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  • From: Eric Sandall <eric AT sandall.us>
  • To: SM Discuss <sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] voting process
  • Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 12:08:39 -0800 (PST)

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On Sat, 11 Feb 2006, Sergey A. Lipnevich wrote:
Mathieu L. wrote:
Sergey, we do not contest your statement that open voting is widely
used, oftenly works and is usually the most efficient solution. However,
the point is some ppl would like some anonymity to participate, that's
the bottom line.


It's seems to be only a matter of time for these people to also ask for
anonymous commits ;-). Is any FOSS project you know doing closed voting
on leadership? I am trying to remember, but there are actually very few
projects that elect their front people. I only know Debian, and they
disclose votes on completion. That's why I questioned the reasoning of
these people.

It doesn't matter if you (or any of us) think their reasoning is
sound, but that /they/ believe it. The whole point of anonymous voting
is so you can cast your vote without fear of reprisal or
discrimination based on who you voted for. As you may have noticed,
most of us don't mind open voting, but as this is a community of
volunteers we must work with the 'lowest' common denominator: some
people wish to vote anonymously. Therefore, we vote anonymously. Some
people have brought up the issue of verifying votes, so now we are
trying to address that, and I think Jeremy has come up with a very
good way to do so:
1. Send GPG signed vote to cote counter (usually the PL)
2. Vote counter sends bag a random hash to the voter
3. Vote results are sent to the list showing which hash voted for whom
4. If you voter sees that their hash doesn't match with their vote,
they send in a complaint and the vote counter verifies they wrote
out the results correctly. If not, he/she corrects it.
5. If a voter still feels their vote is misconstrued we, the
community, can go through the GPG signed votes and make sure they were
not tampered with and that their votes were assigned appropriately.

Keep in mind that #4 and #5 will (hopefully) be corner cases and are
there to make sure our votes stay honest and accurate while keeping
the anonymity that has been requested and in use for a while now.

We're trying to keep a system that lets everyone vote without any fear
of coercion (in any form), which open voting does not allow. It's
great that other distros and communities use open voting, but they're
not us and we don't have to do what 'everyone else' is doing. We've
had concerns in the past about open voting, which have been cataloged
in the archives and reiterated in this thread. The only concern with
anonymous voting, AFAIK, is verifiability, which is what this thread
is supposed to be answering, not whether or not to have open or
anonymous voting.

Hence, we have to come up with a solution that implies anonymity because
we respect these ppl and think it's their legitimate right to have that,
so why don't you try helping us to come up with this kind of solution?


Mathieu, it's not "us vs Sergey," I'm voting too, don't forget that. I
asked why anonymity is requested. Avoiding intimidation was given as one
reason, and being unsure of what to vote for is another (miss any?). For
the first, the vote is closed until it's over. For the second, let
people choose what to [not] do. If people don't vote, they're probably
not looking to change anything.

Your argument here is invalid for the first (intimidation). If a
person would place their vote a certain way if it were open as opposed
to anonymous, if we change that to be anonymous only until the votes
are done, it then becomes open, and they'd then vote as if it were an
open vote since their name is now associated with a vote, which they
didn't want in the first place.

For the second, that's why we have 'abstain'. I want that clause in
there (miss two votes and your out) because almost half of our
developers don't seem to even bother with a vote and continue on their
merry way keeping the packages they like up-to-date. Some don't even
participate in discussions in IRC or the ML. I'm trying to get it into
people's heads that with power (maintaining SMGL) comes responsibility
(participating in discussions, electing leaders, etc.) and not just a
'free' ride to keep the packages they use up-to-date.

As for the fact that we oblige devs to vote, I would tend to agree that
ideally it's not a very healthy concept but the way it's done here is not
that strict since a dev can miss a vote with no problem. And in our case
I think it's a rather good idea because we cannot afford devs to stay
passive in smgl as we are so few, weed participation.

We can start a separate thread on that, but I think we can very much
afford to not make people vote. What we can't afford is stop making SMGL
better. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, but I am very
doubtful that since the time we have instituted mandatory voting, things
improved.

Sergey.

Incorrect (AFAIK) because since we added the mandatory voting clause
we've had less votes (none, I believe) that haven't had enough votes
to be valid.

- -sandalle

- --
Eric Sandall | Source Mage GNU/Linux Developer
eric AT sandall.us | http://www.sourcemage.org/
http://eric.sandall.us/ | SysAdmin @ Inst. Shock Physics @ WSU
http://counter.li.org/ #196285 | http://www.shock.wsu.edu/
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