I’m writing mostly to the people lurking right now (and when it’s convenient I’ll post this to the list too).
PLEASE read through the governance proposal PEPs and ask any clarifying questions you have. This is the chance to do it before having to vote on them.
Right now, discussion has basically turned into just a few people talking about how they fundamentally disagree with the PEPs, which is not helpful feedback. But if you’ve read them and are unclear on how something will work, or have a minor suggestion (rather than a PEP-sized suggestion), we need to hear them now.
You should be able to click the “governance” tag on this post to see the others.
As I understand the voting scheme, ranking only allows us to fundamentally disagree with a single (i.e. the lowest ranked) PEP.
So we’re forced to rank multiple PEPs highly, even if we disagree with them. That in turn might have an impact on the PEP feedback — I’d expect it to be more passionate.
Perhaps, but there’s been very little “how does this work” feedback and a lot of “I don’t think this will ever work” feedback. If the latter is all we’re going to get, we may as well just do the vote already!
I’d like to have more constructive feedback before we actually vote
I’m not sure about the other authors but I am open to evolving my PEP to make it more palatable to any of us who don’t have a fundamental disagreement with it not including a new Dictator or Council.
If you are find the model fine except for some jarring details, be sure to let me know.
Just a reminder about the difficulty of email negotiation [1]:
Email negotiations are also fraught with misunderstanding, both because emotion and tone are difficult to convey accurately and because parties neglect to consider the other side’s perspective. Notably, email communicators are largely unaware of their limitations.
The following tips may help [2]:
Stamp out conflict. When rudeness is encountered, or you are angry, don’t respond immediately and don’t respond in kind. Instead, take a short break, and then contact your counterpart by phone, or email a simple statement of concern and schedule a face-to-face meeting as soon as possible. Conflict with emotional intensity is rarely ever resolved over email.
Ask more questions, not less. There is a tendency to limit your questions over email because it appears tedious. Don’t fall into this trap. To avoid lengthy and exhausting lists, start with broad questions, intersperse phone conversations to discuss the answers, and use shorter emails to group follow-up questions by topic.
Keep the climate positive. Maintain a friendly tone in emails. Interpret e-mail messages with caution and sensitivity, and leave room for personality, style and cultural differences. Make sure to clarify any ambiguities right away. And remember to use generally accepted best practices in email etiquette.
So you would be fine with an election with no prior debate? I find it important to exchange arguments for and against the various proposals. Otherwise we’re just measuring prejudices and a prioris.
I think there are two general types of debates we could have. One would be specific to an individual PEP (i.e. the term limits should be shorter in PEP xyz). The other is debate on which governance PEP should be adopted. Maybe we need a separate topic for the latter? We already have the former.
