Re: [gentoo-council] Council Agenda proposal for upcoming 2010-07-26 meeting

[Richard Freeman]

On 07/24/2010 09:42 PM, Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote:
> On 24-07-2010 23:55, Alex Alexander wrote:
>> Items with a *vote* flag cannot be moved a second time (unless there's
>> new data to consider), so they must be settled at that agenda's meeting,
>> in an attempt to avoid endless discussions.
>
> We should aim to ensure that votes do happen when an item is marked to
> be voted in a meeting. However it depends on council members being ready
> to vote at the meeting and on no new objection being raised during a
> meeting.
> If that fails, it might not be possible or desirable to have a vote when
> people don't know what they're voting on or have some doubts about a new
> objection.

Might I suggest that items that aren't ripe for voting simply be voted 
down, with comments made that the item isn't being outright rejected so 
much as rejected-for-now, with more work needed.  Guidance should of 
course be given on what needs to be done.

Sometimes an idea just isn't worked out enough to move forward - there 
isn't consensus.  The council meetings shouldn't really be the place to 
do such working-out.  IRC, blogs, lists, etc are all much better for this.

I'm not a big fan of standing agenda items - even for status updates. 
If there are status updates they should be VERY brief - after all you 
could just provide it via the list.  If an item isn't worked out then 
just keep it outside of the meeting.

You would need to make sure that for things like devrel appeals/etc that 
appropriate action is taken while the issue remains under consideration 
(I'm not sure whether policy is to ban before appeal and then unban 
later, or vice-versa), and make sure everybody understands that the 
appeal is still in effect.

If immature items become a big problem, here is another thought - have 
more meetings, but only one meeting per month is official.  The 
unofficial meetings would just be designated times where everybody can 
show up and have discussion, but no votes would be held.  That would 
give people time to work out issues, without triggering slacker clauses 
and taking up official meeting time.

Rich