Re: Negative Votes (Re: workprocess - default process comments)

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

Tommie wrote:
| Terry asked:
| 
| >Could you explain what "unjustified negativism" means aside from
| >"difference of opinion"?
| 
| There are several types of "unjustified negativism" that should be
discouraged:

How do you detect and discourage them by requiring a justification?  You 
have to have a process for determining that a justification is inadequate,
and it has to operate within the span of time allotted for voting.

And how do you discourage unjustified positivism?  Surely "unjustified"
is in the mind of the beholder.

Required to say something, pro forma, some folks will have the nerve 
to give as justification,

  "Xena appeared to me in a dream and told me to vote no."

  "I have a premonition that Xena will appear to me in a dream and
   tell me to vote no."

  "I fear that if I vote no Xena ..."

Others, wary of scrutiny by their management, or worried that they'll
never get another job in the XML industry if they're flippant, may say
(and at least some of these are actually technical objections):

  "It's all too complicated."

  "Yuri would never have approved."

  "Tim Berners-Lee has different ideas."

  "I don't think we should vote this out of committee until we are
   sure it can be implemented."

|   * competitive (slowing or stopping a process for competitive reasons
is
|      not unheard of, but is rarely stated as a reason for a negative
vote);

So requiring justification of a negative vote won't stop it.  The
anticompetitive party can just cite something trivial, specious,
irrelevant, or unhelpful, or even be truthful but unhelpful:  "It 
won't work for us technically for reasons I can't divulge now, but 
we'll have a counterproposal Real Soon Now."

|   * personal (voting against something of little importanct to someone
|       because someone they dislike is for it may be petty, but does
|       plague some organizations); and

Same problem.

|   * unstated technical (This is the most important - if there are
technical
|       reasons why some proposal is unsound it is important that they be
|       stated in public.  A negative vote on technical grounds without
the
|       committee knowing and understanding what those technical grounds
are
|       doesn't allow the committee to address the problem.  This is the
reason
|       I suggest that a quote from a prior discussion and a pointer to
the
|       whole discussion is an OK reason - but not stating a reason could
be
|       a problem.)

Again, same problem.  You don't stop this by requiring a justification;
what you want here is "the *real* technical justification," and you can't
force it.

| I realize that people will always have hidden agendas, and that
competitive
| or personal reasons may underlie technical quibbles, but if some reason
is
| given for a negative vote it is possible for that reason to be refuted.
If
| no reason is given there is no way to address the concerns.

But there is no contribution to process made by refuting the objection
(even assuming the group can agree that it has been refuted), unless
you intend to void the negative vote.

So *allow* justification, don't *require* it.  

Again, we need to know what we intend the shape, flavor, and goals of
these committees to be in order to ground these discussions better.
Eduardo raises the question of voting as individuals or companies;
I note that the justification requirement seems to me more common in
orgs such as ISO that have formal delegations; we haven't envisioned
these TCs as having so much pomp.


regards, Terry

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