On 15/03/13 at 10:24 +0000, MJ Ray wrote: > Lucas asked > > Dear questioners, > > > > How much time do you think DPL candidates should spend answering those > > questions? :) > > Probably about half of the time it currently takes ;-) > > > More seriously, [...] Maybe we should try to have some of those > > discussions on a more regular basis, outside DPL elections? > > I think that would be healthy and probably make the DPL elections > easier for people. > > Personally, I posted > http://www.news.software.coop/in-praise-of-consensus/1445/ where > (among other points) I suggest that the debian project misses a good > test for consensus (GRs seem an expensive and heavy one and there's > significant pressure against using them) or a common understanding of > how strong a consensus we want (like: is it more or less than the > established majority sizes?). > > That makes many discussions a lot longer than they really need to be, > where it seems either there are a few people basically in agreement > bikeshedding, or there's an irreconcilable minority who ought to stand > aside and let the remainder develop a compromise. > > So as the discussions are long, there's a reluctance to start them, > which has a number of side-effects, including these Big Questions to > DPL Candidates which maybe aren't really much about the DPL vote. > > I'd welcome a DPL who led work on this aspect of the project > management. I suspect that until there are a couple of minor tweaks > to the project, it's difficult to reach sufficient consensus if the > DPL's against it.
Yeah, I'm interested in that too. For example, we could use polls during long discussions to understand how [silent] people feel. I even did that during the Debian rolling discussion (see http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=659) -- the target there was however wider than just Debian contributors. However, this must be done with great care: - rough consensus is very important to avoid splitting the community. Deciding something because half of the voters+1 agree would be very wrong. - the focus on achieving consensus usually makes us design better solutions. Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
