In today's FESCo meeting, I raised the point that as currently defined, a 0 vote is functionally identical to a -1 vote, despite the voter's intention to essentially be abstaining. I suggest that we amend the rules as follows (thanks @zbyszek for the suggestion):
All 0 votes are split into a +0.5 and -0.5 vote. If the sum of the + votes (including these half-votes) results in a +5.0 or higher, the proposal is accepted. Any other result means that the proposal is rejected. Any non-response would not be included in the count at all (so a non-present member is not assumed to be voting 0 and will add to neither side).
Examples:
That's a reasonable compromise.
+1
Just so I understand: If approved = (plus_ones + 0.5 zeroes) >= 5, voting -1 in a meeting has the same effect on the end result as not voting at all? That sounds very fishy to me.
approved = (plus_ones + 0.5 zeroes) >= 5
Essentially, yes. It means that not making an explicit vote defaults to voting -1.
Or, looked at it from the other side: Voting -1 makes my vote vanish since those votes do not affect approval. I don't like it. :)
I think I'm not following your thought process. The assumption is that all proposals are rejected unless they are explicitly approved. This has always been the case.
Also, five people voting -1 explicitly means that an approval is not possible and voting can stop at that point.
It feels like we're overengineering the voting mechanism in an attempt to fix an edge case. The 5 member requirement only applies to decisions made in meetings, which generally means a proposal has already received a -1. I don't think it's unreasonable to say if a FESCo member is opposed to the proposal and you can't get at least 5 in favor of it, the proposal shouldn't pass.
Looking at legislative bodies, there's a difference between an abstention and a "present" vote, which we've sort of lumped together. An abstention is not voting, "present" is I'm voting, but not making a decision. The former does not increase the count of possible votes, the latter does. So if we explicitly separate abstention and 0 (unhelpfully, my comment in the meeting conflated them), that fixes the problem without having to chop votes in half. In that case, a 0 vote isn't exactly a -1, but it does put the brakes on a little bit.
@bcotton That's fair and makes sense to me.
I prefer the status quo over the proposal here. I think the proposal by @sgallagh is needlessly complicated. And I don't think we should explicitly separate abstention and 0 either.
-1
Metadata Update from @churchyard: - Issue tagged with: meeting
I like @bcotton's approach here. The separation of not voting vs. voting present is important. Absent should be handled separately if for the very simple reason that people are actually absent from time to time and we should not automatically count their absence one way or another.
As @bcotton states, "In that case, a 0 vote isn't exactly a -1, but it does put the brakes on a little bit." Which is a thing we do from time to time to send proposals back for more work or more discussion on devel.
This was discussed during today's FESCo meeting and rejected: AGREED: REJECTED (+5, 0, 0)
Metadata Update from @zbyszek: - Issue close_status updated to: Rejected - Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)
Metadata Update from @zbyszek: - Issue untagged with: meeting
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