[aur-general] Amendment

[Xyne]

On 2010-12-05 12:20 -0500 (48:7)
Loui Chang wrote:

> On Sun 05 Dec 2010 11:53 -0500, Kaiting Chen wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 11:33 AM, Shacristo <shacristo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 11:16 AM, Kaiting Chen <kaitocracy at gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > One of the stated purposes of the quorum is to "ensure that TUs remain
> > > active in the job that they have taken on."  Allowing circumvention of
> > > the quorum requirements will obviously undermine that.
> > 
> > TU's have a lot of different responsibilities. Prolonging a decided vote by
> > six days to motivate or ensure that someone is active does not make sense to
> > me. --Kaiting.
> 
> I would propose shortening the voting period then. I kind of like how
> the system is set up (not perfectly though) to remove the inactive TUs
> semi-automatically.
>


I've copied my reply to another thread below for reference so you don't have to
search for it (I tend to reply to messages as I read them instead of scanning
everything first).

After thinking about this more, I propose the following:

The voting period should remain 7 days regardless of the current votes. It is
rude to others to exclude them from participation even if the outcome is
assured.

Once the voting period is over, the motion shall pass if either an absolute
majority were reached, or if a simple majority were reached with quorum.

This will allow all TUs to have their say if they so choose and it sidesteps
the issue of determining inactivity due to shortened voting periods while
preventing motions with absolute (i.e. insurmountable) majorities from
failing, which is what the real issue is here. Overall I think this is the
simplest solution.







Xyne wrote:

> Loui Chang wrote:
> 
> > On Sun 05 Dec 2010 08:19 -0500, Shacristo wrote:
> > > On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 3:07 AM, Kaiting Chen <kaitocracy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > This is sort of what I was talking about in my previous mail about
> > > > the refinement of the bylaws. Thirteen hours have passed since the
> > > > beginning of the voting period and at this point according to this
> > > > page:
> > > >
> > > > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Trusted_Users
> > > >
> > > > There are thirty Trusted Users. Seventeen yay's have been cast and a
> > > > simple majority has already been reached. We should amend the bylaws
> > > > such that the voting period may end because no amount of nay's can
> > > > change the outcome of the vote at this point. There is no reason for
> > > > falconindy to wait another seven days to receive his Trusted User
> > > > privileges. --Kaiting.
> > >
> > > 17/30 does not make a 66% quorum, so yes, the motion could still fail.
> > 
> > Kaiting is saying that even though quorum hasn't been met, that it's
> > impossible for the vote to fail on the basis of opposition.
> > 
> > If the rest of the TUs voted nay, then it would be 17 aye vs 13 nay
> > which would still be a majority for the motion.
> > 
> > How do they do it in real life if quorum isn't met, but support for the
> > motion is enough that it shouldn't really matter.
> > 
> 
> If quorum is required then the motion would still fail in that case.
> 
> Quorum really just prevents votes from passing with low participation, e.g. 5
> participate and 3 vote yes... that would be a simple majority but clearly not
> enough people to carry any real weight.
> 
> We could amend the bylaws to state that quorum is not required if an absolute
> majority has voted to pass the motion (an absolute majority being more than
> half of all active TUs). I think that makes sense because as it stands now,
> voting against the motion or simply abstaining is completely meaningless. If
> one were opposed to the motion, it would be more beneficial to simply not vote
> at all and to hope that others do the same so that quorum cannot be established.
> 
> That actually applies in general to our application voting system. If you're
> against the application, it would be more effective to simply not vote, which
> seems wrong to me. Voting against the application should have some meaningful
> effect and thus be different from abstaining. I wouldn't mind having some extra
> clause that stipulates e.g. (#yes - #no)/#total >= x. The reasoning is that
> even with a simple majority, if a large portion of the team is against an
> application then it may be disruptive to accept it.
> 
> I realize that the argument against this will be that it isn't KISS and I'm not
> really bothered about it either way. I'm just floating the idea.
> 
> 
> Btw, I actually think it would make sense to have a script that accepts the
> number of active TUs, and the number of votes to determine the outcome. It
> would be completely unambiguous and amusingly geeky. It could also be tracked
> with Git. ;)