#24: Allow other Fedora Groups to use the voting system --------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Reporter: nigelj | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Release 0.5.0 (F14 Target) Component: General | Version: trunk Resolution: | Keywords: --------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Changes (by pfrields):

* cc: pfrields (added)

Comment:

I'm very concerned that Fedora not fall into the morass of Debian-style voting for everything. The ability to set up ad-hoc elections to decide any random issue would tend to upset what is supposed to be meritocracy at every possible level. I'm not saying democratic voting is inherently evil. It's useful when you have an election about people, as opposed to policies or ways to operate. I see three main problems with voting on operations:

1. It avoids accountability. Team leaders are there to lead, which means listening to the group, establishing consensus, and making calls where needed knowing that you can't please 100% of the people 100% of the time.

2. It removes the need, and the ability, to justify arguments. If voters simply put in +/-1 with no context provided, there's no way to judge hard vs. soft opinions, nor how important that matter is to the voter.

3. It tends to be anti-meritocracy. We have a fairly open account process, so it's easy to obtain and hold group membership without daily involvement in the work of that group. Group membership is a switch -- it's on or off, without an indicator of how involved a particular user is. It's therefore very easy for uninvolved people who have a strong opinion to upset the will of other people who are heavily involved (and invested).

When we vote for people, these concerns are balanced out by the personal aspect -- a lengthy discussion about a particular person would be counter- productive, as opposed to issues that concern voters. But for issues and policies, voting should be avoided wherever possible in favor of a more meritocratic process -- consensus-building and informed, sensitive team leadership.

#24: Allow other Fedora Groups to use the voting system --------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Reporter: nigelj | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Release 0.5.0 (F14 Target) Component: General | Version: trunk Resolution: | Keywords: --------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Comment (by pfrields):

So with a small group doing the voting, what separates this case from something like FESCo voting openly on proven packager membership? Should this be done by taking +/-1 in an open meeting?

#24: Allow other Fedora Groups to use the voting system --------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Reporter: nigelj | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Release 0.5.0 (F14 Target) Component: General | Version: trunk Resolution: | Keywords: --------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Comment (by toshio):

Note, this feature would also allow for having different people manage different elections. Not a problem now but could be in the future if, say we have nigelj, stickster, and toshio as the votingadmins but nigelj and stickster are both running for the Board and toshio is running for FESCo. With a separate pool of voting admins per election being run, toshio can admin the Board while stickster and/or nigelj can admin the FESCo election.

#24: Allow other Fedora Groups to use the voting system --------------------------+---------------------------------------- Reporter: nigelj | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Release 0.5.0 (F14 Target) Component: General | Version: trunk Resolution: | Keywords: Blocked By: | Blocking: --------------------------+----------------------------------------

Comment (by pingou):

Version 2.1 allows each elections to have one or more admin groups (ie: the traditional elections group and others) as well as dedicated groups for the voters (empty == cla+1, otherwise the user has to be in one of the groups specified).

This partly fixes this ticket as it still relies on groups but as toshio mentioned above sometime we may want to set it at the individual level.

#24: Allow other Fedora Groups to use the voting system --------------------------+---------------------------------------- Reporter: nigelj | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Release 0.5.0 (F14 Target) Component: General | Version: trunk Resolution: | Keywords: Blocked By: | Blocking: --------------------------+----------------------------------------

Comment (by pfrields):

It seems to me that group is enough, since in the scenario above an additional group could still be temporarily established as a solution.