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Appeal procedure for DAM actions

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  Appeal procedure for DAM actions Joerg Jaspert <da-manager@debian.org> - 2019-01-07 23:40 +0100
    Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Jonathan Wiltshire <jmw@debian.org> - 2019-01-08 00:50 +0100
    Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org> - 2019-01-08 11:50 +0100
      Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org> - 2019-01-08 12:30 +0100
        Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org> - 2019-01-08 12:40 +0100
          Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org> - 2019-01-08 13:10 +0100
    Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Kurt Roeckx <kurt@roeckx.be> - 2019-01-08 16:20 +0100
      Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Joerg Jaspert <joerg@debian.org> - 2019-01-08 21:50 +0100
    Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Karsten Merker <merker@debian.org> - 2019-01-08 22:30 +0100
      Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Joerg Jaspert <da-manager@debian.org> - 2019-01-08 23:40 +0100
        Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2019-01-09 14:20 +0100
        Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Karsten Merker <merker@debian.org> - 2019-01-10 00:00 +0100
          Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Kurt Roeckx <kurt@roeckx.be> - 2019-01-10 09:50 +0100
            Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Kurt Roeckx <kurt@roeckx.be> - 2019-01-10 10:00 +0100
          Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Ulrike Uhlig <ulrike@debian.org> - 2019-01-10 15:50 +0100
            Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Jonathan Wiltshire <jmw@debian.org> - 2019-01-11 00:50 +0100
              Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@gmail.com> - 2019-01-11 10:00 +0100
    Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au> - 2019-01-09 02:10 +0100
      Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Ulrike Uhlig <ulrike@debian.org> - 2019-01-09 11:30 +0100
        Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@gmail.com> - 2019-01-10 14:10 +0100
          Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Ulrike Uhlig <ulrike@debian.org> - 2019-01-10 15:50 +0100
      Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> - 2019-01-10 15:10 +0100
    Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Jonathan Wiltshire <jmw@debian.org> - 2019-01-09 16:40 +0100
    Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Kurt Roeckx <kurt@roeckx.be> - 2019-01-09 16:50 +0100
      Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Pierre-Elliott Bécue <becue@crans.org> - 2019-01-09 19:10 +0100
        Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Luke Faraone <lfaraone@debian.org> - 2019-01-09 19:30 +0100
          Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Kurt Roeckx <kurt@roeckx.be> - 2019-01-09 19:50 +0100
            Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@gmail.com> - 2019-01-10 14:00 +0100
    Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@debian.org> - 2019-01-09 19:50 +0100
      Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Joerg Jaspert <joerg@debian.org> - 2019-01-09 21:20 +0100
    Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> - 2019-01-26 10:40 +0100
      Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> - 2019-01-26 17:20 +0100
        Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> - 2019-01-28 10:00 +0100

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#10187 — Appeal procedure for DAM actions

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Hello everyone,

One of the things that emerged from the recent discussions around DAM actions 
is that we are missing a way to review or appeal DAM's decision.  Currently 
the only way to do this is running a full-featured GR, with all the negative 
side effects such a process has.

While a GR is a constitutional right, and the procedure we lay out here does 
NOT take that away, we feel there is a need for a less drastic procedure that 
would allow double-checking of DAM actions without escalating into a 
project-wide dispute.

With this message we define a way to appeal a DAM action, that balances 
between involving other members in the review, and ensuring that we have 
sufficient independent oversight.

Although this defines a pretty strict timeline for the procedure to avoid a 
long-running process, we waive the time limit defined in §1 for the cases from 
the last 6 months.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Appealing DAM decisions
--------------------------
Any person who had their Debian membership suspended or revoked by DAM may 
appeal the decision. They must request the appeal within 30 days, stating why 
they disagree with the decision in a mail to DAM. DAM will notify the New 
Members Committee (NMC)[1][2] and Front Desk.

The original action taken by DAMs remains in force during the appeal.


2. DAM statement
----------------
Within 72 hours DAM will provide a statement to the NMC and the appealer with 
their reasoning for the account status change.

DAM may also send additional material to the NMC only, encrypted to the 
individual members, if they deem it necessary for the case, and if presenting 
this to a wider public might cause issues of confidentiality for involved 
third-parties. The NMC members are expected to avoid disclosing this material 
to anyone else, including the appealer.[3]


3. Appealer statement
---------------------
Within a further 72 hours, the appealer has the opportunity to respond to the 
DAM statement with their own statement.


4. NM Committee review
----------------------
The NMC has 7 days to review the received material and discuss the matter in 
private. They are expected not to solicit further input, as this is not an 
inquiry but a peer review of the DAM decision.


5. NM-Committee vote
--------------------
After 7 days discussion, or earlier if unanimously agreed by the NMC, 
NM-Frontdesk will ask the secretary to conduct a secret, 3-day-long vote, with 
the following options:

 1. Uphold the decision of the DAMs
 2. Overturn the decision of the DAMs

Committee members otherwise involved in a case must abstain.
DAM members are not allowed to partake in the vote.

A simple majority decides the vote; in the event of a tie, the decision is not 
overturned.

Abstained or absent votes are not counted. If more than half of the NMC 
(excluding DAM) abstain or do not vote, the decision is not overturned.

An independent Developer, usually the project secretary, conducts the vote. In 
the event that the secretary is a partly involved in the case, DAMs will work 
with the DPL to identify a suitable developer.


6. Action
---------
If the decision is overturned, the suspension or revocation of the account 
will be turned into a warning. The previous account status will be reactived 
and all changes to it undone at the earliest of the involved teams 
convenience.[5]

If the decision is upheld, this process, like anything in Debian, does not 
prevent a GR.


Footnotes:

[1] The NM-Committee is defined as:
        - All members of DAM and FrontDesk.
        - All application manager that are marked as active and 
          processed at least one NM in the last 6 months.
    There is a mail alias <nm-committee@nm.debian.org> which reaches all 
    members, it is regularly regenerated by FrontDesk.


[2] At this point, frontdesk will ensure that the NM committee will not 
    be updated until after the case, to avoid a membership change in the 
    middle of an appeal process.


