Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
Timo Röhling writes: > * 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. I admit to having really mixed feelings about whether Debian should *ever* make broad public statements about anything. So, no problem in my mind with making it harder for the project to do so. But then, I've also been around a *long* time, and am often wistful about the days when it at least seemed that most of our discussions were about making technical improvements in Debian. Bdale signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 07:20:48PM +0200, Bernd Zeimetz wrote: > > I did not want to spend time on figuring out if voting --- in > our voting system is the same as not voting at all Ranking all options the same has no effect on the result. It does not have an effect on the quorum or majority. The only effect it has is that more people voted. Kurt
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On 2021-04-20 18:12, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote: Bernd, sometimes the devil is in the details, and that's certainly the case with voting systems. Why should I rank options if there is only a limited number of options I care about, and the others are just equally bad choices imho? I feel like we're sort of belaboring a point. If someone voted 1--- does it really seem plausible that they actually thought Option 2 was exactly as bad as Option 5? So if Option 1 were removed from the table, and they personally would pick which remaining option would be chosen, they'd be just as happy with any of Options 2-8? Basically my vote was like 12--- with 2 being FD, but 1- would also have been fine for me, although I wanted to have FD higher than the other options in this case. So if 1 would have been removed, I'd most likely have voted 2--, with --- also being an option Which is also even in democratic/political voting systems something you can express with your vote (at least in Germany). I did not want to spend time on figuring out if voting --- in our voting system is the same as not voting at all, but in political votes it actually makes a difference. Also I think voting "I don't care about the outcome, all is fine for me" is better than not voting at all, even in Debian. -- 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
Bernd, sometimes the devil is in the details, and that's certainly the case with voting systems. > Why should I rank options if there is only a limited number of > options I care about, and the others are just equally bad > choices imho? I feel like we're sort of belaboring a point. If someone voted 1--- does it really seem plausible that they actually thought Option 2 was exactly as bad as Option 5? So if Option 1 were removed from the table, and they personally would pick which remaining option would be chosen, they'd be just as happy with any of Options 2-8? It seems much more likely that they thought this was a way of expressing maximum support for Option 1, and that ranking anything else diluted that support. Cheers, --Barak.
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
> "Jonas" == Jonas Smedegaard writes: Jonas> Quoting Barak A. Pearlmutter (2021-04-20 16:12:16) Jonas> Maybe it makes sense to e.g. add a friendly notice in the Jonas> voting confirmation email when not all voting power is used. Jonas> But there is already a lot of text surrounding a vote, so Jonas> such noticemight commonly be missed. I support this and thank Adrian for convincing me of the value. I don't support going as far as Adrian appears to want to go and rejecting ballots that fail to rank all choices. --Sam
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 04:41:46PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > Quoting Barak A. Pearlmutter (2021-04-20 16:12:16) > > Maybe looking at options 7/8 wasn't the best example, both because of > > perceived differences and because FD plays a special role. > > But with all the ballots we can find a bunch of votes that do seem to > > not use the full power of the ballot in ways that do seem a bit > > counterintuitive. > > Have a look for yourself, it's a fun exercise. > > A large number of voters stop ranking when they get to FD. I'm not > > sure why, but in many cases this renders their ballot pretty much > > powerless because options with a chance of winning are not ranked. > > > > The details are very interesting, but any discussion of the actual > > options leads back to discussing the topic of the GR proper, so I > > really don't want to go there. > > I appreciate this topic being brought up - it has affected my voting > style: Previously I thought that my voting powers stopped at FD. > > I don't think it makes sense to change the system to mandate use of all > voting power. >... Noone has suggested to remove any intentional way of voting. --12 and 8812 are equivalent when determining the result. --12 might be intentional or not knowing that voting below FD can decide the outcome. 8812 makes it clear that this is an intentional "Debian should stay out of politics" vote, with all other options considered equally bad. > - Jonas cu Adrian
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On 2021-04-20 16:12, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote: Maybe looking at options 7/8 wasn't the best example, both because of perceived differences and because FD plays a special role. But with all the ballots we can find a bunch of votes that do seem to not use the full power of the ballot in ways that do seem a bit counterintuitive. Have a look for yourself, it's a fun exercise. A large number of voters stop ranking when they get to FD. I'm not sure why, but in many cases this renders their ballot pretty much powerless because options with a chance of winning are not ranked. There eare two options: - people don't understand how it works - people understand how it works, and not ranking options is what they want - because it actually ranks these options equally low. The announcement mails state: Unranked choices are considered equally the least desired choices, and ranked below all ranked choices. So - not ranking options is an way to save time. I've written a bunch of 8 instead, but the result is the same. Why should I rank options if there is only a limited number of options I care about, and the others are just equally bad choices imho? -- Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org GPG Fingerprint: ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485 DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
