24 Jan
2013
24 Jan
'13
10:48 a.m.
Hi Sergiu,
On Jan 23, 2013, at 7:53 PM, Sergiu Dumitriu <sergiu(a)xwiki.org> wrote:
Short story:
A Veto carries a lot of power [1], and it brings imbalance to a
supposedly democratic process.
it's not supposed to be democratic btw, but meritocratic ;)
For normal votes, especially those that
ask for opinions, not for validation of a critical decision, a -1 should
count as a normal vote. In this case, an actual Veto should be marked as
such. Proposals:
Before going further down, you've not explained what is wrong and where you've
seen issues. There's no point in changing something that works so you should start by
stating the problem.
A. Keep -1 as a Veto, but require the voter to really
justify the veto
with technical reasons. If the vetoer fails to convince other of his
reasons, and the majority still agrees with the proposal, then the veto
can be discarded, and the vote passes.
I don't like this. One reason I think our current Veto rule is good is because it
allows people outside XWiki SAS for ex to have power to stop things. Imagine that the
XWiki SAS company wants to push for some marketing stuff that is not in the best interest
of the project, since it has a majority of committers who are XWiki SAS employees it means
it can get its stuff in all the time.
B. Separate -1 from Veto. A -1, by default, counts
just as a vote
against the proposal, and the majority will rule. An actual Veto must be
marked as such, but the vetoer must bring very good reasons for the veto.
Using -1 is already saying that you're vetoing the change. If you don't like the
change but still want to let it go you vote +0 or -0. I don't feel we need to change
that
C. Just keep things as they are now, since you think
that the current
process has worked well so far, and nobody abused the right to veto.
Yes I don't remember an instance of abuse and I think it's working quite well. The
only place where we didn't succeed in progressing is the new logo but I doubt that any
other rules would have resulted in a good solution either ;)
Long story:
The right to Veto a VOTE means that just one participant can block a
whole vote, even though the vast majority thinks otherwise. This is a
very powerful right, and I for one tried to avoid using it as much as
possible: in general I use -0 for solutions that I don't particularly
like, but for which I don't have an actual better solution, or an
universally acceptable reason that can convince everybody else of my
decision.
Yes that's the spirit :)
It makes sense to have the Veto power, as a way to
spotlight serious
problems with a proposal. The expected outcome in this situation is for
the vote sender to understand and accept the outcome, and go back to
redesigning the proposed solution, fixing the problems exposed.
But when votes are just about opinions, and about choosing the version
that most people like, it is hard to say that one opinion is more
important than others and it can rightly prevent reaching a conclusion.
This is particularly true about UI design and UX, but also about voting
on processes and rules.
I think this email shouldn't be sent as a VOTE because it's actually asking for
opinions. It would better as a Discussion or Brainstorming. And once we look at all
solutions and have finished the discussion then we could send a VOTE to propose 1 solution
only and not N. You won't be able to close this VOTE because people can say they
don't agree with one proposal (-1 for ex) and agree with others. This is why this
email shouldn't be a VOTE.
In general VOTEs that propose N solutions should be avoided and instead sent as proposal,
discussion or brainstorming.
Note: I made a mistake in replying to your previous VOTE email saying that this email was
legit as a VOTE email. I hadn't read it at that point.
> One possible outcome is that votes (and the proposals being voted) get
> deadlocked, blocking progress. The rules say that the proponent should
> review and change the proposal and restart the vote. Sometimes the
> effort put into the original proposal is considered big enough, and if
> the vetoer failed to convince the proponent of the problems, there won't
> be any more work put into the proposal, and it will just die. I'm not
> saying that this happens too often, but it does from time to time, at
> least for me.
>
>
> So, I think that the Veto power should be used sparingly. I see two options:
>
> A. Keep -1 as a Veto, but require the voter to really justify the veto
> with technical reasons. Currently, the rules say that the vote sender
> must try to convince the vetoer about the rationale of the voted
> proposal. It should also be the other way around: if the majority agrees
> with the proposal, the vetoer should try to convince the others why the
> proposal is bad. If the vetoer fails to do that, and the majority still
> agrees with the proposal, then the veto can be discarded.
>
> B. Separate -1 from Veto. A -1, by default, counts just as a vote
> against, and the majority will rule. -1 keeps its power as a strong
> opinion against the proposal, and it should be justified and the voter
> should try to convince others why the proposal is bad. A -1 can still
> influence other voters and can change the outcome when the concerns
> raised in the motivation for the -1 are accepted as valid. We can put
> more weight into the -1, so for example a vote passes if (2*-1s) + (+1s)
>> 0, or (-1s) + (+1s) > 3, or another balanced variation. An actual Veto
> must be marked as such, but the vetoer must bring very good reasons for it.
>
> I'm +1 for either proposal, leaning towards 2, since it's clearer when a
> vote can be passed or not. To offer the other alternative:
>
C. Just keep things as they are now, since you think
that the current
process has worked well so far, and nobody abused the right to veto.
+1 for C unless someone shows me several examples of things that are going wrong because
of the veto rule and that we cannot satisfactorily resolve.
If the outcome is that from 100 VOTes there's 1 that couldn't be satisfactorily
resolved then I don't think it's a good reason enough to justify a change. IMO
reminding people how to VOTE and explaining the power of VETO and how a VETO should be
explained would be enough in this case.
Thanks
-Vincent
[1]
http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/Community/Committership#HVoting
--
Sergiu Dumitriu
http://purl.org/net/sergiu