[3] This hopefully minimizes the risk of disclosing information that was 
    given to DAM in confidence. The appealer is not included as in some 
    situations it may be used to further harass the reporters.

[5] It involves keyring-maint and DSA, none of which we can or should 
    dictate timelines to. It is expected to be measured in days, not weeks.

-- 
bye, Joerg

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#10188

On Mon, Jan 07, 2019 at 11:27:35PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote:
> 1. Appealing DAM decisions
> --------------------------
> Any person who had their Debian membership suspended or revoked by DAM may
> appeal the decision. They must request the appeal within 30 days, stating
> why they disagree with the decision in a mail to DAM. DAM will notify the
> New Members Committee (NMC)[1][2] and Front Desk.
> 
> The original action taken by DAMs remains in force during the appeal.

To clarify following a query in private: the notification to the committee
includes the rationale given by the Developer. DAM handling the
various notifications is purely to reduce the admin burden on the appealer,
not to keep secrets from the committee.


-- 
Jonathan Wiltshire                                      jmw@debian.org
Debian Developer                         http://people.debian.org/~jmw

4096R: 0xD3524C51 / 0A55 B7C5 1223 3942 86EC  74C3 5394 479D D352 4C51

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#10206

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On Mon, Jan 07, 2019 at 11:27:35PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote:

> 1. Appealing DAM decisions
> --------------------------
> Any person who had their Debian membership suspended or revoked by DAM may
> appeal the decision. They must request the appeal within 30 days, stating
> why they disagree with the decision in a mail to DAM. DAM will notify the
> New Members Committee (NMC)[1][2] and Front Desk.

In case two people appeal at the same time, the NMC should not have to
discuss multiple issues in parallel.

if an appeal is requested while another appeal is already ongoing,
starting the later appeal is delayed until after the committee has
finished voting on the previous ones.


Enrico

-- 
GPG key: 4096R/634F4BD1E7AD5568 2009-05-08 Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org>

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#10209

On 2019/01/08 12:43, Enrico Zini wrote:
>> 1. Appealing DAM decisions
>> --------------------------
>> Any person who had their Debian membership suspended or revoked by DAM may
>> appeal the decision. They must request the appeal within 30 days, stating
>> why they disagree with the decision in a mail to DAM. DAM will notify the
>> New Members Committee (NMC)[1][2] and Front Desk.
> 
> In case two people appeal at the same time, the NMC should not have to
> discuss multiple issues in parallel.
> 
> if an appeal is requested while another appeal is already ongoing,
> starting the later appeal is delayed until after the committee has
> finished voting on the previous ones.

If I read the original text correctly in item 1 above, it seems that
only the person who's rights got revoked can appeal?

If that's the case, are you talking about multiple appeals from people
who have had their membership revoked, or is it that I interpreted it
wrong and that anyone can appeal?

-Jonathan

-- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  Debian Developer - https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
  ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀  Be Bold. Be brave. Debian has got your back.

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#10210

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On Tue, Jan 08, 2019 at 01:21:20PM +0200, Jonathan Carter wrote:

> If I read the original text correctly in item 1 above, it seems that
> only the person who's rights got revoked can appeal?

Yes, correct.

> If that's the case, are you talking about multiple appeals from people
> who have had their membership revoked, or is it that I interpreted it
> wrong and that anyone can appeal?

I'm clarifying the corner case in which two people have had their
membership revoked, and are in a position to appeal in overlapping time
frames.

This should almost never happen, but given that we have waived the time
limit for the cases in the last 6 months, we have potentially
overlapping time frames now.


Enrico who unfortunately cannot run this kind of procedure through
       valgrind --tool=helgrind

-- 
GPG key: 4096R/634F4BD1E7AD5568 2009-05-08 Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org>

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#10211

On 2019/01/08 13:38, Enrico Zini wrote:
>> If that's the case, are you talking about multiple appeals from people
>> who have had their membership revoked, or is it that I interpreted it
>> wrong and that anyone can appeal?
> 
> I'm clarifying the corner case in which two people have had their
> membership revoked, and are in a position to appeal in overlapping time
> frames.

Ah, thanks for clearing that up.

> Enrico who unfortunately cannot run this kind of procedure through
>        valgrind --tool=helgrind

I'm not familiar with valgrind, so I'll take your word for it.

-Jonathan

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#10215

On Mon, Jan 07, 2019 at 11:27:35PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote:
> 
> we waive the time limit defined in §1 for the cases
> from the last 6 months.

Would it make sense to have them 1 week from publishing this
instead?


Kurt

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#10225

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On 15276 March 1977, Kurt Roeckx wrote:

>> we waive the time limit defined in §1 for the cases
>> from the last 6 months.
> Would it make sense to have them 1 week from publishing this
> instead?

Thanks for that. Yeah, that offer is not valid forever, but as we normally say
30 days, lets make it 14 days here. That is, the offer is valid until
2019-01-21, that should be enough time to decide if one wants to do it or not.

-- 
bye, Joerg

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#10227

On Mon, Jan 07, 2019 at 11:27:35PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> One of the things that emerged from the recent discussions around DAM
> actions is that we are missing a way to review or appeal DAM's decision.
> Currently the only way to do this is running a full-featured GR, with all
> the negative side effects such a process has.
> 
> While a GR is a constitutional right, and the procedure we lay out here does
> NOT take that away, we feel there is a need for a less drastic procedure
> that would allow double-checking of DAM actions without escalating into a
> project-wide dispute.

Hello,

many thanks for working on an appeals process on a "lower" level
than a full GR; I appreciate that very much.  IMHO there is one
design flaw in the voting process though, that could (doesn't
have to, but could) lead to a significant bias against the
appealer, so I think this flaw needs be addressed before
the new rules are actually applied.  For details, please see
below.

> 4. NM Committee review
> ----------------------
> The NMC has 7 days to review the received material and discuss the matter in
> private. They are expected not to solicit further input, as this is not an
> inquiry but a peer review of the DAM decision.

