[sakai2-tcc] TCC and votes

[David Horwitz]

The voting has the benefit of making explicit the support or lack
thereof for a proposal - in many cases I have found this it the problem
with previous systems - if one proposed something it was nigh on
impossible to tell whether it was accepted or not.

D

On 08/25/2010 03:25 PM, Steve Swinsburg wrote:
> 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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