On Sun, 26 Aug 2018 at 11:51, Carlos E. R. <robin.listas@telefonica.net> wrote:
I completely disagree here, Bryan, and I consider your post as trolling. You know very well how it works and has worked. We did not discuss whether or not we have personal opinions, we discussed ventilating disagreement with decisions democraticly taken.
I have to agree with Bryan. A board does not operate as a team. The individual members are appointed or elected because of their individual charm/ability/following/haircolour/experience/outlook/whatever. It is very important that the elected members remain true to that. It is the main thing they bring to the party. If a board member disagrees with a democratic decision, it is perfectly fine to point that out. Isn't it quite simply this - when I disagree with a decision made by the board, I would like to know that the board member I elected also disagreed?
Me too. I would like to know what each board member votes, so that next time we have to elect the board I can make an informed choice. This is simple democratic standards. I can know what each member of parliament said on camera or what each one voted, except when the vote was decided to be secret.
Would this same principle of openness apply to the membership votes? Both the election of Board members and any other special voting (such as those for constitutional change)? I imagine such a suggestion to be apocalyptic to community harmony, with Board members ignoring those who voted against them and favouring those who voted for them, with groups of members bickering amongst each other for voting contrary to their opinions. Many countries, even with very open democracies, have secret ballots for this very reason, to ensure that the electorate can vote based on their internal, personal views, without worrying about public reprisals for their decisions. Given the nature of many of the issues the Board has to vote upon, the ability for each Board member to vote based on their concious, knowing that the Board collectively will own the groups decision, is a freedom which I would miss if it were removed. To give a highly illustrative example with names removed to preserve the innocent. There is at least one person active on our mailinglists who has been the subject of a number of petitions to the Board for their removal from the Project, due to what I would describe as their persistent 'misalignment' with the rest of the Project. The Board has repeatedly evaluated that the person involved has not acted in a way that can be considered a breach of our guiding principles, but there is also no question that the person in question is a source of constant frustration for a significant proportion of the Project All of these petitions to the Board regarding this individual have been shot down on the grounds of being 'wrong' in the eyes of the Board to consider the removal of the person in question. (See all the other recent statements regarding everyone's acceptance of a healthy amount of dissent for more background) Any time this topic has been minuted, it has been done so with all details anonymised - giving a full public account of those votes would undermine the outcome of the vote protecting the member in question. Considering this example in a situation where Board votes were public, there would are two major differences I can forsee 1) The Board would be compelled to minute all of the details of who was involved in the petition to the Board, including the initiators of the complaints and the subjects - There is no way this is a good thing. People having a problem with others in the Project should feel they can reach out to the Board in confidence, and people accused of being disruptive to the Project deserve privacy. Even if the Board kept its current role as abitrators of disputes, such a model of disclosure would risk every dispute descending into a public trial of the individuals involved. 2) Individuals in the Board would likely be swayed by considering what was popular, not what was right. In this example, I think it's safe to argue that it would be a highly popular move to vote in agreement with the petition to remove the disruptive member, even though it would be an ethically incorrect one. I wouldn't want to be part of the Project that operated like that, but that is the pandoras box we risk opening if we go down this road. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org