I'm not sure whether I understand correctly what exactly is meant
by "[The members of the NMC] are expected not to solicit further
input" - does that mean that the members of the NMC are not
allowed to ask questions about facts outside/above those
explicitly presented by DAM and those contained in the written
appealer statement, i.e. the NMC members are forbidden to do any
sort of research about the situation on their own?  If yes, that
would seem like an inappropriate limitation to me.

> 5. NM-Committee vote
> --------------------
> After 7 days discussion, or earlier if unanimously agreed by the NMC,
> NM-Frontdesk will ask the secretary to conduct a secret, 3-day-long vote,
> with the following options:
> 
> 1. Uphold the decision of the DAMs
> 2. Overturn the decision of the DAMs
> 
> Committee members otherwise involved in a case must abstain.
> DAM members are not allowed to partake in the vote.
> 
> A simple majority decides the vote; in the event of a tie, the decision is
> not overturned.
> 
> Abstained or absent votes are not counted. If more than half of the NMC
> (excluding DAM) abstain or do not vote, the decision is not overturned.

This rule can lead to a significant bias of the process results
against the appealer.  Imagine the situation that we have 20
people (including DAM) in the NMC, so 17 people are allowed to
vote.  Of these 17 people, 9 cast a vote, 8 vote for overturning
the original decision, one person votes against overturning it,
i.e. we have a result of ~88% to ~11% for overturning the
original DAM decision and the expulsion gets reversed.

Now lets assume that the one person who voted against overturning
the original decision doesn't cast a vote.  The same 8 people as
before vote the same as before, so we get a result of 100% for
reversing the expulsion, but suddenly simply by the one person who
has beforehand voted _against_ a reversal choosing not to cast a
vote, the result of the vote is inversed and the appealer is
expelled even though there has been an unanimous vote that he
should stay a DD, so this rule can clearly cause completely bogus
results.

In previous discussions about a GR to overturn a DAM decision
some people have expressed the sentiment that even though they
personally thought that a specific DAM decision was wrong, they
wouldn't vote in a GR to overturn this decision because that
could be be interpreted as a signal of general distrust in DAM
that they didn't want to send.  The same social effect can also
happen within the NMC and make people abstain from their vote
with the intention of staying neutral on the matter, but as shown
above, abstaining is not a neutral action but biases the result
against the appealer, and this is IMHO a serious flaw.  The
smaller the number of people in the NMC, the higher is the chance
that the decision of a single NMC member to abstain from the vote
causes a bogus result.  Therefore the clause "If more than half
of the NMC (excluding DAM) abstain or do not vote, the decision
is not overturned" would IMHO need to be removed completely from
the rules.

Regards,
Karsten
-- 
Gem. Par. 28 Abs. 4 Bundesdatenschutzgesetz widerspreche ich der Nutzung
sowie der Weitergabe meiner personenbezogenen Daten für Zwecke der
Werbung sowie der Markt- oder Meinungsforschung.

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#10228

On 15276 March 1977, Karsten Merker wrote:

>> 4. NM Committee review
>> ----------------------
>> The NMC has 7 days to review the received material and discuss the matter 
>> in
>> private. They are expected not to solicit further input, as this is not an
>> inquiry but a peer review of the DAM decision.
> I'm not sure whether I understand correctly what exactly is meant
> by "[The members of the NMC] are expected not to solicit further
> input" - does that mean that the members of the NMC are not
> allowed to ask questions about facts outside/above those
> explicitly presented by DAM and those contained in the written
> appealer statement, i.e. the NMC members are forbidden to do any
> sort of research about the situation on their own?  If yes, that
> would seem like an inappropriate limitation to me.

As written, it is not an inquiry. But a check of the decision that DAMs have
made. NMC should not need to dig around for long. And should not be forced by
someone claiming "but if you only ask this one more, or this one, then you MAY
see the light". Nah. Its both sides giving their views, and the NMC deciding
on that. End. If one side can not present enough to support their case, then
their case fails, it shouldn't be up to the NMC to dig out the stuff for them.

Of course we can not forbid them to (say) use google or something, if they
want to. But thats their own personal fun, not required of the process.

>> 5. NM-Committee vote
>> --------------------
>> After 7 days discussion, or earlier if unanimously agreed by the NMC,
>> NM-Frontdesk will ask the secretary to conduct a secret, 3-day-long vote,
>> with the following options:
>> 
>> 1. Uphold the decision of the DAMs
>> 2. Overturn the decision of the DAMs
>> 
>> Committee members otherwise involved in a case must abstain.
>> DAM members are not allowed to partake in the vote.
>> 
>> A simple majority decides the vote; in the event of a tie, the decision is
>> not overturned.
>> 
>> Abstained or absent votes are not counted. If more than half of the NMC
>> (excluding DAM) abstain or do not vote, the decision is not overturned.

> [Description of how the vote can turn out bad for the person]

Well. I see your point. But I do disagree with your solution:

> Therefore the clause "If more than half of the NMC (excluding DAM) abstain
> or do not vote, the decision is not overturned" would IMHO need to be
> removed completely from the rules.

I don't think so. We don't want to end up with a system where, say, you "just"
put pressure on a dozen people to abstain, then have "your friend" vote
overturn, and boo, all is fine again.

So while I agree there might be possible improvements in how the vote goes, I
don't think just deleting that one sentence is it. But I'm not an expert in
voting systems, so am happy for any input. Could go with a quorum (and then
count abstains for it) and requiring a (3 quarter?) majority of voters?! Could
go with something else? Somebody come up with a nice thing, please. :)

-- 
bye, Joerg

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#10235

Joerg Jaspert writes ("Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions"):
> On 15276 March 1977, Karsten Merker wrote:
> > Therefore the clause "If more than half of the NMC (excluding DAM) abstain
> > or do not vote, the decision is not overturned" would IMHO need to be
> > removed completely from the rules.
...
> So while I agree there might be possible improvements in how the
> vote goes, I don't think just deleting that one sentence is it. But
> I'm not an expert in voting systems, so am happy for any
> input. Could go with a quorum (and then count abstains for it) and
> requiring a (3 quarter?) majority of voters?! Could go with
> something else? Somebody come up with a nice thing, please. :)

I'll bit.  Having some kind of quorum requirement is a good idea.

