Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote: > If we look at the actual ballots, it's really interesting. Options 7 > and 8 were semantically pretty much equivalent. It's hard to see any > reason for someone to rank them very differently. 7 was a decision to not issue a statement ["There's no statement on this issue that I want Debian to issue"]. 8 was a decision for further discussion ["There may be statement on this issue that I'd want Debian to issue, but it's not here."] When there isn't an explicit "no decision" option on the ballot, further discussion encompass both, but that is not the case here. > It's very difficult to imagine someone who actually preferred option 7 > being equally satisfied with any of options 1-6 and 8. Here's an example thought process that works: "I want Debian to stop discussing this issue and anything more that Debian does on this issue is equally bad." Or another one: "I know that I prefer this option, but I'm not comfortable with the rest of the options to decide what the project should do, so I'll defer to the project's judgement." Not to say that there aren't voters who are confused, but you should contact them to figure out why they voted the way they did before assuming that they didn't know what they were doing. -- Don Armstrong https://www.donarmstrong.com Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. -- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Re: Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
Bernd Zeimetz write: > Then don't say that. > We have a defined method of voting, and if people don't like the results: > there are procedures to change the voting method, the constitution and other > things. After that you could even start a new GR. Complaining about the > voting system because you don't like the outcome or because you could > announce the outcome in an awkward way is not helpful. > There are awkward voting systems all over the world (ever voted for the US > president? or in Germany?), so Debian is not special. I'm sorry Bernd, but I'm having trouble following your logic there. Are you saying groups should never post-mortem the performance of their voting systems, with an eye towards identifying flaws and perhaps even remediating them? Surely the examples you give suggest otherwise: we'd all be better off if the USA had a better-performing presidential election system! As it happens, I'm personally extremely pleased with the result of the RMS GR election. That's not the point. Just as we examine the performance of, and try to identify issues with, our computer systems, we should examine the performance of, and try to identify issues with, our social structures. Including in particular the way we make group decisions. That includes how we formulate them, how we deliberate about them, and how we ultimately come to a decision. The actual voting system is a part of that, but there are other moving parts. To take one example, I don't think anyone was particularly pleased with the performance of our ballot-option-selection process. --Barak.
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
Neil McGovern wrote... > For info, we use cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping to resolve > these ties. The simple version is that we work out the cycle, and then > drop the lowest margin, in this case the 1, so "Debian will not issue a > pubilc statement" would still win. > > A full description is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method Even if there are these articles about the electoral system used in Debian votings, I still think it was a good idea to do a presentation about this topic at some future (Mini)DebConf. Including discussion of some what-if scenarios from past votings like this one. Any volunteers? Chri- "Else I might do that" stop signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Sun, 2021-04-18 at 20:30 +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote: > > But from a Press Release point of view, it would be pretty darn > awkward to say "The Debian Project has voted and chosen OPTION ALPHA. > It is true that a majority of the voters actually preferred OPTION > BETA to OPTION ALPHA. But don't worry about that, because technical stuff involving graph theory and seemingly-irrelevant > options gamma and delta>." Then don't say that. We have a defined method of voting, and if people don't like the results: there are procedures to change the voting method, the constitution and other things. After that you could even start a new GR. Complaining about the voting system because you don't like the outcome or because you could announce the outcome in an awkward way is not helpful. There are awkward voting systems all over the world (ever voted for the US president? or in Germany?), so Debian is not special. -- Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org GPG Fingerprint: ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485 DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F
Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
The Schwartz set resolution algorithm is absolutely best of breed. But there's an old saying in computer science: garbage in, garbage out. If we look at the actual ballots, it's really interesting. Options 7 and 8 were semantically pretty much equivalent. It's hard to see any reason for someone to rank them very differently. So if the voters are rational, we'd think that nearly all ballots would have options 7 and 8 ranking either the same or adjacent. And that if one is ranked the same as other options, then they should both be. Yet many of the ballots rank one but not the other, or rank them very differently. Some voters ranked either option 7 or 8 as "1" and allowed everything else to default. It's very difficult to imagine someone who actually preferred option 7 being equally satisfied with any of options 1-6 and 8. We tend to assume that the DD electorate is highly sophisticated and rational and understand how to correctly express their preferences, and how ranking works. But a quick perusal of the actual ballots has disabused me of that notion. The usual reaction to this sort of thing is to alter the voter instructions. But people have intuitions for how voting works, and blurbs might not be very effective at changing their behaviour. --Barak.
