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Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 06:19:52 +0200
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Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] dont't abuse of "lazy concensus" on mail tagged
 [DISCUSS]
From: Benoit Chesneau <bchesneau@gmail.com>
To: "dev@couchdb.apache.org" <dev@couchdb.apache.org>
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On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 9:23 PM, Robert Newson <rnewson@apache.org> wrote:
> I'm not sure I fully agree. All the lazy consensus's of late have had
> a 72 hour window on them which is the same duration we use for couchdb
> releases.

This si another topic. Also votes on release need a majority of
approval, and are done on something that *should* have been tested
before the vote. But this is another topic.


>
> However, we can discuss what the minimum lazy consensus period can be
> based on what the minimum time that community members feel they can
> respond.
>
> I don't mean this as horribly as it will sound, but, to a degree, if
> someone can't take the time, in 3 days, to reply with '-1' to a
> thread, perhaps that's a problem too?

Not really. People are not expected to be on their computer all the
time. Some are disconnecting when they go in vacations for real. Some
can't connect at all to a public network because of their customer or
else for some time. The fact is that you can't expect that people
distributed in the world and work synchronously with you most of the
time. Dropping a mail on the mailing-;list on big topics an expecting
an answer in 72h is not really fear. Until you expect that people
works in sync on that topic.

 The whole point of lazy
> consensus is to move forward quickly. We don't always need to wait for
> a large number of +1's to get work done.


Lazy consensus is simply an announcement of 'silence gives assent.' When
someone wants to determine the sense of the community this way,"

http://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.htm


This is what I mean. And -1 can be properly ignored in lazy
concenssus. Lazy consensus are not about looking for a consensus at
all. A way to confirm an idea without any real discussion. A way to
make sure you're not the only one to think that way. I do think that
lazy consensus shouldn't be use for important topics that engage all
the community.

And I do think that asking for a short time in recent topics was used
as a convenience. They didn't require so much urgency. They could have
been handled in the week. Lot of projects outside couchdb do this way.
Even in companies.

>
> Finally, I'll agree that lazy consensus can be used inappropriately, I
> just don't think I agree that it's happened yet.

Some were borderline imo.

To take an example I don't think that the merge of bigcouch should be
done on lazy consensus, it should be a full vote. Because ii is more
than a technical changes. It can also be considered as a switch in the
philosophy of the project so giving more time to people to think about
it would be interesting. Giving the possibility to veto it or to
express their opinion too.  It may not change the result at all and
probably won't , but that not a reason.

- benoit