Yours is not ideal because it is non-monotonic.  Specifically, the
sometimes best way to defeat something would be to simply not vote, so
that the 50% quorum is not reached.

I suggest instead that you say that the decision is not overturned
unless supported by (i) at least sqrt() of the eligible voters
(ii) strictly more than 50% of the people voting.

sqrt is a good function here because it adjust the quorum proportion
according to the voting pool.  If for some reason only a small number
of people are available/eligible, the quorum is most of them.
Currently you say there are 17 so a revocation decision would have to
be supported by at least ~4.123 people, ie (since supporters only come
in whole numbers) at least 5.  That is close to the implied 25% of
your proposal.

Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.

If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.

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#10255

On Tue, Jan 08, 2019 at 11:17:02PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote:
> On 15276 March 1977, Karsten Merker wrote:
> 
> > > 4. NM Committee review
> > > ----------------------
> > > The NMC has 7 days to review the received material and discuss the
> > > matter in
> > > private. They are expected not to solicit further input, as this is not an
> > > inquiry but a peer review of the DAM decision.
> > I'm not sure whether I understand correctly what exactly is meant
> > by "[The members of the NMC] are expected not to solicit further
> > input" - does that mean that the members of the NMC are not
> > allowed to ask questions about facts outside/above those
> > explicitly presented by DAM and those contained in the written
> > appealer statement, i.e. the NMC members are forbidden to do any
> > sort of research about the situation on their own?  If yes, that
> > would seem like an inappropriate limitation to me.
> 
> As written, it is not an inquiry.  But a check of the decision
> that DAMs have made.  NMC should not need to dig around for
> long.  And should not be forced by someone claiming "but if you
> only ask this one more, or this one, then you MAY see the
> light".  Nah.  Its both sides giving their views, and the NMC
> deciding on that.  End.  If one side can not present enough to
> support their case, then their case fails, it shouldn't be up
> to the NMC to dig out the stuff for them.

That point would be perfectly valid if DAM would not be part of
the NMC and would not take part in the discussions, so that the
NMC members would only decide on the written statements from both
sides.  This isn't the case here, though.  DAM is part of the
NMC, takes part in the discussions and can (and probably will,
because that's just natural in such a situation) provide further
input from their viewpoint based on how the discussion proceeds,
but that's (for obvious reasons) not the case for the appealer,
so this causes an asymmetry in the procedure.  Denying the the
Non-DAM NMC members the right to inquire about things intensifies
this asymmetry.

> > > 5. NM-Committee vote
> > > --------------------
> > > After 7 days discussion, or earlier if unanimously agreed by the NMC,
> > > NM-Frontdesk will ask the secretary to conduct a secret, 3-day-long vote,
> > > with the following options:
> > > 
> > > 1. Uphold the decision of the DAMs
> > > 2. Overturn the decision of the DAMs
> > > 
> > > Committee members otherwise involved in a case must abstain.
> > > DAM members are not allowed to partake in the vote.
> > > 
> > > A simple majority decides the vote; in the event of a tie, the decision is
> > > not overturned.
> > > 
> > > Abstained or absent votes are not counted. If more than half of the NMC
> > > (excluding DAM) abstain or do not vote, the decision is not overturned.
> 
> > [Description of how the vote can turn out bad for the person]
> 
> Well. I see your point. But I do disagree with your solution:
> 
> > Therefore the clause "If more than half of the NMC (excluding DAM) abstain
> > or do not vote, the decision is not overturned" would IMHO need to be
> > removed completely from the rules.
> 
> I don't think so.  We don't want to end up with a system where,
> say, you "just" put pressure on a dozen people to abstain, then
> have "your friend" vote overturn, and boo, all is fine again.

I suppose exactly the same argument could be made from the
"other" side as well, couldn't it?  As I have shown in my
previous mail in this thread, with the rule above in force
"putting pressure o a dozen people to abstain" can have the
effect that what would otherwise be a clear unanimous repeal of
DAM's original decision would end up as a confirmation of DAM's
original decision.
 
> So while I agree there might be possible improvements in how the vote goes, I
> don't think just deleting that one sentence is it.

I beg to differ :).  I have taken a look at Ian's proposal with
using sqrt(people allowed to vote) instead of a fixed ratio of
50%. That doesn't solve the general underlying problem of "not
voting" generating a bias against the appealer, but it makes such
a negative effect less likely, so I would consider this at least
a lot better than a fixed 50% ratio.

Regards,
Karsten
-- 
Gem. Par. 28 Abs. 4 Bundesdatenschutzgesetz widerspreche ich der Nutzung
sowie der Weitergabe meiner personenbezogenen Daten für Zwecke der
Werbung sowie der Markt- oder Meinungsforschung.

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#10260

On Wed, Jan 09, 2019 at 11:53:38PM +0100, Karsten Merker wrote:
> > So while I agree there might be possible improvements in how the vote goes, I
> > don't think just deleting that one sentence is it.
> 
> I beg to differ :).  I have taken a look at Ian's proposal with
> using sqrt(people allowed to vote) instead of a fixed ratio of
> 50%. That doesn't solve the general underlying problem of "not
> voting" generating a bias against the appealer, but it makes such
> a negative effect less likely, so I would consider this at least
> a lot better than a fixed 50% ratio.

The problem with deleting the sentence is that only 1 person
voting can decide on the result. You really want to have a minimum
of people voting. And once you introduce some kind of quorum,
there is always a (small) advantage for the status quo, but it
assumes they organize themselves to try and take advantage of it.


