Hi all, I just caught up with all the traffic on this list (and there were a lot of them). Rather than trying to find all the relevant emails and reply to each of them individually, let me just combine all my comments in this mail.
First, let me clarify my position: I feel that our voting system works
best if all the relevant options are represented on the ballot. This
requires that all relevant options have a chance to be developed; if we
have a system that has a hard time limit, no matter where it is set,
then there is a chance that a relevant option would not appear on the
ballot, which I think should be avoided as it can call into question the
legitimacy of the ballot: if a controversial option favoured by a vocal
minority was not represented on the ballot, the GR is not likely to
resolve the issue, because you can be sure that minority will hammer on
the missing option in the discussion after the GR.
I realize that this is an edge case, but rules such as the one for our
voting system should consider all edge cases.
As such, I think that as long as a reasonable need exists for the
discussion period to be extended, it should be possible in theory for
this to be possible. Even if I agree that six weeks is exorbitantly
long, I am wary of adding a rule to my proposed system that caps the
discussion time anywhere.
That being said, I am not unsensitive to arguments of process abuse and
diminishing returns, and as such I do believe that extending the
discussion period should be made harder as time goes on. My current
proposed system already does that to some extent, but it is certainly
possible to improve in that area. I had a few other things that I had
thought of but that, in the interest of not overcomplicating the
process, I did not add to my original proposal; however, two of them
(variable extension times and objections to extensions) have now been
independently proposed by other people, so I think perhaps I should add
them after all.
Additionally, my original proposal had the time extension start from the
point where it was proposed, rather than from the end of the current
discussion period. The reason for this was to encourage that extensions
are only proposed and seconded when they would actually be needed,
rather than proactively by people who actually care only about avoiding
the vote at all, but I think we can also avoid that issue by mandating
that a time extension can only be proposed if there are less than 48
hours left in the discussion time currently.
Given all that, here's something that could work, and that I would see
as reasonable:
- The initial time of the discussion period is 1 week
- When less than 48 hours remain in the discussion time, time extensions
can be proposed under the same rules as ballot option proposals.
- As soon as a time extension reaches its required number of seconds, it
is active and cannot be withdrawn.
- The initial two time extensions increase the discussion time by one
week; further extensions increase the discussion time by 72 hours
- Once the discussion time has reached 4 weeks, further extension
proposals can be objected to by any developer. If the number of
opposing developers is higher than the number of valid seconders for the
extension proposal by the time the discussion period would run out if
the time extension had not been voted upon, then the time extension
does not happen.
- If a time extension happens, the proser and the first K seconders can
no longer propose or second any time extension.
- There is no limit to objections to time extensions.
This makes it trivially easy to extend to 3 weeks, not so easy but
doable to extend to 4, and probably highly unlikely to extend beyond
that, except if a majority of the project believes that it is better to
wait a few days than it is to go to a vote now, or to withdraw the vote
entirely (and that is the whole point of this process).
The third option I had in mind (linking a time extension to a particular
ballot option proposal) had a number of edge cases that meant I thought
it a pretty bad idea overall, so I'm not going to suggest that.
The downside of the above as compared to other proposals is that the
system becomes more complicated with each rule that gets added. I don't
think it is critically problematic yet with the above proposal, but am
open to arguments otherwise.
I note that both Russ and Sam have mentioned they may vote my proposal
above FD, which I find encouraging. In the interest of clarity, however,
I'll note that I do not intend to return the favour; I think having a
time limit that is reflective of the situation at hand is a much better
situation than having a set of rigid rules that cannot be changed, other
than by restarting the whole process from scratch, which is a much worse
situation -- I can imagine it being difficult to convince all proposers
of ballot options that they should withdraw their ballot option so that
the discussion time can be reset, in case someone just needs a few more
days of extra time. I think this is important enough that I would rather
keep the current system instead of moving to the proposal.
On another note,
I note that Russ's proposal does not change §5.1.5 (Project Leader -
Powers - "Propose draft General Resolutions and amendments."). Since we
now will start referring in appendix A to draft options as "proposals"
and those who propose them as "proposers", it may be best, in the
interest of confusion, to also change §5.1.5 to be more explicit about
the fact that proposals from the DPL do not require any seconds.
I welcome any thoughts and comments.
--
w@uter.{be,co.za}
wouter@{grep.be,fosdem.org,debian.org}
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