XMPP Council - 2010-10-18


  1. ralphm waves

  2. Kev

    Evening Ralph.

  3. waqas

    Thanks stpeter :)

  4. stpeter

    waqas: :)

  5. waqas

    Hopefully my connection will survive for an hour.

  6. waqas

    The radar page in the topic is months out of date. Is there an agenda somewhere?

  7. Kev

    On the Council list.

  8. Kev

    Hi all, a possible agenda for tonight follows - please read and bash. 1) Roll call 2) Agenda bashing 3) XEP-220 (Dialback) This is Experimental - shall we issue a last call so we can move it up to Draft? 4) XEP-201 (Threads) Last call finished a while back on this. Are we ready to vote up to Draft? 5) Date of next meeting 6) Any other business

  9. ralphm

    I'm on a train. Let's hope I continue to have a connection.

  10. Fritzy

    just don't try to vote when you're in a tunnel. :)

  11. ralphm

    let's make it quick then. There shouldn't be a tunnel in the next half hour

  12. Kev

    Two minutes yet.

  13. Kev

    I don't see Matt online.

  14. waqas

    Haven't seen him today.

  15. stpeter

    yum, lunch

  16. remko

    dito, haven't seen him either

  17. Kev

    Righty, so.

  18. Kev

    1) Roll call.

  19. Fritzy

    here

  20. Kev

    Kev, Ralph, Nathan, Remko here.

  21. Kev

    2) Agenda bashing.

  22. Kev

    Anyone?

  23. remko

    no

  24. stpeter

    none

  25. Fritzy

    none..looks like the radar is pretty current

  26. stpeter

    Fritzy: amazingly

  27. Kev

    3) XEP-220 (Dialback) This is Experimental - shall we issue a last call so we can move it up to Draft?

  28. Fritzy

    +1

  29. ralphm

    +1

  30. ralphm

    It seems to nicely coincide with me having to fix some issues in Wokkel around that.

  31. Kev

    Remko?

  32. Fritzy

    :)

  33. stpeter

    ralphm: :)

  34. remko

    kev: i haven't read it :\

  35. remko

    Kev: i'll reply on list

  36. Kev

    It's dialback, it used to be in 3920 :)

  37. Kev

    But ok.

  38. Kev

    4) XEP-201 (Threads) Last call finished a while back on this. Are we ready to vote up to Draft?

  39. ralphm

    remko: you can read it during last call!

  40. remko

    oh ok

  41. remko

    if it's the same thing, +1 :)

  42. Kev

    The last thing that happened in the last call feedback on 201 was Peter saying he was going to go research IMAP.

  43. Fritzy

    I haven't seen much feedback on 201.

  44. remko

    kev: +1 on the last call for dialback, i misread it as an 'advance to draft'

  45. Kev

    "It seems that would be RFC 5322: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5256/ Thanks for the pointer, I'll give that a read."

  46. Kev

    stpeter: did you get anywhere with that?

  47. ralphm

    XEP-0201 is informational

  48. stpeter

    Kev: I added a reference to some IMAP specs, but they are not directly applicable

  49. Kev

    ralphm: Right, not Draft.

  50. stpeter

    as far as I can see, anyway

  51. Kev

    stpeter: So you're happy with it as-is?

  52. Kev

    If so, does anyone object to us scheduling a vote for Active for the next meeting?

  53. remko

    no

  54. Fritzy

    No objection. I think it's a good informational spec.

  55. ralphm

    has 201 been used much?

  56. stpeter

    Kev: I think it's fine as-is -- we might need to revise it again in the future after more people implement threads

  57. stpeter

    and do recall that it was connected originally with some Ian-isms like 155 and 116 :)

  58. stpeter

    but I think we've scrubbed most of that

  59. Fritzy

    I'm planning on making it the default behavior in a future release of Sleek.

  60. ralphm

    Fritzy: ah, nice

  61. Kev

    Ok, let's vote on that next time.

  62. ralphm

    +7

  63. Kev

    AOB? I have a query about voting of Council/Board that I was going to bring up on list today, but was busy.

  64. Kev

    Or, next meeting rather.

  65. Kev

    Same time next week?

  66. remko

    wfm

  67. Fritzy

    same time is ok

  68. ralphm

    hooray

  69. Kev

    So, elections.

  70. Kev

    The current bylaws are that the Council has an upper bound in size set by the members (currently 5), and that Council is made up of those people with the most votes, and an affirmative vote by the majority of voters, up to that limit.

  71. ralphm

    right

  72. stpeter

    oh no, voting rules again?!?

  73. Fritzy ducks.

  74. Kev

    stpeter: I think the rules are right, but memberbot is incorrect.

  75. Kev

    I think we changed it so that members shouldn't be limited to voting for five people.

