Re: [tsc-devel] RFC: Voting rules draft

Quintus | Tue, 21 Jul 2015 18:22:07 UTC

Chris Jacobsen <…9@y…> writes:

> There could be two methods by which people are added to the team:
> 1) Based on commits - people who obviously have lots of commits (or lots of content in their
> commits) are just added to the organization by a team admin.  The admin could optionally send
> an email to the team.  If people have objections, a vote is then taken, possibly removing them.
> 2) Based on non-content-contributions - Existing team members can nominate people at any time
> along with a reason for the suggestion.  If there is any question, a vote is taken.  This is,
> as you said, a bit more subjective, so it is based on discussion and possibly a vote.
>
> In both cases these people are added to our organization, which is
> then used for votes.

I’m mostly okay with this, but I’d like to have a vote either way. We
don’t want to encourage people to break up their contributions so that
each letter gets a separate commit just to have them cross the magic
threshold that makes them a team member with voting rights
automatically. That is, the number of commits would merely replace the
nomination requirement, and the person who has contributed the magic
number of commits can request the team to vote on his membership.

May I suggest that while a vote is running, no new team members should
be added?

> There are many kinds of work that do not necessarily produce commits:
> [...]  If someone is a proven-enough contributor in one or more of
> these areas, it may warrant voting power.  As mentioned above, though,
> discussion and possibly a vote would be needed to add them to the
> team.

Using your second method would allow people to join the team on
nomination with a vote following the nomination. I would be fine with
this, as outlined above.

> We may have to discuss how interaction with the project is defined,
> though; we may not want to be too demanding of people, so as to
> encourage volunteer work.

We could place the hurdle rather low. One TSC-related post (i.e. not an
offtopic “here’s my cat video”) could suffice.

> giby is a lot more available in IRC than some of the main team
> members.  I usually have to ask people to show up in IRC.  In
> danfun64's case, he only contributed to the story, while giby
> contributed both the Transifex idea and work towards the French
> translation.

Hanging around in IRC does not mean participating in the discussions
happening there. OTOH, one can perfectly participate in discussions on
the tracker and don’t be available in IRC (see Luiji and simpletoon).
Note how subjective these criteria are, which is why voting on team
membership appears correct to me as it allows everyone to vote according
to his own subjective criteria. While during vote time hard objective
criteria are needed, during team membership joining a subjective moment
is required. Team membership ultimately is not only about voting rights,
but also is a social relation connecting the members of the team, and
how people interact and like/dislike each other is highly
subjective. Too many objective criteria in social relations should be
avoided as they do not honour the human being’s nature.

> I would be curious what others on the team think, too.

Me too. Let’s hope they find time to follow this thread with all its
text :-)

> Thus it would seem reasonable just to take that vote without him and
> resolve the question of his team membership separately.

Agreed.

> Did you remove aakburns from the team?  I remember you had added him
> earlier.  Is tristan still involved in the project?  I don't want to
> discourage him, but I don't think he has contributed much content or
> discussion in a while.

You force me to take position on the issue while I’d rather have wanted
to avoid that. A direct question demands a direct answer, however.

I have not removed them from the team, but I would do so currently at
any time, because I don’t see them participating much. In fact, they are
the reason why I invented the one-year criterion that allows to remove
people from the team on an objective base without causing anger on the
site of the people being removed as this was to be expected.

To stay consistent with what I say and to not appear contradictive, I’ll
remove them during the next days if nobody objects. Though for aakburns
he *has* contributed not too long ago, and I see him mostly on par with
Bugsbane regarding contribution activity (for now). Following your
logic, we’d have to remove Bugsbane as well, which is obviously
wrong. Thus, I conclude I’ll not remove aakburns for now, but I will
check the activity of the other members of the Secretchronicles
organisation during the next days then.

Does this answer your question?

Vale,
Quintus

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