Re: Renaming the FTP Masters

[Joerg Jaspert]

On 16314 March 1977, Thomas Goirand wrote:

Wrong wrong wrong ... we're "project members" ... don't you remember? 
:)

Just like AH is now CT. (Gosh, DMT TLA...)



This shows that it will take years, if not decades, for the rename to
ever be effective (if the person(s) in charge decide(s) it...).


Well.
To rename just the team itself - minutes.
To be effective in terms of us mere humans using the new term, years to 
decades.
To actually adjust all the resources around it ("sub"team names, unix 
roles, host (aliases), mail, directory structures, database roles, BTS 
pseudopackage, dput targets, all the code) may be faster, but a huge 
work with lots of breakage possibilities, not all of which solveable as 
simple as "then have the old name stay for a while as cname".


And that is just from our view of things and we aren't yet sure we are 
complete on that. There are a trillion and two external dependencies on 
many of the above that take extra work and ages on top of that.


--
bye, Joerg

Re: Draft GR for resolution process changes

[Sam Hartman]

> "Timo" == Timo Röhling  writes:
Timo> I must say I find your reasoning convincing. A certain
Timo> stability of ballot options is desirable, and as our voting
Timo> scheme does not suffer from spoiler effects, we can afford to
Timo> keep the odd stale option. Besides, as you pointed out, the
Timo> original proposer can always formally withdraw and ask their
Timo> sponsors to do the same; if there is hidden support, it will
Timo> either materialize or the option will be discarded; no
Timo> additional procedural rules required.

I too find the reasoning convincing.


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Re: Draft GR for resolution process changes

[Russ Allbery]

Russ Allbery  writes:

> This paragraph helped me realize that you see my proposal as a
> substantive change over the current rules for the original GR proposer.
> I hadn't entirely realized that it was, and I see that I missed some
> subtlety in current rules, so I went back and reviewed them.  I believe
> the implications of the current constitution (which I think was also in
> effect in 2008) are:

> 1. The original proposer of the GR can only change the text themselves if
>all the sponsors agree (A.1.5)

Oh, wait, no, it's even more complicated than that, because I think A.1.5
only applies to the *amendments* and not to the original text.  So I think
you need K+1 people to make any change to the original GR text (other than
A.1.6 minor changes), but the proposer can make changes to the
*amendments* provided that all sponsors agree.

Each time I think I understand the current constitutional rules, I realize
that I missed something.

(I think the rest of the analysis still holds, although my change is more
complicated than making point 1 apply to all ballot options.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)  

Re: Draft GR for resolution process changes

[Russ Allbery]

Charles Plessy  writes:

> here are comments from my point of view in the hope of being useful,
> please do not take them as objections; I know that you have looked at
> the problem through many more angles than I did.  By the way, sorry in
> advance if what I write today has been already addressed by others
> earlier.

Oh, no, this is very helpful, and don't worry, you're not repeating
anything other folks have said.

> Le Thu, Nov 11, 2021 at 08:26:00AM -0800, Russ Allbery a écrit :
>> Once a proposal has been sponsored and added to the ballot, we, as a
>> general social convention, stop sponsoring it unless it feels
>> particularly important to be listed as a sponsor.

> This practice of sponsoring over the necessary number has always made me
> uncomfortable.  The more we give importance to the question of who
> sponsored, the more we put social pressure on the voters.  This is
> another reason why I think that limiting strictly to 5 would be better.
> This said, anonymous voting (which I think is better to decide in a
> separate GR) would solve that problem entirely.

I think this matches my opinion as well.

We do have a reasonably strong social convention to not pile on
sponsorships, which has been sufficient in recent GRs to keep the number
of sponsors at 15 or less.  Which is still a lot more than 5, but which is
still quite small compared to the total number of people who vote.

>> In other words, I think once a ballot option makes it onto the ballot,
>> the rules are attempting to capture the sense that it no longer belongs
>> just to its proposer, but now represents some unknown number of people
>> who want to vote for it.

> My conclusion with the 2008 GR is that removing the original option made
> it a better GR.  The removal triggered the addition of new options, but
> none of them were identical to the original one.  Perhaps it would have
> happened also even if sponsors had a veto, but I believe that personal
> responsibility is going to be more efficient than collective
> intelligence there.

