Ray Rashif wrote:
On 10 November 2010 17:15, Xyne <xyne@archlinux.ca> wrote:
I also want to address something else. I am disappointed that 5 TUs voted no without anyone voicing any concerns during the discussion period. To abstain from a vote indicates that you do not have an opinion one way or the other, but to vote no is to indicate that you have a reason to believe that the application should be rejected. The discussion period is for discussing exactly such things. It gives the applicant a chance to address any issues and it enables others to consider what they might not have considered before.
If you have a concern that no one else has expressed during a discussion period then it is your duty as a TU and an active participant in the discussion to bring it up. Please do so in the future.
I also want to say that I do not want anyone to bring up there reasons now. The time for that is past and there would be nothing to be gained from it, and it might lead to unnecessary tensions.
There is no problem with that. The bylaws do not dictate against silence. This is why:
It was brought to our attention at least on one prior occasion. The problem only arises when an application fails, and everyone keeps quiet. That is simply not very nice, though they have the technical right to do so.
A TU may or may not participate in the discussion depending on whether she has anything significant to add, and if she decides not and chooses to vote against the applicant, may do so without voicing an opinion. If this contributes to a failed application, then the ethical thing to do is to state her reasons for the negative vote. Hell, we wouldn't even know if one or more TUs just played around with the buttons!
I still see this as an issue. We're not voting on pizza toppings here. We're granting people access to the [community] repo which is trusted by most Arch users. The TUs are entrusted with maintaining that repo and its standards. If one person had voice a concern with an application and then 5 others silently agreed by voting no, then I see no problem with that. My issue with this is that not a single person said anything. I would hope that a TU would have at least a decent reason to vote no instead of abstain, and I would hope that TUs do more than just pick random buttons when voting. I think my difficulty is in understanding how someone can feel that something merits a rejection yet not a discussion, i.e. "this is clearly an issue for me that makes me think this person won't be a TU, but I see no reason to make the other TUs aware of it... I'll just leave it to luck". The only thing that I can think of is that the distinction between "abstain" and "no" isn't clear. In a way they make no difference as only yes votes and the total number of votes decide the outcome, but there is still a big difference on a personal level between the two, with all the aforementioned implications. Meh, this isn't that big of an issue and it's definitely not a by-law issue. As I wrote before, I'm simply disappointed by this behavior.