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
* Roberto C. Sánchez [2021-04-18 16:10]: 3:1 majority That would put a public statement on par with a change in the Constitution, which is a political statement in itself. -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ╭╮ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ │ Timo Röhling │ ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ │ 9B03 EBB9 8300 DF97 C2B1 23BF CC8C 6BDD 1403 F4CA │ ⠈⠳⣄ ╰╯ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 11:13:15PM +0200, Timo Röhling wrote: > * Roberto C. Sánchez [2021-04-18 16:10]: > > However, that seems likely to only work if there is a method for > > drafting the statement first and then simply having an up or down vote. > No, because we have a ranking vote, where the majority is defined as the > ratio of voters who prefer an option to the default versus those who > do not. > > As you can see in the DPL election, both candidates achieved 4:1 majority, > which would be impossible with a simple plurality vote. > Thanks for the explanation (and also to Adrian). Election systems are not my area of expertise and I wrongly assumed that some form of super-majority would require a binary decision rather than a ranking. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
* Roberto C. Sánchez [2021-04-18 16:10]: However, that seems likely to only work if there is a method for drafting the statement first and then simply having an up or down vote. No, because we have a ranking vote, where the majority is defined as the ratio of voters who prefer an option to the default versus those who do not. As you can see in the DPL election, both candidates achieved 4:1 majority, which would be impossible with a simple plurality vote. Cheers Timo -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ╭╮ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ │ Timo Röhling │ ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ │ 9B03 EBB9 8300 DF97 C2B1 23BF CC8C 6BDD 1403 F4CA │ ⠈⠳⣄ ╰╯ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 04:10:42PM -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote: > On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 10:02:46PM +0200, Timo Röhling wrote: > > * Barak A. Pearlmutter [2021-04-18 20:30]: > > > I'm suggesting that, since we came within a razor (just ONE BALLOT, as > > > Adrian Bunk pointed out) of that situation actually occurring, we get > > > in front of things, think about it, and figure out something proactive > > > to prevent it from ever actually happening: to prevent us from ever > > > having to make such an embarrassing press release. > > Maybe a public statement in the name of all developers should require > > more than a simple 1:1 majority? > > Something like a 3:1 majority would ensure that the measure had a very > broad consensus behind it. I would like to think that it would result > in more constructive discussions. > > However, that seems likely to only work if there is a method for > drafting the statement first and then simply having an up or down vote. > The up or down vote is what Steve tried to accomplish by proposing the > GR to essentially adopt the text of the open leter. However, things > rapidly shifted as more options were added to the ballot. Whether a > "special" sort of GR is needed (one that doesn't allow for adding more > options) or an entirely different mechanism may need to be discussed. > > It isn't clear how all of it would work in practice. Nothing prevents more than one option with a 3:1 majority when there are several options that are widely considered acceptable on the ballot. In the current DPL election both candidates had a 4:1 majority. The 2019 DPL election had 4 candidates, every single candidate had at least a 6:1 majority. To make an example of a 3:1 majority requirement for public statements: Option 1: kittens are super cute Option 2: kittens are cute Option 3: kittens are not cute If option 1 has a 3:1 majority: - option 2 might also have a 3:1 majority, - but option 3 would be unlikely to have a 3:1 majority > Regards, > > -Roberto cu Adrian
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
Adrian Bunk writes: > On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 06:58:49PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote: >>... >>... >> If that arrow had been reversed (which >> could be done by switching the order of two adjacent options on TWO >> BALLOTS) >>... > > On one ballot. > > Which brings us back to my suggestion that we should make ranking all > options mandatory I'm really struggling to understand how you can think that it's important enough to try to start a discussion now about forcing everyone to rank everything when you didn't bother to rank 4 of the options in the GR ballot. Cheers, Phil. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] HANDS.COM Ltd. |-| http://www.hands.com/http://ftp.uk.debian.org/ |(| Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34, 21075 Hamburg,GERMANY signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 10:02:46PM +0200, Timo Röhling wrote: > * Barak A. Pearlmutter [2021-04-18 20:30]: > > I'm suggesting that, since we came within a razor (just ONE BALLOT, as > > Adrian Bunk pointed out) of that situation actually occurring, we get > > in front of things, think about it, and figure out something proactive > > to prevent it from ever actually happening: to prevent us from ever > > having to make such an embarrassing press release. > Maybe a public statement in the name of all developers should require > more than a simple 1:1 majority? > Something like a 3:1 majority would ensure that the measure had a very broad consensus behind it. I would like to think that it would result in more constructive discussions. However, that seems likely to only work if there is a method for drafting the statement first and then simply having an up or down vote. The up or down vote is what Steve tried to accomplish by proposing the GR to essentially adopt the text of the open leter. However, things rapidly shifted as more options were added to the ballot. Whether a "special" sort of GR is needed (one that doesn't allow for adding more options) or an entirely different mechanism may need to be discussed. It isn't clear how all of it would work in practice. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
