Decision making (refuse to vote)

[Thierry]

Hi again,

I have serious concerns with the current situation.

What is wrong with the current call for vote ?


Let me summarize the situation :

- An obscure group of self-appointed people wrote a text, they had the
possibility to discuss and amend its content, with an unlimited amount
of time. The estimated entropy of the text is larger than 1.

- This text can not be modified by the community and is submitted as is
for a majority vote. Those that do not belong to the obscure group
(which is still anonymous after various requests) can therefore only
contribute 1/n bits, where n is the number of voters. They have less
than two days to answer.


My point of view about this :

- This is paternalistic because it means that the community as a whole is
not able to work together and write anything good. This looks also
useless (or dangerous?) to take more time and let people think and
exchange about this.

- This contradicts the contents of the text which claims about
collaboration and respect, however it is not how the obscure group
behaves. Hence, i doubt that the text will be used in other way than for
repression.

- This is in complete contradiction with Sage community habits. Let me
give an example: when someone writes some code, anyone can help during
the review process. If one of the reviewers thinks something can be
improved, it is discussed on trac, modifications are made until
everyone agree. We are all pointing toward a common goal. Discussing
some big issues on sage-devel is a way to involve more people in
important design discussions and mix more ideas together, it is not a
way to enforce the approval by a majority vote.


There are strong issues with majority voting :

- A call for vote aims at closing a discussion. However, if there is an
issue somewhere, the only way to reach a stable solution is precisely to
let the discussion open until enough content is added into it and try to
merge good ideas and objections. Regarding the current proposition, some
objections were emitted by various people.

- Launching such a vote creates a division within the community, whatever
the outcome, between those who belong to the "majority" and the others.
This will result in oppression: the minority will have to behave
according to what the majority decided.

- It is easy to raise an army of voters, especially on a public
mailing-list. It can be as innocent as sending e-mails to people that
are likely to agree with you and say "there is a vote going on, you
should read it and make your own opinion".

- This is unlikely to attract future developers with diverse and original
points of view and autonomous thinking.

- If the text is voted, the minority will have to conform to a text they
could not even discuss. This is even more serious that the text is about
individual behaviour. Was there with a particular minority in mind ?


Choosing among ideas or mixing them ? Competition or Collaboration ? Fight
or Solidarity ?

This e-mail is not ended, i encourage you to read and think about
"majority voting" and "consensus decision making".

We have a serious communication issue, and we need to discuss it, without
deadline. Following the previous thread, Vincent opened a page for this on
the wiki.

Ciao,
Thierry

[François Bissey]

Hi Thierry,

Well that has to be the fiercest reaction so far.

Volker proposed the text and he probably pinched most of it from
somewhere else (fedora if I remember correctly).

I have to take issue with some of your characterization.
There was a long discussion thread and I'll admit I haven't
read the whole of it but a fair amount of it and no one
proposed a change of wording for it. The anti camp didn't want
amendment, they'd rather not have it.
The "for" camp has not put forward any alternative words as far
as I remember.

There was plenty of opportunity to get the text amended and
it didn't happen. Think what you will of it.

I personally think that whatever the result it has shown that
the community is broadly well behaved while there seem to be
strong feelings, so far you are the one who pushed the envelop
the furthest, the debate stayed quite polite.

I don't think we need the code but considering the general
behavior here I don't think it will matter. We are a quite
well behaved community.

We'll have to deal with the occasional explosion with or without code.

Francois

[Nathann Cohen]

Hello !

> Volker proposed the text and he probably pinched most of it from
> somewhere else (fedora if I remember correctly).

He probably participated indeed, but he begins his first post with that:

"Some of the Sage developers who are better with words than me went ahead and stole a lot more, mostly from [...]"

> I have to take issue with some of your characterization.
> There was a long discussion thread and I'll admit I haven't
> read the whole of it but a fair amount of it and no one
> proposed a change of wording for it. The anti camp didn't want
> amendment, they'd rather not have it.

Several developpers mentionned making it an "advice" instead of a "code", so you can see that even the title was an open question. Actually, some of us have been surprised at the speed at which this has become a vote. If you give us an occasion to discuss the actual text, we most surely will.

> The "for" camp has not put forward any alternative words as far
> as I remember.

Well. It may strike you as obvious that among those who were on the short-list to write the code that will become sage-devel's law, everybody will be in the "pro" side. We have been asking quite repeatedly who organised this and when, so far without answer. I do not like this kind of behaviour. This is exactly the "communication and unhappiness" problem right at the top of of the code, and in contradiction with any claim that sage is built as a community.

So can we oppose the code against how the code is being enforced right now ? Enforcing the code when so many people are against it is precisely the kind of things you should not think of doing is you want a strong sense of community.

Its most immediate effect, as you can see, is to divide us.

> I personally think that whatever the result it has shown that
> the community is broadly well behaved while there seem to be
> strong feelings, so far you are the one who pushed the envelop
> the furthest, the debate stayed quite polite.

Especially since somebody not being polite here will now be judged by "a committee" in private.

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[Andrew]

Several developpers mentionned making it an "advice" instead of a "code", so you can see that even the title was an open question.

I voted for adopting the code but I would more comfortable with something like this being adopted as guidelines or recommendations, especially since the votes for and against seem to be roughly equal (please correct me if I am wrong as I haven't counted them recently). As with others, I am not particularly in favour of the idea that there be a committee to "enforce" a code of conduct.
 

Actually, some of us have been surprised at the speed at which this has become a vote. If you give us an occasion to discuss the actual text, we most surely will.

Well,Volker's thread has been open for two weeks and it is THE most discussed thread in sage-dev for quite some time. Also, Vicent has created a wiki page with the express purpose of discussing and reaching consensus on the text.

Andrew

[john_perry_usm]

On Tuesday, November 25, 2014 3:17:22 AM UTC+1, Thierry (sage-googlesucks@xxx) wrote:

Hi again, &c.

[everything else deleted, though I agree with much, not with some]

I don't know if this will reassure you, but (a) I voted no, and (b) given how William seemed to listen & change course on collecting votes [1, 2] I am less worried about being on the losing side (which it looks like right now). I am confident that, if you or other people have concrete proposals for amending the code/guidelines/etc., they will be taken seriously, at least by William.

The unfortunate fact is that some people already feel excluded from the community, with or without a vote. Having read some of the threads in question, I *suspect* it's because certain male developers communicate in a vigorous style which intimidates other developers (male & female). Given the situation, consensus is already impossible; division pre-exists the vote.

So it's incorrect to say that the vote *causes* a division in the community; if you read that thread carefully, you'd see the division is already there.

If I may be allowed some levity: I suppose William may be unconsciously patriarchal & paternalistic -- he is male, after all -- but I don't think he'd be so deliberately, unless it was with his children. :-) & Sage is, in a way, a child of his.

sincerely

john perry

[1] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sage-devel/iGxa2F01rFc/df6sN_F6vp8J

[2] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sage-devel/iGxa2F01rFc/7gxoweTG0oYJ

(hope the links work; I haven't done that in a while, maybe ever)

[john_perry_usm]

On Tuesday, November 25, 2014 5:30:07 AM UTC+1, Andrew wrote:

Also, Vicent has created a wiki page with the express purpose of discussing and reaching consensus on the text.

I missed that. Is there a place for discussion? I have a suggestion that I think most people would accept, and on Wikipedia there's usually a "discussion" page, but I don't see one here.

john perry