[vote] Update OpenWrt rules

[David Woodhouse]

On Tue, 2025-10-28 at 15:50 +0000, Imre Kaloz wrote:
> On Tue, 2025-10-28 at 15:53 +0000, David Woodhouse wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > Well, for a start *whatever* the 'neutral vote' is defined to be by the
> > rules, that really ought to be the intent of the voter who, under those
> > rules, decides to cast precisely that 'neutral vote'. That's kind of
> > tautological.
> > 
> > But what do you believe *should* be the intent of a 'neutral vote'?
> > What is the option that the voter is most *likely* to need?
> > 
> > Isn't is precisely that "I am present, and active, and have observed
> > this motion. I should be counted towards quorum, but do not wish to
> > affect the arithmetic of the yes/no votes"?
> > 
> > And isn't that precisely what the neutral vote is *doing*, in the
> > proposed rules?
> 
> You conveniently ignore human psychology. Abstaining from the vote
> is another way of neutrality, especially if the question does not really
> matter to you and you don't want to just virtue-signal your presence.

Nah, it's not about virtue signalling. People who just want to signal
their presence could do that just as well with a random positive or
negative vote by the flip of a coin.

The neutral votes are precisely about the need for *quorum* — because a
motion shouldn't succeed purely because it was put forth during the
holidays, and only two people actually saw it and voted at all. The
neutral vote is *precisely* what you say here:

> Neutral votes that have been cast in the past included a reasoning,
> and they were not about "half-support" - they were mostly raising
> concerns without the preventing the majority from proceeding if they
> choose so.

Exactly that.

> The proposal wants to use neutral votes in favor of proposals and penalize
> abstaining people.

No, the proposal uses neutral votes precisely as you described them.
They're not in favour; the only count toward the quorum. You can think
of them as half in support, and half against. Balancing out.

(Except for the mathematical error which actually makes them slightly
more negative than they should be, as I pointed out, and which we
should fix in a subsequent tweak).

> <snip>
> 
> > > > 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.
> > 
> > Hm, I'm not sure I understand. How is a 'neutral vote' different to a
> > 'no vote' in that case?
> > 
> > Let's take an example....
> > 
> > There are 6 yes and 3 no votes, out of 20 active voters. So it's just
> > about a 'yes' by the votes cast but just short of the 50% quorum
> > required.
> > 
> > I don't care, but I cast a neutral vote, just to show that I *have*
> > been paying attention and that this isn't happening without my consent.
> > I want to be considered when counting the *quorum* against the 50%
> > threshold but basically don't want to be counted in the yes vs. no part
> > at all. Isn't that the option I should have?
> 
> The proposal wants to limit other options, it might be nice to worry about
> those as well ;)

Which other options do you feel are important to be included?

At the moment we have:

 • 'yes'
 • 'neutral'
 • 'no'
 • not voting at all

The first three are active choices, and count towards the quorum that
any decision requires. Depending on how you want to do the maths, you 
can assign numbers to them as (+1, 0, -1) or as (+1, +0.5, 0) and in
either case, a neutral vote shouldn't affect the yes/no part of the
outcome at all; it should *only* count towards the quorum. It's
*precisely* the 'not preventing the majority from proceeding' that you
mention.

> > What if we were to rephrase the 'neutral vote' explicitly in those
> > terms as counting towards the quorum threshold but not being included
> > in the yes/no tally at all? Would you be happy with that?
> 
> It's not about my happiness. Given I don't see recurring issues with votes
> passing yet, I have a hard time understanding why these are being pushed
> and other then the issues I've raised, what changes would they trigger really.

The point is that we have too many inactive voters and it's hard to
reach quorum using the existing rules.
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