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

[Daniel Vainsencher]

Hi Lex :-)

On who votes:

Like I said the last time you posted this list, the barrier against 
these people under SqP is practically non-existent. Just make them 
users, certify them, and send them their password. With about 20 minutes 
of your time, the problem is solved. Let me know, I'll certify people I 
know from that list.

Not everyone you know is on SqP, but its very easy to fix - probably 
easier than if Alan Kay forgets to apply on a wiki page. So "people 
x,y,z are not on SqP" doesn't look to me like a valid reason to reject SqP.

I don't think we need to get everyone rating like mad, seems the 
algorithm is pretty sensitive, and we can tweak that later on. Anyway, I 
predict over 200 new ratings within 24 hours of the moment we state that 
this is the criterion for voting.

So my gut feeling is that SqP will take far less effort to implement 
than what you propose. So, I know we're not alone on this list... anyone 
else have an opinion either way or some other way?

On who proposes referenda, a seconding mechanism would be a fine 
alternative. So one person proposes, one seconds? Proposer gets to set 
the date?

And a critical matter - do we need a lower bound on voter turnabout for 
a proposal to pass? if not, we probably want a lower bound on voting time.

Daniel

Lex Spoon wrote:
> It's barely possible that the Squeak People designations look strange to
> me simply because all of the people I am thinking of really have left
> Squeak.  But let me take one more stab at showing you how strange it
> looks to me.  Here are the people I posted before, this time with
> annotations.  None of them will be allowed to vote if we "just use
> SqueakPeople".  Don't you guys agree that leaving these people out is
> rather bizare?
> 
> 
> 	Mark Guzdial, who wrote PWS and PWS/Swiki, who taught a
> 	Squeak-based university class to thousands of people over
> 	the years, who sponsored several Squeak-based Ph.D. projects,
> 	who authored a text book based on Squeak, and who co-edited
> 	the nu blue book.
> 	
> 	
> 	Bolot Karimbaev, author of Comanche.
> 	
> 	
> 	Alan Kay.
> 	
> 	
> 	KK Lamberty, a Ph.D. student who did the DigiQuilt project in Squeak.
> 	
> 	
> 	John Maloney, who among many other things brought Morphic to
> 	Squeak, gave Squeak a sound infrastructure, and is now working
> 	on the Scratch project.
> 	
> 	
> 	Jeff Pearce, who brought "Alice" to Squeak.
> 	
> 	
> 	Jeff Rick, who put many hours into building and refining
> 	ComSwiki, and who has put in years of scholarly work on
> 	wikis.
> 	
> 	
> 	Kim Rose, who has been with Squeak Central since the beginning,
> 	is a major player at ViewPoints, who co-edited the nublue book with
> 	Mark Guzdial.
> 	
> 	
> 	Jim Rowan, a Ph.D. student who did multiple projects in Squeak.
> 	
> 	
> 	Nathanael Shaerli, who gave Squeak the Genie gesture-recognition
> 	system and who worked out the traits system of restricted multiple
> 	inheritance.
> 
> 
> Instead of rejecting all of these guys, here is a proposal based on the
> previously posted list of Squeak-based criteria.
> 
> For the first round of membership, let people apply on a Wiki page and
> post their reason for being considered a member.  Objections and
> requests for more information can be posted in Wiki style.  After a
> month or so, I expect that a consensus will emerge on practically all
> applicants (and, in fact, likely 100% of them will be included), and
> that will be the initial membership.
> 
> This seems easier, on the whole, than trying to invigorate the entire
> community to actually take part on Squeak People.
> 
> 
> For later rounds of membership, I propose the same kind of thing, except
> that instead of having public review, we have one person in the group
> review them carefully and then post their findings publically somewhere.
>  If no one objects after a certain period of time (one month?), then a
> person can then be included in the Squeak club with full privilages.
> 
> Again, this seems easier on the whole than trying to get people to
> maintain their Squeak People ratings.
> 
> For referenda, limiting who can propose them means that power gets
> rather centralized.  Allowing resolutions to be proposed by anyone is a
> helpful check against the leadership getting carried away against the
> wishes of the group.  Instead of defining an inner circle and using that
> to limit referenda proposals, how about requiring proposed referenda to
> be seconded?  There are easy ways to avoid trivial referenda if that
> becomes a problem, but once power is centralized it is really hard to
> move in the opposite direction.
> 
> Daniel's non-functional requirements look excellent to me.  We can use
> public text files to get going, even though it unfortunately means that
> votes are all public.  For later rounds, PGP looks good.  The PGP spec
> is public, and we happen to have all the required encryption algorithms.
> 
> Hmm, by the way.  4 out of 5 of the listed authors of our cryptography
> module are not included on Squeak People.  Thus, it isn't only *my*
> collaborators who would be left out by "just use Squeak People".
> 
> 
> -Lex
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