechless That's how you make me feel When I'm with you I am lost for words, I don't know what to say Helpless and hopeless, that's how I feel inside o/` -- Another MJ (In other words, I don't understand what possible correlation there could be between people following or not an experiment by you *deep buried in a thread pattern*, and people seconding an amendment they agree with, knowing it still needs, say, 12 seconds.) -- Adeodato Simó dato at net.com.org.es Debian Developer adeodato at debian.org Listening to: Justin Nozuka - After Tonight -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Possible GR: pre-proposal participation by DDs [strawpoll]
I believe that most debian developers ignore discussions of possible GRs like the current one, until/unless they look like reaching the required number of seconds to trigger a vote. It's hard to prove that a group is ignoring something, but disproof is simple: please could all DDs who watch pre-proposal discussions of possible GRs please email mjr-possiblegr at debian.org. I'll count with from -f possiblegr.mbox | wc -l in a week or so, after filtering out any emails from non-DDs. Following a couple of complaints, I've set Reply-To on this request and posted it as a new thread, to make it easier to spot. Thanks, -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Discussion: Possible GR: Enhance requirements for General Resolutions
Cyril Brulebois k...@debian.org wrote: MJ Ray m...@phonecoop.coop (07/01/2009): It's hard to prove that a group is ignoring something, but disproof is simple: please could all DDs reading this email mjr-possiblegr at debian.org. I'll count with from -f possiblegr.mbox | wc -l in a week. Even for people who might try and follow those lengthy so-called discussions, extra-long mails like Ron's or yours makes it likely that From→mark-as-read actions appear. I wouldn't call your hiding foo at bar in one of them a simple disproof of anything. If that email address gets lots of responses, it simply disproves my claim that no DDs are watching this sort of discussion. If it gets no responses, it still doesn't prove my claim, but how could I prove it? At least I'm trying to check if my belief is wrong, instead of just contradicting other people. In case thread-killing is significant, I'll post it as a new thread. Hope that helps, -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Possible GR: pre-proposal participation by DDs [strawpoll]
Le mercredi 07 janvier 2009 à 13:05 +, MJ Ray a écrit : It's hard to prove that a group is ignoring something, but disproof is simple: please could all DDs who watch pre-proposal discussions of possible GRs please email mjr-possiblegr at debian.org. I'll count with from -f possiblegr.mbox | wc -l in a week or so, after filtering out any emails from non-DDs. WTF are you trying to prove? “Send me email otherwise that means I’m right!” Can’t you tolerate that most DDs don’t have the time to read the logorrhoea of a handful of people on the lists? -- .''`. : :' : We are debian.org. Lower your prices, surrender your code. `. `' We will add your hardware and software distinctiveness to `-our own. Resistance is futile. signature.asc Description: Ceci est une partie de message numériquement signée
Re: Discussion: Possible GR: Enhance requirements for General Resolutions
Ron r...@debian.org wrote: [...Wouter Verhelst's counts...] Those results are not surprising, and if anything make it clear we can easily get more seconds for notable issues than is currently required. How many more is debatable, but this isn't very good evidence for your assertion that 30 people is a very high bar. So provide other evidence, or at least point towards it. I'm using what I've got and I can't use what I've not got. [...] The _formal_ discussion period is limited in length, and IMO quite short. Far too short in fact to actually achieve a real, well considered, consensus in that time. OK, so this proposal means people would spend more time on each GR. I feel that's probably a bad consequence. MJ Ray wrote: [...] also, it's 30 DDs, not 30 people. I'm not sure what you aim to imply there? Are DDs more like sheep than 'people' are or vice versa? Neither. Just there are vote discussion posters who are not DDs. 1. 2Q is unjustified and excessive; The justification (or perhaps 'last straw') is the poor quality of recent vote options, where many people even had quite some difficulty figuring out what the difference between any two options were. [...] I was amongst those having difficulty, as I noted in http://www.news.software.coop/debian-lenny-gr-and-the-secretary/417/ I don't understand how 2Q would necessarily have made it easier, rather than longer and noisier. The exaggeration about how big a change this is seems excessive, but I don't think 30 / 1000 is by most normal scales of excess. What normal scales for seconding? 2. the obvious spoiler effect may exclude consensus options prematurely (interaction of thresholds and Condorcet voting); Sorry, but that sentence is just entirely self-contradictory and unparseable to me ... Whatever effect you speak of is not 'obvious' to me, and if options _had_ consensus clearly there'd be more than 30 people supporting them and they wouldn't be excluded ... Do the different views reduce to: do we believe options should reach consensus before the start of the SRP? [...] Loaded explanations like unjustified and excessive only work if you are preaching to the choir. For the rest of us, that will need to be backed up with some justification of your own if we are to understand what injustice and excess really concerns you here. I've been done! The explanations are loaded because they're not explanations: they're a summary of concerns, as requested previously. My limited justification can be found in messages like http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/12/msg00197.html but I'd welcome justification of 2Q - instead of simple contradictions like these. I don't think a 600% increase is a conservative step. Fortunately this is just an error in your math :) Let's see: It was, but not in that way. If 5 = 100% then 30 = 600%. [... *larger* warring factions? ...] Well if you really believe that might be a problem, then surely you'd be in favour of my actually radical suggestion to raise this threshold to something like 80% of people in the keyring? Not this threshold, but I think I'd second replacing the SRP with something radical that required a relatively high %age. I would prefer any replacement to be time-limited unless there's good reason to be sure it works better than the current way. Alternatively, would it make the path of least resistance ignore everyone else whenever possible because they'll never get 30 or 60 DDs together? Are you saying that if I ever vote with some faction I will never be able to cross the floor and vote with a different group of people who I agree more with on some totally different topic? No. I'm suggesting that GRs would become too rare to be a concern for almost all activities. [vote options defined by a ballot jury] Wait, I'm confused again ... if you are worried about secret groups of 30 people having too much power to influence the project, where are we going to get this jury from, and who will watch the watchers? I'd use a public group selected at random from the keyring, but I'm not strongly attached to that method. [... what goes on in -vote ... not attractive ...] should you really be surprised that we'll build our own consensus to rise up and stop you from doing that? Stop *me*? In 5+ years, I think I've put one amendment on a ballot. I feel that misdirected personal attacks do more to divide the project than any number of discussions. It's not really rocket science, not once you've seen it once or twice before. So please name the other places you've seen it, to convince everyone. [...] I don't want to join the ranks of people who just repeat themselves over and over and over in the vain hope that this will win people over to their way of thinking. Instead of repeating oneself, one could try posting evidence and explaining reasoning, instead of simply making opposite claims and complaining about other views. :-(
