GTFS changes - voting agents
Opened this issue · 12 comments
The Spec amendment process states:
Anyone is allowed to vote yes/no in a form of comment to the pull request, and votes can be changed until the end of the voting period. If a voter changes her vote, it is recommended to do it by updating the original vote comment by striking through the vote and writing the new vote.
It's not clearly stated (unless I've missed documentation), but practice has been that only GTFS consumers or producers have standing to vote on GTFS changes. People usually declare the organization they're voting on behalf of. (e.g. "+1 Trillium").
I think it would also be useful if we had a practice of voters stating the GTFS feed(s) their organization produces or the consuming application(s) they maintain.
Thoughts?
I like this.
However, the tent can (and should) still certainly be big... I don't think we should put limits on the commercial or official nature of that application. Whether you consume GTFS as a commercial enterprise, an academic researcher, or a hobbyist, having actually used it for an application should be enough.
On the flip side, the producer should probably have to represent the "official" producer for a given agency.
Just asking the question. Are you worried people vote and/or participate into a discussion as bad actor and therefore want to have credentials? If that is the case maintain a list of the github username and their activities on the wiki. Having it at every vote does not make sense.
This is a topic that will come up during our Valencia and New York workshops on GTFS Governance. I think that we need to strike a balance. Deciding who can and cannot vote is a touchy subject and can get quite political. Limiting the vote to certain people or entities could be misconstrued. At the moment, anyone can vote, consumer, producer, and outsider. Despite only producer and consumers voting in the past, an outsider vote would technically count.
Anyone is allowed to vote yes/no in a form of comment to the pull request [...]
This being said I recently have been reflecting on this issue. What if someone who hasn't read the PR or didn't participate in the working meeting -1s, in bad faith, sabotage, or out of fear of change? Should we require an additional line stating that they have taken the time to inform themselves and understand the implications of their vote? Should we verify their level of participation? Should we limit voting to participants? How do we increase our governance's accessibility? How do we make the amendment process more digestible for the community? How do other organizations or communities vote? .........
These are just thoughts and questions that I have had since joining the GTFS world. After speaking with members of other international organizations, I realize that there is no perfect solution out there. As a community, we have to figure out what our common philosophy is on this and own it... until it changes again.
I'm less worried about people proving that they are a producer and consumer and more worried about a person objecting to a change for a reason that has already been through the public discourse and has reached a conclusion.
The discussion about a particular aspect of a change should have a beginning, middle, and end and absent new information shouldn't be subject to be re-opened.
Should we require an additional line stating that they have taken the time to inform themselves and understand the implications of their vote?
I think if you raise this question you don't understand what the voting proces is in goverance terms: it is the change advisory board. Typically the voting in ISO/CEN/etc. is done by different actors than participated in the workgroups. It is a new set of eyes on the matter. That we have effectively a veto voting system might not be a good idea.
My fear is the OpenStreetMap Foundation hostile take over style of something that works well today, but may for example require paid membership in Mobility Data in order to be part of the standardisation process.
I think if you raise this question you don't understand what the voting proces is in goverance terms: it is the change advisory board. Typically the voting in ISO/CEN/etc. is done by different actors than participated in the workgroups.
Different organizations have different voting systems. None of which are perfect. Some prefer a centralized top down approach and others more decentralized. Do we want GTFS to be modeled after ISO? It currently is not to my understanding. We don't have an advisory board.
@eliasmbd the suggestion that from @e-lo that we should be careful have people vote against(!) a proposal (because agreeing with it would be a no-op) if they would not have participated in the working group. I would be against that, it would and should not be required to participate on every topic to have a sound opinion on the conclusion that has been presented.
@eliasmbd the suggestion that from @e-lo that we should be careful have people vote against(!) a proposal (because agreeing with it would be a no-op) if they would not have participated in the working group. I would be against that, it would and should not be required to participate on every topic to have a sound opinion on the conclusion that has been presented.
This is why these conversations are important to have. The questions I raised were not proposals but mere questions that might be interesting to discuss during workshops that are aimed at enhancing the voting process. Personally, I think it's up to the community to decide the direction, and that every opinion be voiced before such decisions are made.
I was on vacation last week, hence the delay.
My motivation here is for all stakeholders to have more visibility into the interests that participants represent:
- Employer / Affiliation
- Consumer / Producer / Both?
- Applications
- Feeds
Ready transparency will increase trust and the quality of discussion. One way to implement would be to request that people introduce themselves and/or put a few notes in their GitHub profile.
@antrim Would you consider this as a voting requirement or suggestion?
From what i understand a vote in a Pull Request would look like this:
+1, MobilityData, GTFS Steward, Other, GTFS Validator, No Feeds
I would like to know what other people think about requiring this information on their GH profile. Would you consider it to be an overreach as you may involved in other projects outside of GTFS? Should GTFS governance dictate what is published on your profile? Or, do you think this is a perfectly acceptable demand?
I would like to know what other people think about requiring this information on their GH profile. Would you consider it to be an overreach as you may involved in other projects outside of GTFS? Should GTFS governance dictate what is published on your profile?
Many of the concerns in the past few governance workshops have centered around the need to decrease friction w.r.t. GitHub. This would be increasing it. I am not in favor of having to have a specific github profile in order to vote on GTFS Changes.