Quoting Barak A. Pearlmutter (2021-04-20 16:12:16) > Maybe looking at options 7/8 wasn't the best example, both because of > perceived differences and because FD plays a special role. > But with all the ballots we can find a bunch of votes that do seem to > not use the full power of the ballot in ways that do seem a bit > counterintuitive. > Have a look for yourself, it's a fun exercise. > A large number of voters stop ranking when they get to FD. I'm not > sure why, but in many cases this renders their ballot pretty much > powerless because options with a chance of winning are not ranked. > > The details are very interesting, but any discussion of the actual > options leads back to discussing the topic of the GR proper, so I > really don't want to go there. I appreciate this topic being brought up - it has affected my voting style: Previously I thought that my voting powers stopped at FD. I don't think it makes sense to change the system to mandate use of all voting power. Maybe it makes sense to e.g. add a friendly notice in the voting confirmation email when not all voting power is used. But there is already a lot of text surrounding a vote, so such noticemight commonly be missed. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private signature.asc Description: signature
Re: Thanks and Decision making working group (was Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result)
Le mardi 20 avril 2021 à 12:50:25+0200, Jonas Smedegaard a écrit : > Quoting Philip Hands (2021-04-20 11:57:58) > > Adrian Bunk writes: > > > > > On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 01:04:21PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > > >>... > > >> * The length of the discussion period is ill-defined in multiple ways, > > >> which has repeatedly caused conflicts. It only resets on accepted > > >> amendments but not new ballot options, which makes little logical sense > > >> and constantly confuses people. There's no maximum discussion period > > >> defined, which means fixes for that risk introducing a filibuster. > > >> > > >> * Calling for votes is defined as a separate action from the end of the > > >> discussion period, but in practice the constitution allows any > > >> developer > > >> to call for a GR vote via an abuse of process that probably wasn't > > >> intended, and even apart from that, the set of people who can call for > > >> a > > >> vote is strange and not very defensible. > > >>... > > > > > > The process to shorten the discussion period is also suboptimal. > > > > > > In the latest GR the way the discussion period was shortened was > > > perceived by many as an anti-democratic attempt to suppress discussions > > > about the contents and alternative ballot options. > > > > > > And there was plenty left to discuss (including wording of ballot > > > options and secrecy of the vote) when the minimum discussion period > > > ended and the vote was called. > > > > > > I would suggest to replace the option of shortening the discussion > > > period with the possibility of early calling for a vote after a week > > > that can be vetoed by any developer within 24 hours. This would ensure > > > that shorter discussion periods would only happen when there is > > > consensus that nothing is left to be discussed. > > > > Would you expect a different result if that had been done in this case? > > I genuinely think that more time preparing the ballot would have led to > fewer more well-written options on the ballot, and consequently a higher > likelihood that Debian would have decided to make a (more well-written) > statement instead of the current outcome of not making a statement. History tends to show as far as we are concerned that the longer the discussion, the more look-alike options come and the less the ballots are easy to digest and fill in. Regards, -- Pierre-Elliott Bécue GPG: 9AE0 4D98 6400 E3B6 7528 F493 0D44 2664 1949 74E2 It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Thanks and Decision making working group (was Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result)
Quoting Bernd Zeimetz (2021-04-20 15:26:06) > On 2021-04-20 12:50, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > > > > I genuinely think that more time preparing the ballot would have led > > to fewer more well-written options on the ballot, and consequently a > > higher likelihood that Debian would have decided to make a (more > > well-written) statement instead of the current outcome of not making > > a statement. > > On th other hand this leads to even more discussion, more flame-wars > and maybe some other ballots that come in in a short time before the > voting peropd starts - which might have the same issues you've just > described. But without a defined time on when a vote starts, the > discussion will never end. > > No idea on how to fix that, though. Personally I think having fixed > and known dates is still the best option. I think a sensible step in the direction towards fixing the issue you describe is to not assume that "more discussion" necessarily leads to "the discussion will never end". ;-) For my own part, by "more time preparing" I did only imply "the ordinary 2 weeks", not "all the time in the World". - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private signature.asc Description: signature
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote: That's a very interesting idea. I wonder if we could elaborate upon it to build a more expressive, and more robust, voting system. Voting systems are heavily subject to the law of unintended consequences. As someone who has studied voting systems as an amateur (and enjoyed many discussions with David Graham on the same topic) I'd recommend being very careful about altering the existing system beyond established and studied systems. Cheers, Rob
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
Maybe looking at options 7/8 wasn't the best example, both because of perceived differences and because FD plays a special role. But with all the ballots we can find a bunch of votes that do seem to not use the full power of the ballot in ways that do seem a bit counterintuitive. Have a look for yourself, it's a fun exercise. A large number of voters stop ranking when they get to FD. I'm not sure why, but in many cases this renders their ballot pretty much powerless because options with a chance of winning are not ranked. The details are very interesting, but any discussion of the actual options leads back to discussing the topic of the GR proper, so I really don't want to go there. --Barak.
