[llvm-foundation] Voting

[Hal Finkel via llvm-foundation]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Renato Golin" <renato.golin at linaro.org>
> To: "Hal Finkel" <hfinkel at anl.gov>
> Cc: llvm-foundation at lists.llvm.org, "Alex Bradbury" <asb at asbradbury.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2016 2:15:56 PM
> Subject: Re: [llvm-foundation] Voting
> 
> On 29 June 2016 at 20:03, Hal Finkel <hfinkel at anl.gov> wrote:
> > I understand your point, but I don't think this addresses the
> > problem we have in practice. The problem we have in practice is
> > determining when we have consensus. This is because a small
> > percentage of our community actively participates in any given
> > discussion, and disproportionally loud opponents or proponents can
> > skew the apparent tenor of the conversation.
> 
> Indeed!! And that's what consensus-then-voting "fixes". It's easy to
> blame "few loud opponents", but it's also easy to get distracted by
> them.
> 
> For example, I did a quick count on people agreeing with GitHub and
> it
> came out as 23 out of 25. That's consensus.
> 
> I did the same count on the code of conduct discussion we had, and
> that was around 10 vs. 10 on the reporting issue. This is *not*
> consensus.

I disagree, and I think this highlights the issue. I suspect that, if we actually took all of the active participants in the LLVM community and forced them to vote (even if that included an option to abstain), we might very well find that we had consensus on the code-of-conduct issues. You can't determine consensus by counting emails on the mailing list, it is just not accurate. There are practical constraints and social disincentives to sending "voting" emails. Some people will send a "+1" on some issues, but many will not. To determine consensus, we need to vote (either directly or via representatives/proxies).

The other point about voting, which is not to be overlooked, is that Pareto optimal is neither, in general, globally optimal nor strategically wise. This is one reason why leadership is important.

 -Hal

> 
> I have proposed voting for GitHub, but I will not propose, nor
> defend,
> voting for the code of conduct. Not at this stage, not until we have
> a
> clear majority. And to have a clear majority, both sides need to
> reach
> a reasonable compromise.
> 
> That is the sole reason I support this view: I prefer to reach a
> compromise, conceding some of my points, than to force someone to do
> what I want, just because I have more friends or am more persuasive.
> 
> That's the difference between pure democracy and consensus driven
> communities. I don't have any illusion that there isn't politics and
> self-interest involved in many decisions around LLVM, but the hard
> decisions move slowly and get refined into something most people
> agree.
> 
> I wanted LLVM to use Git at least 5 years ago. I did propose, and
> people did agree, but most considered a contentious issue. So, for
> the
> last 5 years, I've been talking to people, understanding the issues,
> finding solutions, as many others have, and here we are, reaching
> consensus and getting things done. The right way (tm).
> 
> cheers,
> --renato
> 

-- 
Hal Finkel
Assistant Computational Scientist
Leadership Computing Facility
Argonne National Laboratory