Hi everyone,
Last year we wrote a Social Contract with a set of promises to our users about our standards for making Tor. When we agreed on this document, we didn't have a formal set of voting guidelines [1] in place. Now that we have those, I'd like us to officially ratify the Social Contract according to our voting procedure. I am opening up the Social Contract proposal (attached) for discussion. Please first read the voting guidelines linked below, then give your feedback on the proposal in this thread. You may also create a new proposal for discussion.
The discussion phase will run until 10 April. Please do not wait until the last minute to give substantive feedback. After the discussion phase, I'll initiate a vote.
Alison
[1] https://gitweb.torproject.org/community/policies.git/tree/voting.txt
On Mon, 03 Apr 2017 17:52:00 +0000 Alison macrina@riseup.net wrote:
The discussion phase will run until 10 April. Please do not wait until the last minute to give substantive feedback. After the discussion phase, I'll initiate a vote.
When I last provided feedback to this, I received e-mail discouraging feedback. Is it still the case that the people organized in drafting this aren't interested?
Regards,
Thanks Alison!
Quick correction: at the dev meeting a common point of feedback was that folks dislike having too many votes so we plan to combine three things into one vote...
* Ratification of the social contract. * Amendments folks would like for the community council. * Vote to select the next Community Council.
As per Tim's request we're waiting until tomorrow (the 4th) to ask for council volunteers. Since the council selection process is longer (one week call for volunteers, one week Q&A, two week vote) we actually have more time to discuss the social contract before the actual vote. That said, earlier we get feedback the better!
When I last provided feedback to this, I received e-mail discouraging feedback. Is it still the case that the people organized in drafting this aren't interested?
Certainly! Please Yawning, do provide feedback. Sorry about the discouraging email - I don't have any context on that but you're certainly encouraged to give feedback at this point.
Cheers! -Damian
Damian Johnson:
Thanks Alison!
Quick correction: at the dev meeting a common point of feedback was that folks dislike having too many votes so we plan to combine three things into one vote...
- Ratification of the social contract.
- Amendments folks would like for the community council.
- Vote to select the next Community Council.
I think bundling different, unrelated things into one vote is not the right solution to concerns about too many votes. It seems to me that move makes it harder for everyone to reason about the proposed changes and vote accordingly. Which in turn might lead to (more) voting fatigue and reinforcement of that feeling about too many votes. Now, I am not sure whether the dislike-too-many-votes-feedbacks stem from us having already had too many votes or whether that's just a fear for future votes, so it might be hard to make good suggestions. But one thing that does not seem unreasonable to me is to slow to down the whole process by not pushing things through so rapidly.
For this particular case I'd argue we should basically drop the ratification of the social contract: that piece got already ratified. We even have a blog post about it:
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-social-contract
The social contract visible on our blog and the text in the proposal seem to be the same, underscoring that having to ratify it again is superflouos. Moreover, and as alluded to above, it might even help with the feeling of some that we vote too much or the fear that we will if we just drop this as not doing so would add to voting fatique which we definitely want to avoid.
My most important point, though, is a more general one. I think it is wrong to apply newly created policies backwards in time. First, you may create new problems in case a conflict between the past outcome and the present one arises: applied to the social contract this means: what is going to happen if a majority does not accept the social contract this time? Clearly we ratified it by rough consensus in the past, right? Which outcome will prevail in such a case? This is at best underspecified but I actually think such a thing happening would mean much more damage than it is worth.
Second, imagine a community council got elected for a period of time but after half of its term our decision making procedure changes. Maybe we got convinced that voting is less preferable than rough consensus and we start doing everything by rough consensus from that time on. Applying the logic that we need to ratify the social contract again because we have a new ratification procedure to our community council case would mean we had to reelect the community council again despite their term not being over yet. While applying the newly found ratification procedure to get the community council after the current one (to stick to my example) is pretty reasonable IMO doing so midterm makes not much sense to me.
So, let's drop that re-ratifying idea of the same things altogether. It creates more problems than it solves and does not add more legitimacy to previous decisions.
Georg
Silvia [Hiro]:
On 04/04/17 20:52, Georg Koppen wrote: [snip]
So, let's drop that re-ratifying idea of the same things altogether. It creates more problems than it solves and does not add more legitimacy to previous decisions.
Totally agree w/ this.
-silvia
I am totally fine to go with whatever is preferred by the majority. I initiated the proposal because I had a few requests for it. I know that Damian is one of the people who really wants a vote; I'm happy to leave this open for a few days and see if anyone else agrees with him.
Alison
I'd be fine with the following alternative for a vote: ask on tor-internal@ if anyone opposes to the ratification of the social contract. If after two weeks zero people object then it's ratified.
