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

[Lex Spoon]

> , then within a few weeks -- a 
> > month tops --
> > there would be a list of members that could be frozen as the initial
> > set.  This would be a list that everyone should feel good 
> > about, because
> > the rules of joining are objective and because the membership
> > applications are all handled publicly.
> 
> (Having handled online elections on a MUD for many years) How does one
> deal with the community of punks who decide to object to everything?

If we have an objective list, then such objectors--should they turn
up--just make idiots of themselves.  I'm not talking about policy
proposals.  I'm talking, did this guy or didn't this guy post 1000 lines
of code?  The objective list of criteria is key for this approach.

A nice side benefit is that the list becomes subject for discussion over
time.  For example, I've seen multiple discussions on Debian lists about
people who intuitively seemed like Debian Developers--and that, without
consideration, many people would have automatically opted in--but who,
after discussion, everyone agreed did not meet the objective criteria
for membership.  If there's no list of criteria, then these discussions
aren't as effective.  You and I might agree on one list, while another
person has different criteria....


On the flip side, there is a word for leaders promote into power whoever
they feel like.  It's practically the definition of corruption.  It
happens, but I don't see why people are eager to make it the primary
process.


> Who gets to review them and decide that they should be excluded from the
> list of folks who may object?  We ended up moving *away* from an
> object-list approach for voting to pure positive voting

No one.  I made a typo -- I meant "objective list".  My experience with
Debian is that if the list is reasonably objective, then--after
discussion--there is literally unanimous consent on whether new people
meet the list or not.  That's an organization with about 1000 members.



> > Second, have people really thought about what it would be like to live
> > under such a system?  Membership would be granted and denied 
> > based on a
> > dozen or more off-the-cuff reviews instead of 1-3 careful 
> > ones.  That's
> > a recipe for superficial decisions -- it will promote populists over
> > quiet doers.
> 
> Not necessarily.  The algorithm used here merely determines whether the
> reputation flows to an individual, not how strongly.  Also, don't forget
> the laws of large numbers.  With a large community of reviewers rather
> than a small community, the peers and admirers of such quiet doers would
> typically ensure that they were included.

Well, see above.  I am talking about the quality of designations more
than whether some people get left completely in the cold.  Very
productive quiet guys could doubtless get some kind of rank in a
reputation system with casual reviews.  However, almost certainly louder
people will get promoted faster and higher.  The opposite is the case
when membership has objective "doing" criteria.



> However, it's a lot of work for the committee, and it requires an
> impartial committee.  To turn round the 'who are the roots' question:
> Who would you choose to form that committee, Lex?

It doesn't matter.  The current election team would be fine.  Or the board could
even designate the team.  If there is any controversy over the decisions they
make, then the system has failed. Experience with Debian suggests that these
decisions are not controversial.

What is controversial is what goes on the objective list.  But that's unavoidable.
At some point you have to decide who is in and who is out.  I'd like that
decision to be based on things like "the person uses Squeak" instead of things
like "the person is approved by existing members".


> > Is there any experience we can rely on for using reputation systems to
> > define membership?  Maybe some of the worries from the previous
> > paragraph do not emerge in practice?
> 
> I don't have enough experience myself to answer that.

No one else has jumped in, either.  The objective-list plus reviews
approach is tried and true and frankly very boring.  But isn't boring a
good quality for bylaws?


-Lex