Re: [VOTE][RFC] Safe Casting Functions

Stanislav Malyshev wrote on 27/11/2014 01:03:

Hi!

I don't know if it would make a difference here, but I wonder if it would be sensible to add an "abstain" option in votes? That way, someone who has considered an RFC but not formed a strong opinion either way could register that fact. This could even be paired with

You could register that fact by not voting. Why there should be a record that particular person has no idea what to vote for?

There's a difference between "has no idea", which implies ignorance, and "has no strong opinion", which implies ambivalence. Registering an abstention means "I have read and understood this proposal, but I do not feel strongly enough to support any of the voting options presented". Like any vote, that could be followed up by an e-mail explaining the reasoning behind it. It might not suit our circumstance, but distinguishing between "didn't vote" and "registered an abstention" is quite common in the world at large. Interestingly, the UK parliament doesn't have a mechanism for it, so MPs will sometimes walk across the House to get themselves listed as voting both for and against a motion in order to indicate it.

the notion of a "quorum", i.e. a minimum vote count demonstrating that the outcome of the vote is not the accidental result of "missing" votes, say because several people happened to be on holiday or busy.

If there are people too busy to vote but interested in the topic, then they could ask to extend the vote or postpone if - if there are enough such people, I do not see why anybody would deny such request. If people are too busy to even communicate - then I'm not sure what there is to be done about it. I'm not sure how "quorum" would help - say, there is no "quorum" - so what we do? Just not vote until... what happens? Hold indefinitely long votes? Repeat votes until arbitrary threshold is passed and then argue if that was "accidental" or "gamed" or anything else? I'm not sure it would be better than holding a straight vote.

Yes, I think a strict numeric quorum requirement is probably overkill for this situation, I just thought I'd mention it. It works well with a committee or parliament where turnout is expected to be close to 100%, because passing on 50% of a 50% turnout is clearly problematic. But in our case, I'm not even sure what the total number of people who could vote is, but I suspect there are many who almost never do, making any hard limit rather arbitrary. To be clear, I think abstentions still make sense without a quorum requirement (just not vice versa). Regards, -- Rowan Collins [IMSoP]