Kurt

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#10261

On Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 09:43:27AM +0100, Kurt Roeckx wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 09, 2019 at 11:53:38PM +0100, Karsten Merker wrote:
> > > So while I agree there might be possible improvements in how the vote goes, I
> > > don't think just deleting that one sentence is it.
> > 
> > I beg to differ :).  I have taken a look at Ian's proposal with
> > using sqrt(people allowed to vote) instead of a fixed ratio of
> > 50%. That doesn't solve the general underlying problem of "not
> > voting" generating a bias against the appealer, but it makes such
> > a negative effect less likely, so I would consider this at least
> > a lot better than a fixed 50% ratio.
> 
> The problem with deleting the sentence is that only 1 person
> voting can decide on the result. You really want to have a minimum
> of people voting. And once you introduce some kind of quorum,
> there is always a (small) advantage for the status quo, but it
> assumes they organize themselves to try and take advantage of it.

This isn't really correct. With Ian's proposal there is no way to
vote tacticly, there is just a minimum amount of people that need
to vote, but that's still in the advantage of the status quo.


Kurt

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#10266

Hello!

Karsten Merker:
> On Tue, Jan 08, 2019 at 11:17:02PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote:
>> On 15276 March 1977, Karsten Merker wrote:
>>
>>>> 4. NM Committee review
>>>> ----------------------
>>>> The NMC has 7 days to review the received material and discuss the
>>>> matter in
>>>> private. They are expected not to solicit further input, as this is not an
>>>> inquiry but a peer review of the DAM decision.
>>> I'm not sure whether I understand correctly what exactly is meant
>>> by "[The members of the NMC] are expected not to solicit further
>>> input" - does that mean that the members of the NMC are not
>>> allowed to ask questions about facts outside/above those
>>> explicitly presented by DAM and those contained in the written
>>> appealer statement, i.e. the NMC members are forbidden to do any
>>> sort of research about the situation on their own?  If yes, that
>>> would seem like an inappropriate limitation to me.
>>
>> As written, it is not an inquiry.  But a check of the decision
>> that DAMs have made.  NMC should not need to dig around for
>> long.  And should not be forced by someone claiming "but if you
>> only ask this one more, or this one, then you MAY see the
>> light".  Nah.  Its both sides giving their views, and the NMC
>> deciding on that.  End.  If one side can not present enough to
>> support their case, then their case fails, it shouldn't be up
>> to the NMC to dig out the stuff for them.
> 
> That point would be perfectly valid if DAM would not be part of
> the NMC and would not take part in the discussions, so that the
> NMC members would only decide on the written statements from both
> sides.  This isn't the case here, though.  DAM is part of the
> NMC, takes part in the discussions and can (and probably will,
> because that's just natural in such a situation) provide further
> input from their viewpoint based on how the discussion proceeds,
> but that's (for obvious reasons) not the case for the appealer,

It is written in the initial proposal that DAM is excluded from this
vote. Maybe they should also be excluded from discussion within the NMC
 explicitly. Would that solve the issues you raised?

> so this causes an asymmetry in the procedure.  Denying the the
> Non-DAM NMC members the right to inquire about things intensifies
> this asymmetry.

As said elsewhere, the sentence about inquiry needs clarification it seems.

Cheers,
Ulrike

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#10271

On Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 02:34:00PM +0000, Ulrike Uhlig wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> Karsten Merker:
> > On Tue, Jan 08, 2019 at 11:17:02PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote:
> >> On 15276 March 1977, Karsten Merker wrote:
> >>
> >>>> 4. NM Committee review
> >>>> ----------------------
> >>>> The NMC has 7 days to review the received material and discuss the
> >>>> matter in
> >>>> private. They are expected not to solicit further input, as this is not an
> >>>> inquiry but a peer review of the DAM decision.
> >>> I'm not sure whether I understand correctly what exactly is meant
> >>> by "[The members of the NMC] are expected not to solicit further
> >>> input" - does that mean that the members of the NMC are not
> >>> allowed to ask questions about facts outside/above those
> >>> explicitly presented by DAM and those contained in the written
> >>> appealer statement, i.e. the NMC members are forbidden to do any
> >>> sort of research about the situation on their own?  If yes, that
> >>> would seem like an inappropriate limitation to me.
> >>
> >> As written, it is not an inquiry.  But a check of the decision
> >> that DAMs have made.  NMC should not need to dig around for
> >> long.  And should not be forced by someone claiming "but if you
> >> only ask this one more, or this one, then you MAY see the
> >> light".  Nah.  Its both sides giving their views, and the NMC
> >> deciding on that.  End.  If one side can not present enough to
> >> support their case, then their case fails, it shouldn't be up
> >> to the NMC to dig out the stuff for them.
> > 
> > That point would be perfectly valid if DAM would not be part of
> > the NMC and would not take part in the discussions, so that the
> > NMC members would only decide on the written statements from both
> > sides.  This isn't the case here, though.  DAM is part of the
> > NMC, takes part in the discussions and can (and probably will,
> > because that's just natural in such a situation) provide further
> > input from their viewpoint based on how the discussion proceeds,
> > but that's (for obvious reasons) not the case for the appealer,
> 
> It is written in the initial proposal that DAM is excluded from this
> vote. Maybe they should also be excluded from discussion within the NMC
>  explicitly. Would that solve the issues you raised?

It was always our intention that DAM does not have any part in or view of
the NMC discussion or vote. We submit the review to them and we get back
a result. End.

I have the very highest regard for both Joerg's and Enrico's integrity. I
hope that they would say likewise about me. We are trying hard to do the
right thing and not the subvertible thing, so please have a little faith
that we are not designing this appeals process purely so we can game it in
our favour.

> 
> > so this causes an asymmetry in the procedure.  Denying the the
> > Non-DAM NMC members the right to inquire about things intensifies
> > this asymmetry.
> 
> As said elsewhere, the sentence about inquiry needs clarification it seems.

It is to focus the committee's attention onto the provided allegations and
defence, and keep them from going off on a tangent. A review should not
involve further evidence-gathering.

-- 
Jonathan Wiltshire                                      jmw@debian.org
Debian Developer                         http://people.debian.org/~jmw

4096R: 0xD3524C51 / 0A55 B7C5 1223 3942 86EC  74C3 5394 479D D352 4C51

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#10272

On Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 12:48 AM Jonathan Wiltshire <jmw@debian.org> wrote:

> I have the very highest regard for both Joerg's and Enrico's integrity. I
> hope that they would say likewise about me. We are trying hard to do the
> right thing and not the subvertible thing, so please have a little faith
> that we are not designing this appeals process purely so we can game it in
> our favour.

