[EuroPython] Voting structure on the web

Magnus Lyckå magnus@thinkware.se
Wed, 16 Jul 2003 03:10:52 +0200


At 14:04 2003-07-15 +0200, Andrew Smart wrote:
>First the question should have been: for what kind of votes you are
>going to use this voting system?

Fair enough, but whatever questions plan to bring up, I think you
are putting the cart in front of the horse if you set up some kind
of technical voting system without a formal structure in place.

You can ask people on a mailing list what their opinions are, or
what they plan to do, so some kind of "polls" might take place, but
voting requires a system. A vote is supposed to be an "act of power",
not just an expression of opinions, and that requires some kind of
governing rules, or it will just invite conflicts. But maybe you used
the word "vote" in a wider meaning than I interpreted it?

>If some small group here on the list makes the basic decissions there
>is also a fair change that it will split the community.

Agreed. But if the people who makes their voices heard on the list
all agree, and noone opposes them on the list, I think that the others
have given their silent approval or showed that they don't care.

>The problem is to "bootstraping" the whole thing, on either way.

But a technical solution for collecting votes can't solve the
bootstrap problem. Collecting votes is simple. That's not the
issue. Who has the right to formulate the questions? Who has the
right to speak? Who has the right to say: "Enough said, we must
vote now!" Who should interpret the votes? Who can vote? When is
it right to put an issue to the vote? Who is bound by the result
of the vote? To what degree? For how long? What can be done if
results of votes are ignored?

There are plenty of questions that overshadow the issue of counting
votes. Unless the bigger questions are handled, there is no way to
get credibility in a voting.

Partly, the questions I placed above are handled by bylaws, but not
all. For an organisation to be effective, we need to share a common
goal, be open and understand each other. If we succeed in that, vote
counting will be rare...


--
Magnus Lycka (It's really Lyckå), magnus@thinkware.se
Thinkware AB, Sweden, www.thinkware.se
I code Python ~ The Agile Programming Language