[AFS3-std] AFS Standardization Proposal

[Simon Wilkinson]

On 20 Jul 2008, at 22:09, Jeffrey Altman wrote:

>>  The vote-taker should, around the same time nominations start, post
>>  a list of the eligible voters.
> I would feel uncomfortable defining participation.  Lurkers play an  
> important role in the
> community even if they are not frequently published documents or  
> even commenting
> on them.   Voting for the leadership in itself is an important  
> aspect of community
> participation.

Indeed. However, having a low bar to eligibility raises the spectre  
of vote-packing, where a large number of addresses join the list in  
the run up to an election purely to vote for a particular candidate.  
I'm not sure how we can avoid this, with any method for determining  
elegibility. Personally, I think that we're a sufficiently small  
community that we don't have to worry about these kind of attacks at  
the moment - if we grow to a scale where this is a problem, then  
hopefully we can evolve new systems as we grow.

> I'm not sure how I feel about posting the names of eligible voters.

The current proposal makes these names public by requiring that all  
list members be able to access the membership list. I think that  
having some form of transparency here is important, both as a method  
of exposing vote packing, and of double checking the counts produced  
by the chairs. Note that as part of the election process, the names  
of those who _voted_ is also publicly disclosed.

> We want them hosted by an organization that will survive a single  
> individual being hit
> by a bus, train, plane, etc.

This is critical, in my opinion. Beyond that, I don't really have a  
strong view on where they should be hosted, as long as the underlying  
data is sufficiently accessible that it can be moved elsewhere as  
required.

S.