Bylaw amendment mechanism and transparency

Community Elections and Referendums
#1

If 5% of registered members object, we will arrange a vote. If you wish to object, please e-mail board@gnome.org to register your objection before 12:00 UTC on May 16th 2022.

I have a question about this mechanism. How can we (those who don’t have access to the board@gnome mailbox) know how many objections have been raised?

If 12:00 UTC arrives and somebody posts “Too bad; not enough objections,” is that just to be accepted on faith?

And, perhaps more pertinently for practical debate, how can we know where the membership’s opinion stands before the magic moment? I.e., if there are people on the fence whose objection-mail might tip the balance and trigger an actual public vote, then knowing that fact before the carriage turns into a pumpkin could well have a major impact on their decision whether or not to send that private email.

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Consultation on bylaw amendment: allow non-member directors (withdrawn)
#2

Sure, this is true, but I guess if someone were to think the board is likely to be dishonest and sabotage the process, then surely this is probably not the most efficient way we could achieve our nefarious goals? :smile:

To provide an independently verifiable mechanism, do you think it would be sufficient to publish the number of objections received and the timestamps of the corresponding emails that were sent to the board mailing list? That would also provide a check against objection emails going to the wrong address or being caught in a spam filter.

The idea was that we needed an unambiguous process (for example, we did not think it would be appropriate to collect objections in this Discourse thread, where it might be ambiguous what is a critical comment and what is a formal objection.) Making it confidential means that people don’t feel pressured by other members, and this goes both ways — as you mentioned, it could tip someone either into objecting or not objecting. At least I expected, going in, that people would feel free to mention in public that they were objecting, if they felt comfortable sharing that.

#3

Just additionally to this, both myself and @zana are also on the board list, and I’d direct the membership and election committee to start a vote if the threshold was reached.

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#4

Sure, this is true, but I guess if someone were to think the board is likely to be dishonest and sabotage the process, then surely this is probably not the most efficient way we could achieve our nefarious goals? :smile:

I suppose the emoji here means you’re making light of this possibility, but I’ll go on record as saying that I don’t think it’s so inconceivable that it’s a suitable topic to dismiss via joke. “Trust us, I looked in the box and you definitely lost the vote” is as far away from transparency as you can get.

To provide an independently verifiable mechanism, do you think it would be sufficient to publish the number of objections received and the timestamps of the corresponding emails that were sent to the board mailing list?

It’s in the “necessary” column, but definitely doesn’t meet the bar of “sufficient” by itself.

The idea was that we needed an unambiguous process (for example, we did not think it would be appropriate to collect objections in this Discourse thread, where it might be ambiguous what is a critical comment and what is a formal objection.) Making it confidential means that people don’t feel pressured by other members,

All of this:

  • People expressing their opinion on the question
  • The opinions being tallied
  • The opinion of each individual remaining private and anonymous

sounds like you are trying to describe a referendum … but without actually having a vote.

How about just having the vote.

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#5

Whether the board observes the bylaws is a matter of law under the California corporate code, and the directors are legally obligated to perform as set out therein. The bylaws do not on the whole include specific requirements for transparency, but due to the nature of our community and carrying out some of the corporate processes in an online/distributed manner, we invest a significant amount of additional personal effort into ensuring this - such as publishing minutes of board meetings and providing mechanisms by which people can ensure their votes are counted in online elections.

Philip independently suggested exactly what I was thinking - if every potential objector is able to confirm via a list of timestamps or (anonymised) msgids that their objection has been counted at the end of the consultation period, this performs the same function as the unique tokens given to each voter which allows them to confirm whether votes are counted during director elections. I’m unclear why this is deemed insufficient - objectors who did not find their objection had been counted would be able to determine this.

We’re following the processes set out in the bylaws regarding amendments. Perhaps we’re mistaken, but our hope is that if the change is not overly controversial, the additional effort of arranging an EGM and a vote can be avoided. As you can hopefully understand we would prefer that the changes can be enacted ahead of the directors nomination period opening, otherwise we would normally carry out a vote during the AGM at GUADEC - but this would be too late. Aside from the insinuations that the board may be untrustworthy which I personally find quite draining, I think the level of engagement and discussion of the amendment so far on the forum here has been great and more detailed than I’ve seen at most AGMs.

#6

Quick reply here: you’re referencing things like “msgids” that were not in Philip’s message. So please do not imply that I’ve objected to something that I haven’t.

I believe it is quite possible to construct a verifiable means of counting objections. Loose references to possible components of one aren’t a complete solution, though. If you, Rob, are saying you’re committed to implementing one, then let’s get to it.

#7

While I’m at the keyboard: I made no such insinuations. I asked about the mechanism.

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#8

Hi Nate,

I believe I’ve outlined the process: at the end of the consultation period I will share the total number of objections received, and an anonymous list of a distinct property of the objection mails, allowing all who registered an objection to confirm whether their objection has been properly counted.

As to what that distinct property is - I don’t know enough about how different MUAs construct message IDs to know if sharing the local part could be deanonymised. Perhaps I can reply to each objection received with hash of the message ID that I will use, and how they can reconstruct/verify that hash?

My apologies; this was an over-reaction on my part. Previous boards have on occasion felt unfairly attacked on grounds of integrity and I was being overly defensive. I am happy to implement a (simple!) mechanism for transparency here; provided we can maintain anonymity for those who wish to retain it.

Many Thanks,
Rob

#9

I believe that sending a simple …I hate to say “token”, but you know what I mean… along those lines in reply to each email is good. But I think it’s also mandatory that a tally of the count be public during the running-clock period, not just a number posted after time runs out and it’s all over. Posting the hashed “receipts” or whatever in that tally would enable each person to verify that theirs has been included.

But having the running count be visible to everyone is vital, due to

  • the count taking place within an arbitrary time-limit
  • the fact that the clock started without prior notice
  • the fact that “silence” is registered as an “approve” vote

In fact, although I used the term “vote” earlier, that’s not really an accurate description. This is a lot more like signature-gathering in prep for an initiative or to qualify for being put on the ballot. In both of those circumstances, the number of signatures gathered as time elapses is vital.

(I think the details of reporting this status really ought to be forked out into a separate thread at this point, but I believe it is essential that the community to which the question is posed be able to see the count during the time period they’ve been given to respond to it, not merely after the fact.)

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#10

For transparency here, as of 2022-04-29T22:00:00Z we’ve received 5 objections, with local parts of the message-id being:

  • CAJ-e=JCZqUB73nuKFYF0DA0U1ZqhOb-kE5-1rDHbOKqty91C3g
  • e99b5039f06ffa84760fd45e78427b7aed956bc8
  • CAOthwd396hU5N1s1o_LVaNYAASi6Za+HGBtQxLw7jB-6zsT7dA
  • CAN_+j2vjuE6pXmc+pnu6LNU9TMJT7xnpqoc5D-NiJPaLkE3fLA
  • AS1P195MB14961C96F192872DCA14A3C0DEFC9
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#11

As a potentially silly point of order, what value has this been evaluated to?

#12

The Membership & Elections committee has the official word on the number of members and the date on which we are supposed to count them for this purpose, but here’s the assumption I’ve been making: I count 221 members currently on Membership – The GNOME Foundation. So to surpass a threshold of 5% would require 12 objections.