If at least one person says nay it goes to a vote.
On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 12:17 PM, Alison macrina@riseup.net wrote:
Silvia [Hiro]:
On 04/04/17 20:52, Georg Koppen wrote: [snip]
So, let's drop that re-ratifying idea of the same things altogether. It creates more problems than it solves and does not add more legitimacy to previous decisions.
Totally agree w/ this.
-silvia
I am totally fine to go with whatever is preferred by the majority. I initiated the proposal because I had a few requests for it. I know that Damian is one of the people who really wants a vote; I'm happy to leave this open for a few days and see if anyone else agrees with him.
Alison _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
Damian Johnson:
I'd be fine with the following alternative for a vote: ask on tor-internal@ if anyone opposes to the ratification of the social contract. If after two weeks zero people object then it's ratified.
If at least one person says nay it goes to a vote.
That's not a good idea. You would basically say "no" as you want to have a vote and then we'd have a vote. That would basically boil down to you saying "It's getting a vote because I, Damian, say it gets a vote."
Georg
On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 12:17 PM, Alison macrina@riseup.net wrote:
Silvia [Hiro]:
On 04/04/17 20:52, Georg Koppen wrote: [snip]
So, let's drop that re-ratifying idea of the same things altogether. It creates more problems than it solves and does not add more legitimacy to previous decisions.
Totally agree w/ this.
-silvia
I am totally fine to go with whatever is preferred by the majority. I initiated the proposal because I had a few requests for it. I know that Damian is one of the people who really wants a vote; I'm happy to leave this open for a few days and see if anyone else agrees with him.
Alison _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
Georg Koppen:
Damian Johnson:
I'd be fine with the following alternative for a vote: ask on tor-internal@ if anyone opposes to the ratification of the social contract. If after two weeks zero people object then it's ratified.
If at least one person says nay it goes to a vote.
That's not a good idea. You would basically say "no" as you want to have a vote and then we'd have a vote. That would basically boil down to you saying "It's getting a vote because I, Damian, say it gets a vote."
I realize that you probably wanted to say "at least one person which is not me". Sorry if I got you wrong. But I still think this is the wrong thing to do (apart from the fact that there is not even a second sponsor for the proposal as far as I can see it and it is thus not clear to me that there will be anything to vote about if we followed our process strictly).
First, the social contract is already ratified. If nobody says anything against it on tor-internal it would mean it would be ratified again by rough consensus. Why should we do that twice by the same method just weeks apart?
Second, you get all the possible downsides I mentioned in my other mail if just one person says "no". That still seems not worth it (it adds to voting fatigue, possibly produces contraditory outomces etc. etc.)
Georg
Georg
On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 12:17 PM, Alison macrina@riseup.net wrote:
Silvia [Hiro]:
On 04/04/17 20:52, Georg Koppen wrote: [snip]
So, let's drop that re-ratifying idea of the same things altogether. It creates more problems than it solves and does not add more legitimacy to previous decisions.
Totally agree w/ this.
-silvia
I am totally fine to go with whatever is preferred by the majority. I initiated the proposal because I had a few requests for it. I know that Damian is one of the people who really wants a vote; I'm happy to leave this open for a few days and see if anyone else agrees with him.
Alison _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
I realize that you probably wanted to say "at least one person which is not me".
No, I didn't. I don't object to ratifying the social contract. If we put it to a vote I'd affirm it. The ask was to put it forward to the rest of the list to see if we have consensus. Our voting policy calls for a two week vote - if we put that question to the list and don't get an objection in that time I'd be content to call the matter closed.
Damian Johnson:
I realize that you probably wanted to say "at least one person which is not me".
No, I didn't. I don't object to ratifying the social contract. If we put it to a vote I'd affirm it. The ask was to put it forward to the rest of the list to see if we have consensus. Our voting policy calls for a two week vote - if we put that question to the list and don't get an objection in that time I'd be content to call the matter closed.
Hi all,
Today is the last day of the social contract proposal period, and essentially the only feedback was "there is no need to vote on this". I didn't see anyone object to that. If no one chimes in by UTC 0000 (about 10.5 hours from now) to say that they definitely want to see this go through the normal voting resolution, I'm going to call off the vote and consider it ratified according to our original consensus. Please note that it will still not show up in the repo of documents that we've ratified according to our new voting policy. It'll stay on the blog and on the community team wiki.