  76. stpeter

    ahhhhh

  77. ralphm

    Revote!

  78. Kev

    Because with someone needing a affirmative majority, we could well end up without a full Council.

  79. stpeter

    ralphm: :P

  80. Kev

    e.g. 8 applicants, 2 people get a vote from all members, the other 6 share the votes just less than equally, and we only have two people on Council.

  81. stpeter

    seems unlikely, although possible

  82. Kev

    It's not that infeasible if we had e.g. 3 strong candidates and 5 less strong - not suggesting that we do.

  83. Kev

    I was wondering what other people thought.

  84. stpeter

    I'm all in favor of someting re-writing memberbot :)

  85. waqas

    Are the memberbot sources public by the way?

  86. Kev

    I don't think this particular change needs a rewrite, although I'm all in favour of someone doing so.

  87. stpeter

    waqas: they should be -- but in fact it would be better for someone to start fresh because the code is not very good

  88. waqas

    I have been writing some bots lately (for statistics), and was going to do one for filling forms.

  89. Kev

    Tobias has written such a thing for gsoc a couple of years ago, and Gislan (I think) wrote a memberbot plugin for sleekbot to replace the current memberbot.

  90. stpeter

    Kev: what do you suggest?

  91. Fritzy

    I could find some time to do a rewrite this week, I think.

  92. stpeter

    I don't think we can rewrite the bot in mid-stream

  93. Tobias

    Kev: and i even heard back from a single user from australia :P

  94. waqas

    Mine would be a plugin for Riddim (bot based on Prosody sources)

  95. Kev

    stpeter: no, I think we'd need to cancel the current votes and redo them.

  96. stpeter

    erk

  97. Kev

    waqas: I'm opposed to using Riddim unless someone commits to making it work :)

  98. Kev

    I run Riddim in a couple of places, and it's great if you're willing to kill it and restart it when it falls over, but that's pretty often.

  99. stpeter

    Kev: but members still have only 5 votes -- the difference is in how they're counted

  100. Kev

    stpeter: Why do they only have five votes, though?

  101. stpeter

    so the problem is that you need to decide for whom you want to vote before you start

  102. waqas

    Kev: We were planning on making packages, and it'll probably get plugin reload without restart soon, same as Prosody.

  103. Kev

    This isn't a bylaws thing, justsomething we've traditionally done.

  104. stpeter

    or, if you don't like how things went, ask Alexander to throw out your votes and start again

  105. stpeter

    um

  106. Kev

    The problem isn't memberbot, it's that we're artificially limiting members to five votes.

  107. stpeter

    well, we're electing 5 people -- why would you get 8 votes?

  108. stpeter

    we're asking you to affirmatively state that you want these 5 people on the Council

  109. remko

    which doesn't really happen

  110. Kev

    Right, but each person must have >50% people voting affirmatively on them.

  111. stpeter

    if we're going to change the voting system, we might move to preference voting or somesuch

  112. remko

    why not ask which people you would want on council, be it more or less than 5

  113. waqas

    Unless the names are randomized for each voter, the first five probably get significantly more votes :/

  114. remko

    i thought they were randomized these days

  115. Kev

    They are.

  116. stpeter

    you look at the list of candidates, decide "I was Alice, Bob, Charlie, David, and Elizabeth" and vote yes for them, no for everyone else

  117. stpeter

    waqas: they are randomized

  118. Kev

    stpeter: Yes, I understand how to vote :)

  119. ralphm

    I always decide before I start voting what my votes will be

  120. stpeter

    Kev: so what's the problem?

  121. ralphm

    I don't really see an issue

  122. stpeter

    I don't see anything to change here

  123. stpeter

    at least not for this year

  124. Kev

    Let's say we have 12 people standing next year.

  125. Kev

    and the votes go something like (making it up, they won't add up right)

  126. stpeter

    if folks want to have a long debate about voting processes for 2011, I'm all for it

  127. Kev

    45% 45% 45% 45% 45% 30% 30% 30% 30% 30% 20% 20%

  128. ralphm

    I suggest fixing the voting system when we get into trouble

  129. Kev

    We end up with no council

  130. ralphm

    it's not like we can't fix stuff after it breaks down

  131. Fritzy

    I need to get going.

  132. Kev

    Or no board, I think, because Board elections have the same 50% requirement in the bylaws iirc.

  133. Kev

    Anyway, as long as people are convinced there isn't a problem, I'll go sit quietly in the corner.

  134. ralphm

    :-D

  135. stpeter

    Kev: I suggest we burn that bridge when we come to it

  136. Kev

    Ok.

  137. Kev

    AOAOB?

  138. stpeter

    I see the concern (now)

  139. ralphm

    I think the bylaws have a provision for solving unforseen issues by ubermajority

  140. stpeter

    nod

  141. Kev

    Ok, no other business then.

