Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2014-04-08

[Samuli Suominen <ssuominen@gentoo.org>]

On 07/04/14 14:49, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 7:36 AM, Tom Wijsman <TomWij@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> This is also already present in GLEP 48[1]:
>>
>>     In the case of disagreement among QA members the majority of
>>     established QA members must agree with the action. Some examples of
>>     disagreements are whether the perceived problem violates the policy
>>     or whether the solution makes the situation worse.
>>
>> We know what to do; however, we can't do it if we're not addressed.
> So, I already sent this suggestion to qa@ last week, but:
>
> I would recommend that QA consider some questions that at least seem
> to be poorly understood (perhaps the process should be on the wiki):
> 1.  When should a QA member seek action regarding something in the tree?

Direct action? When there is something visibly broken[1], or a policy
has been violated

[1] The definition of broken doesn't apply to controversial design models,
for which...

...indirect action can be taken, like putting it on council's next agenda

> 2.  Does a QA member need to seek approval for their actions, and when?

When he wants to change something despite no policies being violated, nor
anything being actually broken[1]

[1] See above.

> 3.  When seeking approval, how should a QA member do so?  How long do
> they need to wait for a reply before taking action?

For long as it takes to get everyone available for a majority vote
and/or putting
it on council's agenda and waiting until the vote has been done in their
side.

> What we also don't want is a situation where one person in QA does
> something.  Then somebody else objects and undoes it pending a vote.
> Then the vote comes in and it gets reverted again.  Then the impacted
> developer appeals to council or the problem gets fixed and then the
> mask/etc gets dropped.  At that point all our users ragequit because
> they just had a package upgraded three times and downgrated twice.

That's why individual QA members, or even two of them, as some people
team up in a nasty way, shouldn't have too much powers to begin with.
For anything even slightly controversial, they should always seek for a
majority vote, and that vote should result in a clear action, like written
down policy/guideline.

I'm not sure where to draw the line between requiring a majority QA vote,
or when to push it to council.
Problem with just having a majority QA vote, is that the voting happens in
a unscheduled (or very late scheduled) meeting at IRC, and there isn't prior
discussion on the ML where objections could be raised by non-members.

Let's not make this a dictatorship. :-/

- Samuli