Re: Thanks and Decision making working group (was Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result)
On 2021-04-20 12:50, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: I genuinely think that more time preparing the ballot would have led to fewer more well-written options on the ballot, and consequently a higher likelihood that Debian would have decided to make a (more well-written) statement instead of the current outcome of not making a statement. On th other hand this leads to even more discussion, more flame-wars and maybe some other ballots that come in in a short time before the voting peropd starts - which might have the same issues you've just described. But without a defined time on when a vote starts, the discussion will never end. No idea on how to fix that, though. Personally I think having fixed and known dates is still the best option. -- Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org GPG Fingerprint: ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485 DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On 2021-04-18 23:18, 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. Just because two votes are semantically equivalent it doesn't mean that people rate them equally. Our voting system luckily allows similar options, so you can decide based on wordings and maybe even the feeling you have when you read the text. Imagine we'd have a GR over the pantone colours of the Debian logo. - PANTONE Rubine Red 2X CVC - PANTONE Strong Red C - PANTONE Rubine Red C - PANTONE 199 C (from https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLogo) Basically all options are red, actually very similar red colours. If you see one colour alone, you'd be completely happy with it. If you are actually able to compare them, you might notice that one is a bit more pink and you hate pink and the other one doesn't fit to the stickers on you laptop. So it makes a lot of sense to be able to decide on such minor differences. You might even hate pink so much, that you'd rate that option below FD. I've done the same in GRs in the past: ranked basically equal options completely different due to their wordings. Its a good thing that you can do that in Debian, and imho it makes a lot of sense to allow to choose on such minor differences. The voting system works as designed, even if some people don't understand the outcome or are not happy with it. -- Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org GPG Fingerprint: ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485 DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F
Re: Thanks and Decision making working group (was Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result)
Quoting Philip Hands (2021-04-20 11:57:58) > Adrian Bunk writes: > > > On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 01:04:21PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > >>... > >> * The length of the discussion period is ill-defined in multiple ways, > >> which has repeatedly caused conflicts. It only resets on accepted > >> amendments but not new ballot options, which makes little logical sense > >> and constantly confuses people. There's no maximum discussion period > >> defined, which means fixes for that risk introducing a filibuster. > >> > >> * Calling for votes is defined as a separate action from the end of the > >> discussion period, but in practice the constitution allows any developer > >> to call for a GR vote via an abuse of process that probably wasn't > >> intended, and even apart from that, the set of people who can call for a > >> vote is strange and not very defensible. > >>... > > > > The process to shorten the discussion period is also suboptimal. > > > > In the latest GR the way the discussion period was shortened was > > perceived by many as an anti-democratic attempt to suppress discussions > > about the contents and alternative ballot options. > > > > And there was plenty left to discuss (including wording of ballot > > options and secrecy of the vote) when the minimum discussion period > > ended and the vote was called. > > > > I would suggest to replace the option of shortening the discussion > > period with the possibility of early calling for a vote after a week > > that can be vetoed by any developer within 24 hours. This would ensure > > that shorter discussion periods would only happen when there is > > consensus that nothing is left to be discussed. > > Would you expect a different result if that had been done in this case? I genuinely think that more time preparing the ballot would have led to fewer more well-written options on the ballot, and consequently a higher likelihood that Debian would have decided to make a (more well-written) statement instead of the current outcome of not making a statement. I know that my own contribution in the process felt rushed, and that I thought at the time I seconded options 2 and 3 and 4 that I would have much preferred to instead have the time to discuss eventual merger of them instead of worrying that all of those views were presented at all on the ballot. Flaws of ambiguity in at least one of the texts were pointed out without having time to address it. For the record I don't say this as someone grumpy over the actual result in this vote: On the contrary the winning option was my first choice. Also, I *do* understand that for this specific vote there was a sense of urgency (especially for those introducing the vote). My point here is not that the concrete vote by all means should have not been rushed, but that I do believe that taking the current vote as a concrete example the time to prepare the ballot had a real effect on the outcome. > I don't think that one can automatically assume that more discussion > is better. I agree. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private signature.asc Description: signature
Re: Thanks and Decision making working group (was Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result)