  142. stpeter

    Kev: I suggest you hold your breath, then bring this up after the current round of elections :)

  143. Kev

    In that case, Thanks all, see you next week.

  144. remko

    thanks

  145. Kev

    I'll do some minutes tomorrow morning probably.

  146. Kev bangs the gavel.

  147. stpeter

    somehow I had not seen the possibility of this :(

  148. stpeter

    anyway, for Council we'll issue a Last Call for comments on XEP-0220 and expect some more votes on XEP-0201

  149. Kev

    stpeter: Well, we'll LC on 220, and Council will vote on 201 next week.

  150. stpeter

    ah

  151. stpeter

    WFM

  152. stpeter

    won't next week's meeting be the last one of this term?

  153. Kev

    Probably, I've not looked at dates.

  154. stpeter looks for the XSF member meeting on the calendar and doesn't find it

  155. ralphm

    ah, so it the 25th

  156. stpeter

    yes

  157. ralphm

    an hour after council meeting starts

  158. stpeter

    I just asked for clarification about the time

  159. stpeter

    19:00 UTC?

  160. Kev

    For Council or Members?

  161. Kev

    Council is 18:00 UTC next week.

  162. stpeter

    Members

  163. ralphm

    it says so in the announcment

  164. stpeter

    I missed the announcement :P

  165. Kev

    I never received an announcement.

  166. Kev

    I only knew voting had started because memberbot appeared online.

  167. stpeter

    there were some emails on the list

  168. Kev

    I had the initial meeting announcement back on Sept 20th

  169. Kev

    But not one to say proxy voting had started.

  170. Kev

    The initial announcement said 1900

  171. ralphm

    it was sent on sept 9

  172. ralphm

    eh, 8

  173. Kev

    ralphm: What was?

  174. Kev

    Ah, that mail.

  175. ralphm

    the meeting notice

  176. Kev

    Yes.

  177. Kev

    Not the voting announcement :)

  178. stpeter

    ok

  179. stpeter

    calendar updated

  180. Kev

    Thanks.

  181. ralphm

    it also noticed voting

  182. ralphm

    starting at oct. 1

  183. Kev

    Yep. Which didn't happen, as far as I know.

  184. stpeter

    Kev: I'd prefer to debate voting procedures after this round -- the scenario you raise becomes more likely as we have more candidates, but there is also the possibility that we have 5 candidates for 5 positions and one of them is deeply unpopular (receives only 20% of the vote or whatever) and then the person would be voted in despite receiving all those no votes

  185. Kev

    I'm not proposing changing the bylaws, which I think are right.

  186. Kev

    I think it's right that if 90% of membership think someone is unsuitable that they won't get in.

  187. stpeter

    I thought perhaps you were suggesting that we remove "with the proviso that no individual receiving less than a majority of votes cast shall be elected"

  188. Kev

    The problem I see is that membership aren't given the chance to say whether each candidate is suitable or not :)

  189. Kev

    No, I believe that is absolutely right to have.

  190. Kev

    Membership are able to express up to five people who they think are suitable, but in the current voting system (not the bylaws, just how we count votes) it says nothing about their opinion of the other X people standing.

  191. stpeter

    ah

  192. stpeter

    sure

  193. stpeter

    so we need preference voting :)

  194. stpeter

    rank them all from 1 to 8 or whatever

  195. stpeter

    I mean, all of these folks would be qualified

  196. ralphm

    or 'abstain' per candidate, next to yes and no

  197. Kev

    I don't think that's even true.

  198. stpeter

    it's hard to vote "no" on any of them

  199. Kev

    I think ideally we have a two vote system.

  200. Kev

    Or two-track, rather.

  201. waqas is curious if HAL would get any votes if he stood

  202. stpeter

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method

  203. ralphm

    Time's up. Eindhoven

  204. Kev

    One track for voting for each member if they're suitable or not (this should be >50% for any member of Council), and one track for expressing preference.

  205. stpeter

    ralphm: tot ziens!

  206. stpeter

    too complicated

  207. Kev

    And no, I've frequently believed people have stood for Board/Council who weren't qualified :)

  208. stpeter

    well sure :)

  209. Kev

    So simply the X most popular isn't a reasonable metric, because that could pick people who everyone unanimously believes are unqualified, given a scarcity of competent candidates.

  210. Kev

    This is terribly unlikely to be the case this year.

  211. stpeter

    so we either live with the consequences and hope for better candidates next time, or modify the voting process

  212. Kev

    But then next year, when only 5 people stand, one of whom joined the XSF because it was cool and hasn't ever read or understood a XEP...

  213. stpeter

    heh

  214. stpeter

    brb

  215. stpeter goes back to completing his AD review of https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpstate-cookie/