Limited voting in EM

[Rob Lanphier]

On Sat, 15 Mar 1997 Saari at aol.com wrote:
> >> The voting method that I proposed was *only* for finished documents.
> >> That's it.  Nothing else is binding in my book.
> >> 
> >> It's a pure YES/NO vote (or SUPPORT/OPPOSE, I could care less) for
> >> finished documents.  When a finished document is approved, the old
> >> FAQ is replaced with a new one.
> 
> This is too bad.  Because the topic of voting methods is still evolving, I
> was really hoping for a method whereby this group could work *together* to
> evolve and iterate a FAQ which would become better and better over time.  I
> had thought that the process of piecewise proposals and debates would help us
> all to better understand the subject.  There is nothing like trying to create
> an explanatory document to induce better understanding!
> 
> Instead, Rob will only allow very limited voting on finished products.  This
> likely means that the work of generating a new draft(s) will be done offline
> individually or in small groups.  The EM members will only have very limited
> opportunities to rubberstamp a finished product.  And we are likely more
> likely to flip-flop between competing proposals (if anyone bothers) rather
> than moving steadily toward a group consensus.

My apologies for snapping out so violently.  However, I have to stand by
my decision to make votes on final FAQs the only binding elements.  There
are several problems with piecemeal binding votes.  It forces people down
roads they never would have gone down had they seen a finished prodcut.
It also forces those who would like to restructure the document to go
through several votes,a nd it's just a mess.

I have no problem with *informal* discussion and consensus on this list
about elements of the FAQ.  What I refuse to do, though, is to officially
"bless" a FAQ effort that doesn't have a FAQ in hand.  If someone wants to
write the thing in isolation, and they come forward with a finished
product, I will gladly allow a vote on it, even if that means undermining
an effort that has been going for a while.

I'm interested in results.  The intermediate process is irrelevant if it
doesn't produces results.  If you want to hold informal votes, fine.  As
long as they don't masquerade as official votes, I'm cool with them.  What
I don't want to see is you or anyoine else holding someone up who has a
finished product because "we already voted on the title, and we decided it
was thus-and-such, and we already voted on the section headers, and yours
don't match".

> I have some ideas for FAQ contents, but I am not especially interested in
> trying to write one all by myself.  I would be happy to participate with a
> sub-group in this, but only if it is organized as a "society of equals"
> instead of the usual hierarchical methods.  I had thought it would be fun to
> use the EM list as a whole for this (where non-participants could simply
> ignore "CFV" messages) but it looks like Rob won't allow this.

Hey, just put out messages like "could someone please write this
section?", and "what do people think about this?".  You gave me the
impression that I had to dictatorally come up with a procedure to
bootstrap this process.  I did.  I'm telling you know, I don't have time
to dicker here.

If people can't respect the fact that I don't have a lot of time to run
this, then I'm going to be forced to shut this list down. In fact, nothing
is stopping anyone from starting up a similar mailing list with less
"disappointing" rules right now.  

Rob Lanphier
robla at eskimo.com
http://www.eskimo.com/~robla