This paragraph helped me realize that you see my proposal as a substantive
change over the current rules for the original GR proposer.  I hadn't
entirely realized that it was, and I see that I missed some subtlety in
current rules, so I went back and reviewed them.  I believe the
implications of the current constitution (which I think was also in effect
in 2008) are:

1. The original proposer of the GR can only change the text themselves if
   all the sponsors agree (A.1.5)

2. Someone else can propose a formal amendment to the text of the
   resolution by getting the normal number of sponsors, in which case the
   original proposer of the GR can accept it without needing the approval
   of any other sponsors and it replaces the original text (A.1.1 and
   A.1.2)

3. A formal amendment can be rejected by the original proposer of the GR,
   at which point it becomes a new ballot option.  At that point, only the
   original proposer of the GR can suggest changes to the unaccepted
   amendment, and all sponsors of the unaccepted amendment have to agree
   for the change to be made (A.1.5).  Otherwise, unaccepted amendments
   can't be changed at all, but can be withdrawn (A.4).

The part that I was focused on fixing was the last part, which treats
"unaccepted amendments" (the current term for ballot options) in a rather
weird way and gives the original GR proposer the sole power to modify them
even though, in practice, those amendments are often contrary to the
opinion of the original GR proposer.  My intent was to make the rules in
situation 1 apply to situation 3 and also get rid of this special and
somewhat odd grant of powers to the original proposer.

I think what you're pointing out is that 2 also changes in my proposal,
which I hadn't paid close attention to.  Currently, if a change to the
original GR (but not any of the unaccepted amendments) has the support of
K+1 people (the proposer of the amendment plus the sponsors), the original
proposer of the GR can choose to replace their text with the amended text
without having to get the approval of the existing sponsors.  Under my
proposal, this concept of a sponsored amendment doesn't exist; if someone
wants to change a ballot option rather than add a new one, they have to
convince the proposer of that ballot option and all of its sponsors.

I agree that this is a change; I'm eliminating the whole idea of an
accepted amendment and relying on only the first point.  But I think it's
a relatively minor change that leads to a lot of process simplification
but not much difference in the outcome.

Under my proposed system, if there is K+1 support for a new form of a
ballot option, the original proposer agrees, but one of the original
sponsors disagrees, the (slightly more complex in this edge case) process
is:

1. The new ballot option is proposed and sponsored as normal.  The
   original GR proposer can sponsor that new ballot option.  It is added
   to 

Re: Draft GR for resolution process changes

[Charles Plessy]

Thanks Russ for keeping me in the loop,

here are comments from my point of view in the hope of being useful,
please do not take them as objections; I know that you have looked at
the problem through many more angles than I did.  By the way, sorry
in advance if what I write today has been already addressed by others
earlier.

Le Thu, Nov 11, 2021 at 08:26:00AM -0800, Russ Allbery a écrit :
> 
> Once a proposal has been sponsored and added to the ballot, we, as a
> general social convention, stop sponsoring it unless it feels particularly
> important to be listed as a sponsor.

This practice of sponsoring over the necessary number has always made me
uncomfortable.  The more we give importance to the question of who
sponsored, the more we put social pressure on the voters.  This is
another reason why I think that limiting strictly to 5 would be better.
This said, anonymous voting (which I think is better to decide in a
separate GR) would solve that problem entirely.

> In other words, I think once a ballot option makes it onto the ballot, the
> rules are attempting to capture the sense that it no longer belongs just
> to its proposer, but now represents some unknown number of people who want
> to vote for it.

My conclusion with the 2008 GR is that removing the original option made
it a better GR.  The removal triggered the addition of new options, but
none of them were identical to the original one.  Perhaps it would have
happened also even if sponsors had a veto, but I believe that personal
responsibility is going to be more efficient than collective
intelligence there.

> Once people who have sponsored the original ballot option start
> objecting, I think we should take that as concrete evidence that the
> new option is sufficiently different that it may not represent the
> people who were supporting the old option, and we should therefore
> default to adding the new option via the normal mechanism.

Fraknly speaking, I worry that some day somebody will sponsor as many
options as possible and object to changes for the sake of adding
toxicity to GR.  The more members we have, the less unlikely it becomes.

But even assuming good will, I think that a process that makes it easier
to remove or merge options would serve us better than a process that
makes it easier to fork options.  A lot of GR voters do not follow the
debates on debian-vote, and with too many options, possibly all written
in different styles, there is an increased risk of voting for the
contrary of what we want.

Have a nice day,

Charles

-- 
Charles Plessy Nagahama, Yomitan, Okinawa, Japan
Debian Med packaging team http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tooting from work,   https://mastodon.technology/@charles_plessy
Tooting from home, https://framapiaf.org/@charles_plessy