[sakai2-tcc] TCC and votes

[Steve Swinsburg]

Hi Seth,

This all sounds good. I agree that the 'vote' word is thrown about a bit, even people responding with  +1 when really they are just agreeing to something, not a vote per se. So we should tighten the reigns on this practice.

That said, often we do need formal votes just to make it clear for the archives. I think the 72 hour window is perfectly suitable.

cheers,
Steve

On 25/08/2010, at 1:49 AM, Seth Theriault wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> A few people have contacted me regarding the TCC and votes. These 
> comments and some cloudy weather at the beach this weekend 
> spurred me to think a little more deeply about how "votes" fit 
> into what we are doing.
> 
> In the debate over voting v. working, I prefer working. It would 
> be shameful if this group just turned into a technical "board of 
> elections" or if people believed that every proposal or thought 
> or idea they had required a vote. I think there is a big 
> difference between keeping people engaged and informed about 
> technical issues and "approving" things.
> 
> That said, I think we do need formal votes for some things like 
> releases or schedules so that decisions are actually made on 
> big-ticket items. These decisions help us to communicate with the 
> rest of the community so it can be more effective.
> 
> So how do we balance this?
> 
> First, our decision-making procedures probably need to evolve a 
> bit. Under cloudy skies, I took another look at the Apache voting 
> process:
> 
> http://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.html
> 
> and compared it to what we have written down in Confluence.
> 
> I think we have accidentally combined "formal", -1/0/+1 votes 
> with lazy consensus (as defined by Apache). This is the same 
> fatal flaw that exists in Sakai-Dev voting because calling for a 
> vote on Sakai-Dev is the same as calling for lazy consensus since 
> there were no binding votes. But now we have binding votes in the 
> TCC and perhaps we want to exercise them judiciously.
> 
> To do this, we might want to make a small semantic change in how 
> we operate: Being careful about using the word "vote" in our 
> discussions. For the most part, we just want lazy consensus, not 
> a formal vote, but we need to be clear about it. A good example 
> of this clarity is Chuck Severance's recent dev list message 
> about a Pluto library upgrade. The result was some nice 
> discussion back and forth, and then some work got done.
> 
> If we do want a vote on something (perhaps a lazy consensus 
> proposal got a lot of questions or there is real disagreement 
> about what to do) we need to be prepared to go through the more 
> rigid process, most notably the 72-hour voting window. We also 
> want to be very clear and precise about what the vote is about.
> 
> Second, if you think something needs a vote, feel free to call 
> for it and manage it yourself, subject to the requirements. The 
> Chair and Vice-Chair have NO monopoly on deciding what proposals 
> float to the top for votes or approval. They are available to 
> help you administer a vote or even act as a sounding-board if you 
> are not sure what to do (although I think the group is probably 
> the best sounding board). 
> 
> Seth
> 
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