Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2012-04-03

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 7:52 AM, Brian Harring <ferringb@×××××.com> wrote:
> Condorcet should be dev wide imo, rather than council.  I'm certainly
> not of the belief we should do group wide votes on every decision, but
> this sort of thing is likely to generally piss people off and not have
> any clear majority on its own- thus would go that route.

Frankly, this really strikes me as one of those situations where
resolving it by some kind of majority vote among many options is
probably the worst possible way to resolve it.

If we narrow it down to one or two items and there is a consensus
among the Council that either is fine and it comes down to religious
preference, then a limited dev-wide vote might at least settle the
debate.  However, I wouldn't just throw the 47 options in the email
chains into some huge list and have everybody rank them.

It probably wouldn't hurt to have the Council members hash this out to
some extent before going into a meeting.  If the only time you discuss
this is 20 minutes per month you'll never make a decision.  By all
means hash it out on -project or on an email alias if noise is too
great.  Perhaps post updates to -project if the latter is used, and
let everybody influence the debate indirectly through the Council.

I think just about every line of argument has already been hashed out
over the last few years.  The council members just need to go over the
debate and form a consensus.  Using a vote to solicit feedback is
fine, but I wouldn't use it as a substitute for discussion and forming
consensus.

Rich