At least from my perspective, this is not about anyone's integrity;
your integrity is beyond doubt.

Yet, processes should be somewhat resilient. This is especially true
if they are executed seldomly, have extreme consequences, might
challenged, or are likely to face increased public scrutiny. In this
case, all of those apply.


Once again, thank you to all parties involved who took it upon
themselves to weather this mudslinging contest,
best,
Richard

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#10230

On Mon, Jan 07, 2019 at 11:27:35PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote:
> With this message we define a way to appeal a DAM action,

I'm treating this as if it's a first draft and open to comment.

> 1. Appealing DAM decisions
> --------------------------
> Any person who had their Debian membership suspended or revoked by DAM may
> appeal the decision.

Based on the process you describe, I'd suggest phrasing this as "may
ask for the decision to be reviewed by the New Members Committee".
An "appeal" (at least in legal terms) usually goes to the more powerful
body, but in this case, DAM is the more powerful body.

Having the boss's decision reviewed by people who report directly to
the boss is kind of a dodgy structure; and people on the new member
committee will probably want to maintain good relations with DAM, at
least if they want to continue doing new member work.

> 2. DAM statement
> ----------------
> Within 72 hours DAM will provide a statement to the NMC and the appealer
> with their reasoning for the account status change.

I think by this point DAM should have already provided the reasoning
for the expulsion to -private (or -project if the person being expelled
agreed), so this should be redundant.

> DAM may also send additional material to the NMC only, encrypted to the
> individual members, if they deem it necessary for the case, and if
> presenting this to a wider public might cause issues of confidentiality for
> involved third-parties.

> [1] The NM-Committee is defined as:
>        - All members of DAM and FrontDesk.
>        - All application manager that are marked as active and
> processed at least one NM in the last 6 months.
>    There is a mail alias <nm-committee@nm.debian.org> which reaches all
> members, it is regularly regenerated by FrontDesk.

All AMs that have processed an NM in the last 6 months is a fairly
broad group, and not one that's particularly selected for dealing with
particularly sensitive information. It doesn't seem like a great idea to
send sensitive info to them that you wouldn't feel comfortable sending
to any random developer to me, so again sending the detailed reasoning
to -private still seems like the right approach, removing personally
identifying details in the rare cases where that's necessary.

> The NMC members are expected to avoid disclosing
> this material to anyone else, including the appealer.[3]

Doing things that way avoids this risk/caveat.

I don't really think providing sensitive material to the new member ctte
in this way is helpful anyway: if they can't pass it on to the person
who got expelled they can't ask "is this true? what's your side of the
story?" either, which is pretty essential if you want to have a remotely
fair process.

> 3. Appealer statement
> ---------------------
> Within a further 72 hours, the appealer has the opportunity to respond to
> the DAM statement with their own statement.

DAM should be providing the full reasoning to the person being expelled
when they're expelled; if that person's going to ask for review, they
already have all they need to provide their side of the story as part
of the request for review, avoiding the need for this 72h period.

Both the above changes would cut the appeal time down by a week, from:

 - expulsion happens
 - <30 days, review is requested
 - 3 days for DAM to do an update
 - 3 days for expelled person to provide a statement
 - 7 days for discussion
 - 3 days for vote

to something more like:

 - expulsion happens, affected member and -private given detailed
   reasoning
 - <30 days, review is requested and statement from expelled person is
   provided to newmaint-ctte
 - 7 days for discussion
 - 3 days for vote

This setup avoids giving the expelled developer the opportunity to
pick Christmas or Easter or the start/end of the freeze or some other
inconvenient time to start the process, and immediately triggering a 3
day deadline for DAM members.

> 4. NM Committee review
> ----------------------
> The NMC has 7 days to review the received material and discuss the matter in
> private. They are expected not to solicit further input, as this is not an
> inquiry but a peer review of the DAM decision.

One of the things appeals courts in real life can do is send the case back
to a lower court with a requirement to fix up mistakes in fact finding,
which gives them an easy opportunity to avoid having to do any fact
finding themselves. Since the balance of power is the other way around
here; I'd expect that if the new member committee isn't just going to be
a rubber stamp for DAM, then they'd need to be able to solicit further
input in cases where DAM's summary of events doesn't match the expelled
developer's take on what happened.

(Another difference between the proposed process and court appeals is
that appeals courts can provide detailed opinions as to why the original
decision was wrong which helps avoid making the same mistakes in future;
this process doesn't really have that feature)

> 5. NM-Committee vote
> --------------------
> After 7 days discussion, or earlier if unanimously agreed by the NMC,
> NM-Frontdesk will ask the secretary to conduct a secret, 3-day-long vote,
> with the following options:
> 1. Uphold the decision of the DAMs
> 2. Overturn the decision of the DAMs
> Committee members otherwise involved in a case must abstain.
> DAM members are not allowed to partake in the vote.

I think "involved" should probably be more explicit. If the expulsion
came from a recommendation from the anti-harassment team, which in turn
resulted from a complaint, does that mean members of the AH team and the
complainant must abstain? How about if someone said "hey, tone it down"
on a mailing list, and this was used as part of the evidence that it was
an ongoing problem, but they weren't otherwise involved in the expulsion?

A rule that could work might be:

 - DAM will only directly expel people for DMUP violations and similar
   serious, urgent and unambiguous breaches of trust
 - Other expulsions will be initiated by other developers following the
   process described in 2005 (or some updated replacement)
 - If a review is required, neither DAM or the developers who
   initiated/seconded the expulsion process are allowed to participate
   in the review process (nor is the expelled developer, obviously)

If discussions are to be held on a private list that the expelled member
doesn't have access to, DAM etc probably should also be excluded from
that list while the discussion takes place.

> A simple majority decides the vote; in the event of a tie, the decision is
> not overturned.
> Abstained or absent votes are not counted. If more than half of the NMC
> (excluding DAM) abstain or do not vote, the decision is not overturned.

