I agree that we’ll have to iterate to make asynchronous consent work closer to ideal. I think we’ll get there through experience, trial-and-error somewhat.
People should specifically make a point of doing the vote first before reading the later comments. It makes sense to make this intention explicit in the instructions we spell out. And @photm your use of the details hiding helps with this, so let’s perhaps spell that out too.
Also, we don’t have to assume objections delay by a week. Perhaps we say that if everyone who voted in the first week gets in their vote on an updated proposal, then either it’s done or maybe a small time buffer available such as 24 hours. The week frame would just be in case everyone needs that whole time.
It’s already given, because an objection is mainly an argument about why sth bad will happen, not the description of sth bad that will happen, i.e. if the reasoning changes, it’s a different objection. For instance:
Old objection: The proposal is not aligned with what people would expect us to do, thus it follows many patrons will unpledge.
Imagine this objection is disqualified, because it cannot be demonstrated that people would dislike whatever the decision is about.
New objection: Many patrons have already unpledged because we began implementing the decision, thus it follows people really do dislike it, thus more will unpledge.
Concern: In S3, consent decisions are used all over the place as part of other processes. However, if consent decisions take an entire week, this potential might be lost.
I’m not really happy with the details hiding, so let’s maybe play around with this some more, without explicit rules that we would need to change, until we’re sufficiently happy to put it into the instructions. My tensions about this are:
While the details of objections/concerns are hidden, the fact that there are objections, or the fact that there are concerns, is not hidden.
People receive notifications for these replies even though they should ignore them until they made up their mind.
The notification emails include the entire raw text of the replies, i.e. the details aren’t hidden there. It already happened to me that I accidentally read a few words that would’ve been hidden before considering whether I should currently be allowed to read them.
Once the poll is closed, having the details/summary stuff everywhere is fairly messy and annoying – we would have to edit everything. This can hopefully be done better.
Write objections/concerns into an etherpad, copy them into one huge post once the poll is closed.
That’s a great idea! I thought about how to determine the list of people to wait on before moving forward, and couldn’t get up with sth I liked. Making the resolving of an objection a special case and simply using the list of people who voted the first time seems like a good way to do this.
The way the proposal is phrased, there’s still another thing to try out: Once an objection is raised, people can discuss on how to integrate it. Once there’s a proposed edit to the proposal that would fix the problem, the poll is closed, the proposal edited and a new poll is opened.
This means if people are quick enough to raise their objections and integrate them, they won’t delay the process much. At the same time, there’s still the entire week for everyone to think about the final proposal.
I think we should try this first and then maybe change it when we review in two months.
I feel the details/summary stuff harms the discussion:
It’s very annoying to edit, because the live preview doesn’t show the hidden contents (Except if you unfold it, but it folds again once you continue typing)
It’s very annoying to read, because you need to unfold everything
It leads to very bad headings (that are intentionally designed not to convey information)
It’s very hard to find something you’ve read before (It happend multiple times to me already that I unfolded the wrong one of my “Concern 1”, “Concern 2” gadgets)
At least on my machine, they randomly fold if I scroll away from the posts and then back
You don’t have the accidentally-start-reading effect when scrolling along the text, reading becomes an intentional and annoying action
I think we should stop using it Fortunately, the proposal currently doesn’t mandate it, so this post is neither a concern nor an objection, so I’m not even breaking our new tradition here. I still do propose that we stop using it for concerns/objections too.
Not using details/summary would strengthen the problem of influencing each other, but I argue this is a good thing: This way, we will find out by experience whether influencing-each-other is a real problem we need to deal with, or whether it’s just a bikeshedding concern I raised.
I think we should try very hard to raise objections based on reason and not based on what the rest of the group does. We’ll see if we need to hide the rest of the group from us until we made the decision, or if we manage to do it by means of willpower.
I’m fine with the proposal to stop hiding objections/concerns. We can stick with the intention of considering our impressions before reading any concerns or objections. But indeed, we can see as we go how much we find that influence to be a problem.
Proposal is very long. I don’t think an initial process should start as something so complex. At least we need it down to something that my 11pm brain can process, otherwise it reduces my ability to participate by quite a bit (basically only on weekends when I won’t be tired from work).
edit: it’s possible that this is fix-able with formatting.
