Re: Voting/Decision making guidelines

On Tue, Jul 25, 2000 at 08:44:32AM -0400, Chris Nandor wrote:
> 
> OK, I'd like to take a small step back and find out what the purpose of
> voting is.  I've tried to find out from previous posts and couldn't.  I
> guess Chip shares my concerns:
> 
> At 21:04 -0700 2000.07.24, Chip Salzenberg wrote:
> >As for voting: I've seen a few people mention votes as part of some
> >process or other.  But without formal membership in an organization (a
> >la Debian, and let's *not* go there!)  I don't see how voting could
> >actually be a useful part of a political process.
> >It can only be used for opinion polls.
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That's the only use of voting that I've proposed. I.e., opinions on the
relative priority of each of the issues we've identified.

> As I see it, voting could serve two purposes: an advisory role, or a
> decision-making role.  The latter seems unreasonable; this is why we have
> the pumpkings and working groups.

Agreed.

> The former seems subuseful; this is why
> we have the pumpkings and working groups.  :-)

I'd hate to imagine the amount of email that would be required to achieve
the same result as the 'vote'. (I don't think of it as a vote, more of
an opinion poll.)

> I suppose it can't hurt anything as long as we don't take the voting too
> seriously; but if we aren't going to take it too seriously, what's the
> point?

There's a middle ground here.

I don't see such polls being regular events, or even used again at all.
But at this early stage it enables a potentially very large amount of
input (ideas, opinions etc) to be collated and efficiently prioritised.

Tim.