Re: FYI, Secret Ballots Proposal is Likely to Die for Lack of Support

2022-02-16 Thread Richard Laager
Your secret ballots proposal had some other procedural housekeeping bits 
in it, like dealing with overrides for the secretary. How do you feel 
about the consensus on that?


--
Richard



Re: FYI, Secret Ballots Proposal is Likely to Die for Lack of Support

2022-02-16 Thread Sam Hartman
> "Richard" == Richard Laager  writes:

Richard> Your secret ballots proposal had some other procedural
Richard> housekeeping bits in it, like dealing with overrides for
Richard> the secretary. How do you feel about the consensus on that?

I think we're fairly close to a proposal there that the people who care
about are happy with.
I'd want Kurt to chime in.

Personally, I don't know if those are important enough to vote on unless
they are attached to something else.
If people want me to propose that I'm okay doing so.

--Sam



Re: FYI, Secret Ballots Proposal is Likely to Die for Lack of Support

2022-02-17 Thread Gerardo Ballabio
Sam Hartman wrote:
> Personally, I don't know if those are important enough to vote on unless
they are attached to something else.

I understand your point, but I'd still prefer that uncorrelated issues
be discussed and voted separately.

And since the Debian Constitution is such an important document, I'd
warn against "fast-tracking" changes into it even if they seem
"minor". I remember that some years ago what everybody thought was
just an "editorial change" ended up actually having rather strong
consequences.

Please let's give proper thought to every change without running the
risk that the "more important" hides the "less important", or that
some people might vote a change that they wouldn't have voted on its
own, just because it's attached to another one that they care more
about.

If the secretary override thing is not that important, let's just not vote it?

Gerardo

P.S. I'm not a DD so I can't second the GR, but for what it counts, I
support secret votes.



Re: FYI, Secret Ballots Proposal is Likely to Die for Lack of Support

2022-02-18 Thread Jeroen Ploemen
On Wed, 16 Feb 2022 15:34:09 -0700
Sam Hartman  wrote:

> I'd want to see several additional people express support on
> debian-vote before I'd feel comfortable proposing a GR.

Sam, I was unaware of the discussion taking place but very much
support your efforts towards secret ballots.

Every voter should feel free to express their opinion without fear of
reprisals. In the real world that often requires secret ballots, as
demonstrated by the election process in numerous democratic countries.
Debian is no exception: for the RMS GR I ended up spending more time
considering whether or not to actually cast my vote than it took me
to make up my mind about the options on the ballot.


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Re: FYI, Secret Ballots Proposal is Likely to Die for Lack of Support

2022-02-18 Thread Charles Plessy
On Wed, Feb 16, 2022 at 03:34:09PM -0700, Sam Hartman wrote:
> 
> My take is there's not currently enough support on debian-vote to bring
> it to a vote.

> I'd want to see several additional people express support on debian-vote
> before I'd feel comfortable proposing a GR.

Hi Sam,

thank you very much for your time spent on this issue.

I really would like all votes to be anonymous in principle.  Last year I
blogged about the possibility to crunch our vote data and cluster DDs by
affinity.  While I did not manage to do it myself, I am uncomfortable
with the idea that we provide machine-readable data that makes this kind
of approach likely to succeed one day.

http://charles.plessy.org/Debian/debi%C3%A2neries/DebianAnalytica/

Maybe the GR does not need to go deeply on the technical details and can
simply state the principles, define who choses the implementation, and
to what extend the final process can deviate from perfection.

I do not mind making a couple of concessions with practical challenges,
and if a few people have need to transiently access deanonymised data to
prove that there was no fraud, no problem.  I think that after enough
time for the results to be accepted, the deanonymised data should be
just deleted.

I think that we can also remove the tally sheets from the past votes
from our public servers.  Sure, they will stay forever in the Internet
Archive, but the point is that the amount, kind and scope of the data
that we publish ourselves should match our view about pricacy.  Not sure
if we really have a consensus but I think that we should refrain from
publishing personal data that does not serve a significant purpose.

Have a nice week-end,

-- 
Charles