I very much like simplicity/shortness, so this is a great objection IMHO. Any ideas how we could fix this?
I think you might mean this by formatting: Reordering, adding headings, italicizing important stuff, etc but leaving the overall amount of text the same. Is this correct?
More radical ideas:
Define a simple process how you can object to the process that was used for a consent decision, and leave all the rest up to the initiator of the decision
Split all the non-mandatory bits out of the proposal, into a “recommendations for consent decisions” forum post that is not formally decided upon, but maybe discussed
Instead of a formal mechanism for disqualifying objections, allow the team to start special consent decisions in which only team members can participate
I like these so much that I would like to create a new, much simpler proposal (for a safety mechanism that gives us the confidence to do consent decisions in whichever way the initiator thinks is appropriate). However, I’m not 100% sure everyone else thinks this is the right thing to do – maybe people like the current proposal and want it to be fixed instead.
Before I write a new proposal, are there any objections to going forward like this? (I.e. reasons why this would not be a good step forwards toward a good agreement)
Objection (explain it in a reply to this post)
No Objection, but a Concern (explain it in a reply to this post)
No Objection, No Concern
0voters
(This poll breaks the rules of the current proposal, most importantly because it takes less than 1 week, but I think that’s appropriate.)
I think the problem is that the implementation and the consenting are just mixed together, making it harder to follow the initial proposal. I do think it was mostly formatting that made it hard for @smichel17 to understand. I think a new proposal could incorporate the best ideas with less words, more to-the-point (don’t as much explanation within the proposal itself).
I liked the idea of having some formal mechanism for disqualifying objections. I’m not sure what’s best.
I liked it too . However, if the new proposal will be open enough for arbitrary consenting processes, the concerned person can simply follow the disqualification process as described in the old proposal.
I think the question is about choosing between the following two strategies:
“Here’s a precise formal process for doing consent decisions on the forum.” (this topic)
“Decisions made by consent become effective, regardless of the process followed. However, the process should have [certain features]. If it doesn’t have these features, feel free to [object in a certain way].” (the proposed new topic)
I object myself, because it would not help with simplicity/shortness at all:
Thinking about the new proposal, I noticed that I would want to add most of the old proposal into it as an example process.
By talking about required-features-of-the-process instead of the-process-itself, the abstraction level rises, making it even harder to think about when tired.
Instead, I will try to:
Fix the formatting in the current proposal
Remove as much as possible without breaking it, i.e. most of the non-mandatory bits probably
I changed the proposal significantly, hopefully this resolves @smichel17’s objection.
All forum users reading this: You’re encouraged to read the proposal thoroughly and then participate below. If you don’t participate, you implicitly give consent – in that case, please do give your consent explicitly though.
What exactly is the concern that would motivate this amendment? I could imagine the concern is any of these:
“other objections are confronted and ignored” sounds like people might get a harsh treatment
People might feel uncomfortable with being explicitly disallowed to participate in sth, when being allowed is the default
“Make it clear that only team members can participate” might be hard to do in a way that stops people from accidentally participating
Maybe a better way to integrate the concern would be to remove the “other objections are confronted and ignored”, because a) this won’t happen often anyways, b) it is obvious that such objections would be ignored. Maybe “confronted” is a too strong word?
I just wasn’t sure there’s any technical way otherwise to limit voting to a particular group. It seems the easier to just show the poll to that group rather than show it to everyone but tell most people not to vote. If there were a way to restrict the voting without hiding the poll, that seems fine enough.
Concern is what to do if someone else votes or how to express the sentiment that they shouldn’t or how to pick out the team votes from a mixed vote etc.
I think it would be best to do a second consent decision afterwards, with a proposal to amend the agreement. This way, we could avoid further delay for the currently running consent decision. (Maybe this is a good way to deal with concerns in general.)
Side-note: Discourse was just updated to now allow polls anywhere to be formally restricted to a group or trust-level. If we care to do that, it’s an option without putting the poll in a restricted topic or category.
Fortunately, the proposal currently doesn’t mandate it, so this post is neither a concern nor an objection, so I’m not even breaking our new tradition here. I still do propose that we stop using it for concerns/objections too.
. However, if the new proposal will be open enough for arbitrary consenting processes, the concerned person can simply follow the disqualification process as described in the old proposal.
