[vote] Update OpenWrt rules

[Imre Kaloz]

On Tue, 2025-10-28 at 13:25 +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:

<snip>

>>> If you don't have a strong opinion about a motion, there are two things
>>> you can do:
>>>
>>>   1. Just don't vote at all.
>>>   2. Explicitly cast a 'neutral vote' to say "I've seen this, and I
>>>      don't mind either way".
>>
>> So let's say we only vote for a few months about giving commit access to
>> people who you don't support yet you are not against them getting access
>> your two options are:
>>
>> 1. "Just don't vote at all", and you are now inactive - congratulations!
>> 2. Explicitly cast your neutral vote and make it a half-approval.
>
> What on earth is wrong with that? I mean, the *term* "half-approval" is
> a bit clumsy any maybe misleading but the effect is precisely what
> you'd desire, surely? You indicate your presence and you count towards
> the quorum, but without affecting the actual yes/no part of the vote
> either way. It's not a *no*, it's not a *yes*, it's mathematically in
> between when counting the votes to see if it passed.

I'm pretty sure 0 is right in the middle mathematically.

> (And as noted, it ought to be 2/3 not 1/2 for the maths to be truly
> correct).

I understand maths guarantee that there is no way neutrals alone to
flip a vote with 2/3. It still can be used to create a false sense of
support for revotes and invalidates the intent of a neutral vote.

>>> That's what the second option is for, to allow someone to explicitly
>>> say that they *were* present and paying attention for the purposes of
>>> quorum, but that they just didn't have a strong opinion about the
>>> actual question.
>>
>> The new proposal is taking away that option. What it achieves is basically
>> whenever you don't fully support the vote, you should always go against
>> it, even if it causes tension and drama in the community.
> 
> I don't understand why you think so.

Because the new rules would turn your neutrality to half-approvals when
they should be considered as half-disapprovals as well.

> How would you *want* this explicit "I'm here but don't care" neutral
> vote to be handled, if not how it's being proposed?

If you are asking what would be a fair solution, I would say that neutrals
should stay 0 and add them to the quorum. Given the inactivity clause is
supposed to fix most of your concerns, for a vote to pass, make the
requirement 2/3 of the active votes "yes" _or_ 50%+ of all people who have
voting rights.


Imre