A quorum of 50% is pretty high; using the same formula for Q from the
constitution would probably make more sense. Not counting explicit
abstentions as part of quorum also is pretty unusual.

I'd suggest explicitly making this a secret ballot, like DPL elections.

> 6. Action
> ---------
> If the decision is overturned, the suspension or revocation of the account
> will be turned into a warning.

If DAM wrongfully expels someone, I think the stress of going through
the wrongful expulsion and the review process is probably more than
punishment enough for whatever they actually did, and it's better to
write the whole saga off, instead of making a note on their personnel
file, or whatever "turning it into a warning" means.

As I've said on -private, I don't really think putting the burden
on the expelled developer is the right way to do things: if you get
expelled you're going to be pretty annoyed/frustrated/angry/etc, and as
a result you'll be a very bad advocate for yourself. It's better IMO to
inform the project as a whole (ie, send a detailed explanation of what
caused the expulsion to -private), and let people who aren't already
annoyed/frustrated consider whether it makes sense or not. Changing the
trigger for nm-ctte review to be K (ie, 5) DD's rather than the expelled
person would probably work, I think -- that's the same number who could
do a GR anyway, after all.

Cheers,
aj

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#10234

Hello,

Anthony Towns:
> On Mon, Jan 07, 2019 at 11:27:35PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote:

>> 1. Appealing DAM decisions
>> --------------------------
>> Any person who had their Debian membership suspended or revoked by DAM may
>> appeal the decision.
> 
> Based on the process you describe, I'd suggest phrasing this as "may
> ask for the decision to be reviewed by the New Members Committee".
> An "appeal" (at least in legal terms) usually goes to the more powerful
> body, but in this case, DAM is the more powerful body.
> 
> Having the boss's decision reviewed by people who report directly to
> the boss is kind of a dodgy structure; and people on the new member
> committee will probably want to maintain good relations with DAM, at
> least if they want to continue doing new member work.

I cannot see a problem here. The vote of NMC will be secret, so there is
no way that DAM could know about who voted what.

>> 2. DAM statement
>> ----------------
>> Within 72 hours DAM will provide a statement to the NMC and the appealer
>> with their reasoning for the account status change.
> 
> I think by this point DAM should have already provided the reasoning
> for the expulsion to -private (or -project if the person being expelled
> agreed), so this should be redundant.

No, you might have read below that the idea is to leave it to the
concerned person to disclose why they've been suspended or expelled.
Also see mail sent by Jonathan Wiltshire yesterday to d-d-a.

>> DAM may also send additional material to the NMC only, encrypted to the
>> individual members, if they deem it necessary for the case, and if
>> presenting this to a wider public might cause issues of confidentiality for
>> involved third-parties.
> 
>> [1] The NM-Committee is defined as:
>>        - All members of DAM and FrontDesk.
>>        - All application manager that are marked as active and
>> processed at least one NM in the last 6 months.
>>    There is a mail alias <nm-committee@nm.debian.org> which reaches all
>> members, it is regularly regenerated by FrontDesk.
> 
> All AMs that have processed an NM in the last 6 months is a fairly
> broad group, and not one that's particularly selected for dealing with
> particularly sensitive information. It doesn't seem like a great idea to
> send sensitive info to them that you wouldn't feel comfortable sending
> to any random developer to me, so again sending the detailed reasoning
> to -private still seems like the right approach, removing personally
> identifying details in the rare cases where that's necessary.

So sending this info to a number of AMs is less privacy sensitive than
sending it to ~1000 people on -private? I don't think this is useful and
I don't understand why you are proposing such a thing. We've repeatedly
seen information from -private forwarded and shared with the outside world.

There are archives accessible to each DD, even new DDs can read the
archives from years ago...

ie. -private is not private and this information has *nothing* to do on
a mailing list.

Imagine a case of harassment and the harassed person does not want their
identity to be disclosed? Even if you send some information about a
venue or a time when this happened, it might be possible to reverse
engineer the identity of the person. It's not up to "us" to decide about
disclosing such information to a huge list of people.

>> The NMC members are expected to avoid disclosing
>> this material to anyone else, including the appealer.[3]
> 
> Doing things that way avoids this risk/caveat.
> 
> I don't really think providing sensitive material to the new member ctte
> in this way is helpful anyway: if they can't pass it on to the person
> who got expelled they can't ask "is this true? what's your side of the
> story?" either, which is pretty essential if you want to have a remotely
> fair process.

The procedure does not say they cannot ask if something is true.

But as seen in the two current cases, both suspended/expelled developers
absolutely wanted to know who complained about them. Hence this sentence
makes sense: please do not share the raw material with anyone, including
the appealer.

>> 3. Appealer statement
>> ---------------------
>> Within a further 72 hours, the appealer has the opportunity to respond to
>> the DAM statement with their own statement.
> 
> DAM should be providing the full reasoning to the person being expelled
> when they're expelled; if that person's going to ask for review, they
> already have all they need to provide their side of the story as part
> of the request for review, avoiding the need for this 72h period.

DAM _does_ send the expelled/suspended person an email containing their
reasoning afaik. Leaving time is a good thing: the expelled/suspended
person may use it to write up something to clarify what they don't agree
with. Let's give them this time?

> Both the above changes would cut the appeal time down by a week, from:
> 
>  - expulsion happens
>  - <30 days, review is requested
>  - 3 days for DAM to do an update
>  - 3 days for expelled person to provide a statement
>  - 7 days for discussion
>  - 3 days for vote
> 
> to something more like:
> 
>  - expulsion happens, affected member and -private given detailed
>    reasoning
>  - <30 days, review is requested and statement from expelled person is
>    provided to newmaint-ctte
>  - 7 days for discussion
>  - 3 days for vote
> 
> This setup avoids giving the expelled developer the opportunity to
> pick Christmas or Easter or the start/end of the freeze or some other
> inconvenient time to start the process, and immediately triggering a 3
> day deadline for DAM members.
I think it is good to define these things very precisely instead of
vaguely so I do agree with the initial proposal over your idea.

