[aur-general] Special Removal of an Inactive TU: speps

[Thorsten Toepper]

On 18.01.2018 01:43, Balló György via aur-general wrote:
> On 18.01.2018 00.18, Thorsten Toepper via aur-general wrote:
>> Therefore the second requirement, to NOT do any special action on the
>> AUR requiring TU privileges is not fulfilled, as participating in
>> votes is exactly one of these TU privileges.
> 
> This is unclear in the bylaws. I assumed that AUR is the repository
> where the user-contributed packages are stored. Therefore the actions
> that require AUR privileges are: disown/merge/delete a package. These
> actions are tracked on the aur-requests mailing list only if a request
> was filed before the action, so we don't really know the last
> privileged action of a TU. I think it should be implemented within the
> AUR web interface.

Well, from my point of view being a TU is not solely about package
management or taking care of what users posted about the packages stored
in the AUR. It's also about what you did here with this action, keeping
the group of users who have a higher influence on what happens with Arch
Linux (be it what ends up in [community] or is dropped again, management
of users in the AUR system) in a good shape.

Please don't misunderstand my mail from last night it's no "WHAT YOU DID
WAS WRONG DON'T DO THAT EVER AGAIN!!!". I consider it great that you
initiated these proposals, I just feel uneasy about the point that
Florian pointing out for both that they still participate in the social
part of being a TU. We wouldn't have this discussion if there had been a
second person initiating this with you and the "normal" removal had been
applied. Your arguments are fine, they are objective and there is no
personal affection visible, so this should have sufficed.

As the special removal has been applied the votes need to be considered
in both blocks, the one before the big OR and the one afterwards. My
position is that in the first block the second point, has been fulfilled
due to participation in the social part of being a TU and this also
applied for the second block.

I can't remember how many years it's been since there was the last
discussion that lead to this rule and I won't invest time (the lack of
that made step down) searching the office, but what I [think to]
remember pretty well that the problem point back then was people having
the special privileges of being a TU didn't participate in votes which
lead to failures due to quorums that couldn't be reached without their
participation. And there were also discussions in case applications
overlapped how in case the first applicant becomes a TU will be counted
into the quorum of the second application. As vote participation was one
of the central points back then I consider the votes to be an important
factor if this "method" is chosen to be applied.

That's why I proposed at the end of last nights mail to consider a
overhaul of the wording of the definition to make the definition more
strict and reduce the room of interpretation. With a second vote
afterwards there wouldn't be anything to question.

So again, this is no attack in any form, last night I just remembered
old discussions in public and behind the curtains in the IRC about the
problem with the quorums and that there was the need of a rule to strip
TUs of their special status in case they ignored this social aspect of
their task. And therefore I think that if that rule is chosen, the
historic background should not be forgotten.

And again: It's good you looked at the status of all TUs and took
action. :-)

Cheers,
Thorsten

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