Adrian Bunk writes: > On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 01:04:21PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: >>... >> * The length of the discussion period is ill-defined in multiple ways, >> which has repeatedly caused conflicts. It only resets on accepted >> amendments but not new ballot options, which makes little logical sense >> and constantly confuses people. There's no maximum discussion period >> defined, which means fixes for that risk introducing a filibuster. >> >> * Calling for votes is defined as a separate action from the end of the >> discussion period, but in practice the constitution allows any developer >> to call for a GR vote via an abuse of process that probably wasn't >> intended, and even apart from that, the set of people who can call for a >> vote is strange and not very defensible. >>... > > The process to shorten the discussion period is also suboptimal. > > In the latest GR the way the discussion period was shortened was > perceived by many as an anti-democratic attempt to suppress discussions > about the contents and alternative ballot options. > > And there was plenty left to discuss (including wording of ballot > options and secrecy of the vote) when the minimum discussion period > ended and the vote was called. > > I would suggest to replace the option of shortening the discussion > period with the possibility of early calling for a vote after a week > that can be vetoed by any developer within 24 hours. This would ensure > that shorter discussion periods would only happen when there is > consensus that nothing is left to be discussed. Would you expect a different result if that had been done in this case? There were certainly people objecting to things, but it seems to me that their views were correctly reflected in the vote results, in which case I'm wondering what would have been added by discussing it further. It's possible that there were people who were on holiday or some such, and thus missed the whole thing, but on the other hand it's also pretty clear that some people were at the end of their endurance ... perhaps they would have been driven to ignore the continuing discussion if it had gone on longer, and thus been disenfranchised. I don't think that one can automatically assume that more discussion is better. 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
Quoting Felix Lechner (2021-04-20 00:55:19) > On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 2:40 PM Pierre-Elliott Bécue > wrote: > > > > I don't understand how you semantically see 7 and 8 as comparable. > > Aside from Bdale's reason for ranking unwanted options below FD—which > were motivated by the voting system—I do: GRs do not decide a matter > with prejudice, even though the weight to bring them again may be > substantial. Therefore, doing nothing is very similar to doing nothing > but talking more. > > As we all heal from this divisive issue, I furthermore find it > meaningful that proponents of a shortened discussion, who were at > times accused of pushing the resolution, were actually aligned with > voters: By a narrow margin, people did not want to discuss the matter > at all. I am one of those feeling the process happened too fast, and at the same time I voted 7 as my first choice. I disagree with your conclusion. Seems it is directly tied to your interpretation that 7 somewhat equals 8, which I also don't share: I can only read 7 as "We shall not formally act as organisation on this topic, only defer action to individuals", and 8 as "We shall do something else than presented on this ballot". I. e. to me 7 and 8 are quite different: Only 7 is a closure, and only 8 is an indication of "we ned more time". Or rephrased: Wanting more time to prepare ballot options is to me quite different from rejecting all closure options presented on the ballot by voting for the non-closure option. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private signature.asc Description: signature
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
Felix Lechner writes: > Hi, > > On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 2:40 PM Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote: >> >> I don't understand how you semantically see 7 and 8 as comparable. > > Aside from Bdale's reason for ranking unwanted options below FD—which > were motivated by the voting system—I do: GRs do not decide a matter > with prejudice, even though the weight to bring them again may be > substantial. Therefore, doing nothing is very similar to doing nothing > but talking more. While I see what you're saying, I think it is missing a very important point, which is that the bulk of the voters apparently disagree. FD came quite close to the bottom of the ranking, whereas not issuing a statement came top -- if the voters as a group have distinguished between these two options so significantly it seems quite odd to pretend that they are equivalent. The two things also send quite different messages in the result. If the FSF have paid attention to this vote (which I'd hope they did) they'll have seen that deciding not to issue a statement won by a single vote. All other options that achieved majority were critical of the FSF. I think they would have (rightly) interpreted FD winning as a completely different result. > As we all heal from this divisive issue, I furthermore find it > meaningful that proponents of a shortened discussion, who were at > times accused of pushing the resolution, were actually aligned with > voters: By a narrow margin, people did not want to discuss the matter > at all. or (given how low down the order FD came) by a wide margin they didn't want to talk about it any more -- either way, I agree with you on that. 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
Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
Le lundi 19 avril 2021 à 15:55:19-0700, Felix Lechner a écrit : > Hi, > > On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 2:40 PM Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote: > > > > I don't understand how you semantically see 7 and 8 as comparable. > > Aside from Bdale's reason for ranking unwanted options below FD—which > were motivated by the voting system—I do: GRs do not decide a matter > with prejudice, even though the weight to bring them again may be > substantial. Therefore, doing nothing is very similar to doing nothing > but talking more. Stating "I shall not make a statement" isn't, to me, doing nothing. It's far the opposite actually, it's expressing the idea that the matter is outside our scope. While FD here just means maybe in some future we'll express some opinion on it, but first we have to discuss it more. As for the meaning of the vote itself, I will not risk any coin on it. -- Pierre-Elliott Bécue GPG: 9AE0 4D98 6400 E3B6 7528 F493 0D44 2664 1949 74E2 It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
