[aur-general] Welcome our newest TU, Kaiting Chen!

[Xyne]

Ray Rashif wrote:

> On 10 November 2010 17:15, Xyne <xyne at 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.