* Barak A. Pearlmutter [2021-04-18 20:30]: I'm suggesting that, since we came within a razor (just ONE BALLOT, as Adrian Bunk pointed out) of that situation actually occurring, we get in front of things, think about it, and figure out something proactive to prevent it from ever actually happening: to prevent us from ever having to make such an embarrassing press release. Maybe a public statement in the name of all developers should require more than a simple 1:1 majority? Cheers Timo -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ╭╮ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ │ Timo Röhling │ ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ │ 9B03 EBB9 8300 DF97 C2B1 23BF CC8C 6BDD 1403 F4CA │ ⠈⠳⣄ ╰╯ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Re: Secret ballot and RMS Resolution
How you can credibly blame the FSF to have kept secret the process of RMS reinstatement, when you are the first asking to keep secret the votes in regard of this stupid GR ? You should select better the DPL the next time, pushing a such divisive GR in freeze time was a very bad decision for the overall ending quality of the project. Please don't do I such stupid thing again, learn from the past. Maybe you should make a rule, no highly divisive GR in freeze period again. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
Sure, if an element of a cycle must be picked then our voting system does have a way of picking one, unless there's a perfect tie. (And the details are really interesting if, like me, you're into that sort of thing.) But from a Press Release point of view, it would be pretty darn awkward to say "The Debian Project has voted and chosen OPTION ALPHA. It is true that a majority of the voters actually preferred OPTION BETA to OPTION ALPHA. But don't worry about that, because ." That kind of thing is fine for electing a DPL, when presumably candidates ALPHA and BETA and GAMMA are all reasonable choices, given that they're in a winning cycle. Plus we don't really need to justify that decision externally. But for other decisions---and the RMS GR is a poster boy for this---that logic really doesn't fly, and such a situation would be quite problematic. I'm suggesting that, since we came within a razor (just ONE BALLOT, as Adrian Bunk pointed out) of that situation actually occurring, we get in front of things, think about it, and figure out something proactive to prevent it from ever actually happening: to prevent us from ever having to make such an embarrassing press release. --Barak A. Pearlmutter
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 06:58:49PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote: >... >... > If that arrow had been reversed (which > could be done by switching the order of two adjacent options on TWO > BALLOTS) >... On one ballot. Which brings us back to my suggestion that we should make ranking all options mandatory (with intentional equal ranking allowed) if we decide to continue using Condorcet, since this kind of decision of the whole vote can happen between the 7th and 8th choice on a ballot and the winner in the latest systemd vote was also decided between 7th and 8th choice. cu Adrian
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 07:17:18PM +0100, Neil McGovern wrote: > On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 06:58:49PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote: > > If the winning option in an election is part of a preference cycle, > > then it (by definition) has the property that there exists some other > > option that a majority of the voters preferred. In some elections that > > is unavoidable: we need to pick one DPL, and if they're in a cycle so > > be it; if there's a tie we can just toss a coin. But in others, like > > the RMS GR, it seems like it would be a rather bad property and we'd > > be better off treating it as FD and trying again later. > > > > For info, we use cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping to resolve > these ties. The simple version is that we work out the cycle, and then > drop the lowest margin, in this case the 1, so "Debian will not issue a > pubilc statement" would still win. > > A full description is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method We drop the weakest defeat, not margin. My understanding is that the weakest defeat is the one with the lowest number for the first value in the defeats below (137, 139, ...) If the assume option 4 beats option 7 instead of the other way around, as far as I know, we would end up with the following defeats being removed: Option 2 defeats Option 1 by ( 137 - 113) = 24 votes. Which doesn't drop an option from the Schwartz set Option 1 defeats Option 3 by ( 139 - 131) =8 votes. Which has as effect that option 1 is no longer in the Schwartz set Option 3 defeats Option 4 by ( 150 - 140) = 10 votes. Which has as effect that option 3 is no longer in the Schwartz set Option 2 defeats Option 4 by ( 165 - 132) = 33 votes. Which leaves only option 4 in the Schwartz set. Note that the following defeat is not removed in the sequence above: Option 4 defeats Option 1 by ( 156 - 146) = 10 votes. Since at that time option 1 is no longer in the Schwartz set, and so that defeat is no longer relevant. Kurt
