[AFS3-std] (no subject)

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

On Sat, 19 Jul 2008, Jake Thebault-Spieker wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 1:19 PM, Jeffrey Hutzelman <jhutz+@cmu.edu> wrote:
> >
> > * Section 2.2.2:
> >  With regard to eligibility, I think rather than "subscribed as of X",
> >  it might be better to do something involving both actual participation
> >  and a period of time.  For example, a requirement that someone have
> >  made a substantive post sometime in the previous 18 months, where
> >  "substantive" means something which is part of an on-topic technical
> >  discussion (including just expressing support for a proposal, but not
> >  organizational issues), and is determined by the vote-taker subject to
> >  appeal.
>
> To what end? If "substantive" is determined by the vote-taker, this
> requires not only scouring of the mailings over the last 18 months,
> and is also relatively subjective. Yes, there could be a loose
> definition of "substantive", where the vote-taker follows what he/she
> deem to be under these guidelines, but even then, the guidelines are
> open to interpretation.
>
> I'm not entirely opposed to the idea, I do feel however that
> attempting to explicitly define something that may or may not be
> easily defined could lead to interpretation problems. Just my $0.02.

While "substantive" is somewhat subjective, I don't intend it to be very
much so -- basically, if you are participating, you are in.  If you are
spamming, or asking inane questions on the wrong list, you are not.


Any guidelines for who is eligible are going to require some
interpretation.  For example, if a person is subscribed more than once
with different addresses, that does not mean they get to vote more than
once.  The safeguard for criteria that are subject to interpretation is
that the process requires posting of a list of eligible voters, far enough
in advance that people can point out problems or, if necessary, appeal.
The actual counting of votes applies a very objective criteria -- every
person on the published list gets exactly one vote.

-- Jeff