>> 4. NM Committee review
>> ----------------------
>> The NMC has 7 days to review the received material and discuss the matter in
>> private. They are expected not to solicit further input, as this is not an
>> inquiry but a peer review of the DAM decision.
> 
> One of the things appeals courts in real life can do is send the case back
> to a lower court with a requirement to fix up mistakes in fact finding,
> which gives them an easy opportunity to avoid having to do any fact
> finding themselves. Since the balance of power is the other way around
> here; I'd expect that if the new member committee isn't just going to be
> a rubber stamp for DAM, then they'd need to be able to solicit further
> input in cases where DAM's summary of events doesn't match the expelled
> developer's take on what happened.

Maybe the sentence needs to be made clearer: what kind of further input
are we talking about and why it shall not be solicited.

> (Another difference between the proposed process and court appeals is
> that appeals courts can provide detailed opinions as to why the original
> decision was wrong which helps avoid making the same mistakes in future;
> this process doesn't really have that feature).
There could be a _non-mandatory_ reasoning written by the NMC to DAM if
a decision is overturned.

>> 5. NM-Committee vote
>> --------------------
>> After 7 days discussion, or earlier if unanimously agreed by the NMC,
>> NM-Frontdesk will ask the secretary to conduct a secret, 3-day-long vote,
>> with the following options:
>> 1. Uphold the decision of the DAMs
>> 2. Overturn the decision of the DAMs
>> Committee members otherwise involved in a case must abstain.
>> DAM members are not allowed to partake in the vote.
> 
> I think "involved" should probably be more explicit. If the expulsion
> came from a recommendation from the anti-harassment team, which in turn
> resulted from a complaint, does that mean members of the AH team and the
> complainant must abstain? How about if someone said "hey, tone it down"
> on a mailing list, and this was used as part of the evidence that it was
> an ongoing problem, but they weren't otherwise involved in the expulsion?
> 
> A rule that could work might be:
> 
>  - DAM will only directly expel people for DMUP violations and similar
>    serious, urgent and unambiguous breaches of trust

I suggest you read the procedure sent by Jonathan Wiltshire yesterday on
d-d-a that makes it clear how such decisions are taken.

>  - Other expulsions will be initiated by other developers following the
>    process described in 2005 (or some updated replacement)

The above mentioned procedure does also make clear how to initiate a
discussion within DAM, so this should solve your concern.

>  - If a review is required, neither DAM or the developers who
>    initiated/seconded the expulsion process are allowed to participate
>    in the review process (nor is the expelled developer, obviously)

Sounds reasonable.

> If discussions are to be held on a private list that the expelled member
> doesn't have access to, DAM etc probably should also be excluded from
> that list while the discussion takes place.

I don't think that -private should discuss this. See my comment below.

>> A simple majority decides the vote; in the event of a tie, the decision is
>> not overturned.
>> Abstained or absent votes are not counted. If more than half of the NMC
>> (excluding DAM) abstain or do not vote, the decision is not overturned.
> 
> A quorum of 50% is pretty high; using the same formula for Q from the
> constitution would probably make more sense. Not counting explicit
> abstentions as part of quorum also is pretty unusual.

Make a better proposal.

> I'd suggest explicitly making this a secret ballot, like DPL elections.

Wasn't this written in the email already?

>> 6. Action
>> ---------
>> If the decision is overturned, the suspension or revocation of the account
>> will be turned into a warning.
> 
> If DAM wrongfully expels someone, I think the stress of going through
> the wrongful expulsion and the review process is probably more than
> punishment enough for whatever they actually did, and it's better to
> write the whole saga off, instead of making a note on their personnel
> file, or whatever "turning it into a warning" means.

It means that once you've been expelled/suspended, and the NMC decides
they want to overturn this decision, you may consider yourself warned:
some of your behavior triggered this DAM decision in the first place.

> As I've said on -private, I don't really think putting the burden
> on the expelled developer is the right way to do things: if you get
> expelled you're going to be pretty annoyed/frustrated/angry/etc, and as
> a result you'll be a very bad advocate for yourself. It's better IMO to

If it gets to this point, IMO, there is some work to do by the
suspended/expelled: there was a reason this happened, DAM does not
pronounce a suspension/expulsion for absolutely nothing.

> inform the project as a whole (ie, send a detailed explanation of what
> caused the expulsion to -private), and let people who aren't already
> annoyed/frustrated consider whether it makes sense or not.

I don't agree with you. There is no process whatsoever in your proposal.
What happens if the discussion spawns two camps, or more, just like what
we're currently seeing? How do you expect people to make a decision of
sense in that case?

Changing the
> trigger for nm-ctte review to be K (ie, 5) DD's rather than the expelled
> person would probably work, I think -- that's the same number who could
> do a GR anyway, after all.

I don't understand this proposal.

Cheers
Ulrike

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#10263

On Wed, Jan 9, 2019 at 11:27 AM Ulrike Uhlig <ulrike@debian.org> wrote:
[...]
> Anthony Towns:
[...]

> > Having the boss's decision reviewed by people who report directly to
> > the boss is kind of a dodgy structure; and people on the new member
> > committee will probably want to maintain good relations with DAM, at
> > least if they want to continue doing new member work.
>
> I cannot see a problem here. The vote of NMC will be secret, so there is
> no way that DAM could know about who voted what.

[...]

> > (Another difference between the proposed process and court appeals is
> > that appeals courts can provide detailed opinions as to why the original
> > decision was wrong which helps avoid making the same mistakes in future;
> > this process doesn't really have that feature).
> There could be a _non-mandatory_ reasoning written by the NMC to DAM if
> a decision is overturned.

Those two are mutually exclusive.

Assuming best case and that the text is piped through Secretary to
avoid sender addresses: It would be an undue burden for dissenting NMC
members to find each other in a truly secret ballot, let alone have
them write something in a way which ensures DAM can't deduct from the
style of writing, points raised, and timing who's among the set of
people. Add that everyone in that group would know how many dissenting
votes there were so you even know how many dissenters you would need
to find.


Richard

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