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 06:58:49PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote: > If the winning option in an election is part of a preference cycle, > then it (by definition) has the property that there exists some other > option that a majority of the voters preferred. In some elections that > is unavoidable: we need to pick one DPL, and if they're in a cycle so > be it; if there's a tie we can just toss a coin. But in others, like > the RMS GR, it seems like it would be a rather bad property and we'd > be better off treating it as FD and trying again later. > For info, we use cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping to resolve these ties. The simple version is that we work out the cycle, and then drop the lowest margin, in this case the 1, so "Debian will not issue a pubilc statement" would still win. A full description is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method Neil signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 06:58:49PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote: > I hope it is on-topic here to note that options 1, 3, and 4 formed a > Condorcet preference cycle. So these *do* occur in the wild! And not > for low-ranked obscure options either. > > The winning option 7 has an arrow with a 1 on it to option 4, which is > as razor-thin as you can get. If that arrow had been reversed (which > could be done by switching the order of two adjacent options on TWO > BALLOTS) the winning option would have been in an enormous preference > cycle of FIVE (5) options! The most likely winner in that case would option 4. Kurt
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
I hope it is on-topic here to note that options 1, 3, and 4 formed a Condorcet preference cycle. So these *do* occur in the wild! And not for low-ranked obscure options either. The winning option 7 has an arrow with a 1 on it to option 4, which is as razor-thin as you can get. If that arrow had been reversed (which could be done by switching the order of two adjacent options on TWO BALLOTS) the winning option would have been in an enormous preference cycle of FIVE (5) options! If the winning option in an election is part of a preference cycle, then it (by definition) has the property that there exists some other option that a majority of the voters preferred. In some elections that is unavoidable: we need to pick one DPL, and if they're in a cycle so be it; if there's a tie we can just toss a coin. But in others, like the RMS GR, it seems like it would be a rather bad property and we'd be better off treating it as FD and trying again later. If we're going to stick with Condorcet (and this election certainly suggests taking a fresh look at our voting system) I think we might want to consider giving the Secretary the power to declare some elections as winner-in-cycle-means-FD before the election is held, presumably based on some set of reasonable criteria. --Barak A. Pearlmutter
General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
Hi, The results of the General Resolution is: Option 7 "Debian will not issue a public statement on this issue" The details of the results are available at: https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/vote_002 Kurt Roeckx Debian Project Secretary signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Debian Project Leader Election 2021 Results
Hi, The winner of the election is Jonathan Carter. The details of the results are available at: https://vote.debian.org/2021/vote_001 Stats for the DPL votes: |--+--++---++-++---| | | Num || Valid | Unique | Rejects | % | Multiple | | Year | DDs | Quorum | Votes | Voters | | Voting | of Quorum | |--+--++---++-++---| | 1999 | 347 | 27.942 | |208 | | 59.942 | 7.44399 | | 2000 | 347 | 27.942 | |216 | | 62.248 | 7.73030 | | 2001 | ?? | ?? | |311 | || | | 2002 | 939 | 45.965 | 509 |475 | 122 | 50.586 | 10.33395 | | 2003 | 831 | 43.241 | 510 |488 | 200 | 58.724 | 11.28559 | | 2004 | 908 | 45.200 | 506 |482 | 52 | 53.084 | 10.66372 | | 2005 | 965 | 46.597 | 531 |504 | 69 | 52.228 | 10.81615 | | 2006 | 972 | 46.765 | 436 |421 | 41 | 43.313 | 9.00246 | | 2007 | 1036 | 48.280 | 521 |482 | 267 | 46.525 | 9.98343 | | 2008 | 1075 | 49.181 | 425 |401 | 35 | 37.302 | 8.15356 | | 2009 | 1013 | 47.741 | 366 |361 | 43 | 35.636 | 7.56155 | | 2010 | 886 | 44.648 | 459 |436 | 88 | 49.210 | 9.76513 | | 2011 | 911 | 45.274 | 402 |392 | 93 | 43.030 | 8.65836 | | 2012 | 948 | 46.184 | 436 |403 | 72 | 42.511 | 8.72589 | | 2013 | 988 | 47.149 | 402 |390 | 73 | 39.474 | 8.27170 | | 2014 | 1003 | 47.505 | 412 |401 | 61 | 39.980 | 8.44117 | | 2015 | 986 | 47.101 | 364 |353 | 39 | 35.801 | 7.49454 | | 2016 | 1023 | 47.977 | 286 |282 | 74 | 27.566 | 5.87787 | | 2017 | 1062 | 48.882 | 327 |322 | 57 | 30.320 | 6.58729 | | 2018 | 1001 | 47.457 | 343 |333 | 53 | 33.266 | 7.01674 | | 2019 | 1003 | 47.505 | 389 |378 | 59 | 37.687 | 7.95701 | | 2020 | 1011 | 47.694 | 352 |339 | 33 | 33.531 | 7.10776 | | 2021 | 1018 | 47.859 | 469 |455 | 89 | 44.695 | 9.50706 | |--+--++---++-++---| Kurt Roeckx Debian Project Secretary signature.asc Description: PGP signature
