Op 19-10-2011 14:00, Rob Weir schreef:
On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Ross Gardler
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not going to dig into all the details of how a vote is called in the ASF.
In posting this I am not asking for the current vote to be recalled,
there is no need.
I am just wanting to flag something that concerns me about how the
vote was called (and as per usual this is just advice from a mentor,
these are not rules that must be adopted).
In an ASF community everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone
should be encouraged to express that opinion in a formal vote, just as
much as they should be encouraged to express their opinions in day to
day discussion.
We're very concerned, as we should be, to ensure that everyone, even
non-PPMC members, can weigh in on all project discussions and
decisions, including policy and governance questions. As we should.
I applaud that commitment to openness.
However, the proposal that we're voting on has this clause regarding
the support forums:
"Forum governance will be discussed in a publicly readable forum.
Write access will be limited to those with at least 10 posts."
In other words, we're agreeing to a proposal where it is not true
that "In an ASF community everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone
should be encouraged to express that opinion in a formal vote, just as
much as they should be encouraged to express their opinions in day to
day discussion."
*You're forgetting that the forums aren't an almost closed mailing list like
ooo-dev. How many people are subscribed to ooo-dev?
As of 9/20 the number of registered users of the forums is 44830 and the number
of people with over 10 posts still exceeds 1000.
If we'd open the gates to anyone, you'd probably soon see bored kids pollute
the discussions with the kind of crap that they now post on Wikipedia.
If you don't like the forum, I suggest that you just ignore it.
**Peter aka floris v*
**
When I brought that up in the discussion thread I was shut down by a
mentor for introducing an "overly legalistic parsing" of the proposal.
I take that to mean I was thinking too much. I'll stop now, because
honestly the incongruity if our words and actions is shameful and
painful to observe.
-Rob
It is true that only some members of the community have binding votes.
However, this only becomes important in the event of an absence of
community consensus.
Therefore, when calling a vote please do not word it in such a way
that implies others in the community do not have a vote that counts.
It does count. A responsible PPMC member will use their own vote to
support any appropriate objections from the community. They can only
do that if the community is encouraged to express their views
alongside everyone else..
Specifically, there is no need to define binding votes in the vote
thread, the way Apache Projects vote is well documented and, over
time, the AOOo project will gain its own guidelines. Secondly, do not
list the people who are "important" enough to have a binding vote.
Thirdly, explicitly call for all community members to express their
preferences in the vote.
In other words, make every action of the PPMC as inclusive as possible.
Finally, Denis - thank you for calling the vote.
Ross
--
Ross Gardler (@rgardler)
Programme Leader (Open Development)
OpenDirective http://opendirective.com