Alison
Alison wrote:
Today is the last day of the social contract proposal period, and essentially the only feedback was "there is no need to vote on this". I didn't see anyone object to that. If no one chimes in by UTC 0000 (about 10.5 hours from now) to say that they definitely want to see this go through the normal voting resolution, I'm going to call off the vote and consider it ratified according to our original consensus. Please note that it will still not show up in the repo of documents that we've ratified according to our new voting policy. It'll stay on the blog and on the community team wiki.
I think that we should vote on this anyway. To keep everything consistent, to make sure that people who didn't notice the above statement can have a say, and to avoid future drama from randos.
~Griffin
Griffin Boyce:
Alison wrote:
Today is the last day of the social contract proposal period, and essentially the only feedback was "there is no need to vote on this". I didn't see anyone object to that. If no one chimes in by UTC 0000 (about 10.5 hours from now) to say that they definitely want to see this go through the normal voting resolution, I'm going to call off the vote and consider it ratified according to our original consensus. Please note that it will still not show up in the repo of documents that we've ratified according to our new voting policy. It'll stay on the blog and on the community team wiki.
I think that we should vote on this anyway. To keep everything consistent, to make sure that people who didn't notice the above statement can have a say, and to avoid future drama from randos.
~Griffin
Thanks Griffin. The vote will begin on tor-internal tomorrow.
Alison
So, let's drop that re-ratifying idea of the same things altogether. It creates more problems than it solves and does not add more legitimacy to previous decisions.
Hi Georg. I strongly disagree but this is a discussion I've had a few times so it's certainly a common concern. My reply the last few things is this: please enumerate the things you believe have been ratified.
Thus far the social contract is the only example anyone has mentioned. Please provide a full listing of the things you believe are ratified. This discussion is moot without that.
I think bundling different, unrelated things into one vote is not the right solution to concerns about too many votes.
Interesting. I thought this would be a simple uncontroversial fix. When we vote in the US I get a ballot with multiple measures on it. I don't get thirty separate ballots for each thing I'm voting on.
We presently have three things to be voted on (social contract ratification, community council amendments, and community council selection). Why do you want us to conduct three separate votes for them?
* Damian Johnson schrieb am 2017-04-04 um 21:03 Uhr:
I think bundling different, unrelated things into one vote is not the right solution to concerns about too many votes.
Interesting. I thought this would be a simple uncontroversial fix.
IIRC we discussed this in AMS and I also proposed not to put all issues into one vote. My impression was that we agreed on this. Again, I'd suggest to, at least, separate the voting of the council members from other issues.
When we vote in the US I get a ballot with multiple measures on it. I don't get thirty separate ballots for each thing I'm voting on.
That is different in Germany. We get separate ballots for separate things. However the maximum amount I had so far was five.
IIRC we discussed this in AMS and I also proposed not to put all issues into one vote. My impression was that we agreed on this. Again, I'd suggest to, at least, separate the voting of the council members from other issues.
I don't recall this but maybe it's just my memory (there were lots of discussions so easily possible I missed something). It's not a topic I care strongly about and was intended to help others, so happy to drop it hand have separate votes.
Damian Johnson:
So, let's drop that re-ratifying idea of the same things altogether. It creates more problems than it solves and does not add more legitimacy to previous decisions.
Hi Georg. I strongly disagree but this is a discussion I've had a few times so it's certainly a common concern. My reply the last few things is this: please enumerate the things you believe have been ratified.
Thus far the social contract is the only example anyone has mentioned. Please provide a full listing of the things you believe are ratified. This discussion is moot without that.
What about all the arguments I brought up in my mail against re-ratifying things? I see no discussion of a single one by you. Sure, you can strongly disagree without any counter-argument but that seems not a good idea to me.
I am not sure either why a full list of things already being ratified is an essential part of the discussion as my main point was a *general* one which IMO is valid even if we had not anything ratified by now. Be that as it may, the only item on that list so far is the social contract.
Georg
What about all the arguments I brought up in my mail against re-ratifying things?
Hi Georg. I read your post as saying "the social contract was on the blog, and therefore it's ratified". Our definition of ratification may be different. All I mean by the word is that it meets the bar set in...
https://gitweb.torproject.org/community/policies.git/tree/voting.txt
Does the social contract meet that bar? I don't know. I suspect it does which is why I asked Alison to put this to a vote (or a simple 'does anyone object?' consensus check would do the trick too). I simply need some affirmation that the social contract meets the bar set above. If folks would prefer not to affirm that then that's *perfectly* fine. It just won't be added to the repo of policies that have been ratified via this method.
Cheers! -Damian
tor-project@lists.torproject.org
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Alison -
Damian Johnson -
Georg Koppen -
Griffin Boyce -
Jens Kubieziel -
Silvia [Hiro] -
Yawning Angel