On 21 April 2014 13:57, Stephen Gallagher <sgallagh@redhat.com> wrote:
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On 04/21/2014 03:42 PM, inode0 wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 2:08 PM, Stephen Gallagher
 
> I'll be watching with great interest as I too have considered
> proposing something based on consensus decision making for one of
> the other governance bodies in Fedora.
>

This is the tricky part. A consensus-based model is *very* difficult
to shoehorn into the system after the group has been established for a
long time. I think we have an opportunity to do so in the Server WG
right now because at least so far, we've managed to reach consensus on
almost everything anyway; we haven't really had to deal with splitting
on major decisions and fighting for swing votes.

But with groups like FESCo, the Board, FPC, etc. (not singling any
out), there's a long and entrenched history of majority-based
decision-making. The unfortunate side-effect there is that it has on
some occasions led to individuals or factions being unable to work
together (which is ultimately disfunctional).


I am going to need citations and analysis here. When I was on the board it was very driven by consensus and while there were +5 -4 votes .. the majority of them were not put to a vote until it was clear that a consensus had been reached as best as possible (eg if the vote was +5/-4 then it was taken off the table until it could be improved to being more than just enough to pass.) 

The bigger problem is that Fedora is a passion project for many many people who come to it. That brings a lot of emotion and conflict and as much as we can alleviate it.. it is something that we have to realize is always going to be there. If we don't want it to be a passion project any more it is going to take a lot more changing the voting systems


--
Stephen J Smoogen.