[Elections] Re: Who votes? how does voting work?

[Daniel Vainsencher]

Lex Spoon wrote:
[snip]
> First, I think we all agree now that we can't just use the current
> Squeak People rankings, correct?  As recently as Jan. 1, Daniel
> proposed that we do just that.  Hopefully that sub-proposal is now
> dead?
Oh, that never existed except as a miscommunication. I meant "current" 
to refer to the time of the vote, not to the time of the mail.

> That sub-proposal, however, was the simple option.  If we don't follow
> that, then the question opens of how to fix things up.  The most
> important question here is the choice of roots.  
[snip]
 >  Can we please agree on this in the abstract and not dig
> into individual cases?
Sure, I propose we start with the current (somewhat arbitrary) roots, 
and extend them only by vote, based on some abstract criteria.

  > Leaving aside that option, who should we pick as roots?  Answering
> that question seems just as hard as holding an election, bringing us
> back to the beginning.
Nah, I think that choosing roots is much more like choosing vote 
verifiers in your proposal - something that is not that important, 
because for any reasonable choice you will get reasonable results, and 
the current status is not that unreasonable. Except that roots don't 
have to work nearly as hard as reviewers... :-)

[snip some objections to reputation systems and SqP specifically]
> Overall, I like reputation systems and hope to see more experiments
> with them.  This is not the time for an experiment, though.
> Bylaws should be boring.
Well, we're not yet proposing to put any voting system into any bylaws. 
I think Ken is right in proposing we try this system for some upcoming 
decision (maybe, but not necessarily, the choice of SqF board), and 
rethink our opinions when experience has made us wiser. What do you think?

If we decide SqP is unworkable, we can always start choosing voters by 
Mantis later on.

Daniel