[Mpi-forum] Voting in July (and beyond)

[Rolf Rabenseifner]

Was nobody looking at our rules:
http://meetings.mpi-forum.org/secretary/voting.php
- Measures pass on simple majority.
- Formal votes will be taken by roll. 
  If you are not present, your organization 
  does not vote (effectively the same as abstain).

Here you can see "abstain" == "not voting",
and wiki clearly tells "simple majority"
means more than 50% of the passed votes.

Why was there a discussion about this?

Jeff, how old is this file?

Best regards
Rolf


----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dave Goodell" <goodell at mcs.anl.gov>
> To: "Main MPI Forum mailing list" <mpi-forum at lists.mpi-forum.org>
> Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2012 5:25:56 PM
> Subject: Re: [Mpi-forum] Voting in July (and beyond)
> On Jun 14, 2012, at 9:15 AM CDT, Jeff Squyres wrote:
> 
> > On Jun 14, 2012, at 9:25 AM, Richard Graham wrote:
> >
> >> First, I would not note that as a mishap - a specific question came
> >> up, and the forum did it's best to address the question, and
> >> interpret what majority vote means.
> >
> > I'm not debating what happened. But the mishap = mistake, and this
> > was clearly a mistake, regardless of good intentions.
> >
> > So however you want to define it, I don't think that anyone
> > disagrees that the voting rules were different in Japan than they
> > had been in all prior meetings.
> 
> They may not, however, have been *observably* different. If we never
> had a close vote in the past then nobody but you would have known that
> the voting rules were changed.
> 
> >> We need to keep with what was the consensus at the meeting,
> >
> > I'm not disagreeing with the fact that we need to abide by the
> > voting results as they were decided in the room in Japan (because
> > everyone knew/understood the "Japan" rules when they were voting).
> 
> Absolutely, almost anything else would be crazy and/or a waste of
> everyone's time.
> 
> >> and change that ONLY after further discussion. So, it at this stage
> >> pass mean yes > 0.5 * total vote.
> >
> > No.
> >
> > The Japan rules were a mistake.
> >
> > It is not proper to change the voting rules:
> >
> > a) with discussion from only one meeting, and
> > b) when the secretary -- i.e., the guy who knows the rules -- was
> > not even present
> >
> > In July, voting should be the same as it has been for all prior 2.x
> > and 3.x Forum meetings: pass = yes > no (abstains don't count).
> >
> > *** We =CANNOT= abolish "abstain" at the whim of one mis-guided
> > decision from one meeting ***
> 
> You are effectively asserting that your voting rules are more correct
> because you said that they came first, even though they were not
> clearly documented to anyone else.
> 
> >> We can have this as the first item for discussion on Monday, but
> >> have to have a discussion before we change.
> >
> > I do not think it is proper to change the voting rules based on any
> > one meeting. To me, changing the voting rules should require 2
> > formal votes (just like text) using the currently established rules.
> 
> We have no procedure for this. AFAIK we never voted the original rules
> into place. At the Japan meeting we took consensus from the room
> because there was no clear ruling on this known to *anyone* in the
> room. Both members of the steering committee that were present (Bill &
> Rich) felt the "abstains can't change the denominator" view was
> correct.
> 
> I think that an in-person discussion about this on the first day of
> the upcoming meeting is the most appropriate way to deal with this
> debate. Perhaps a two-votes-over-two-meetings-scheme is appropriate,
> perhaps not. When we have made other procedural changes, such as the
> "ticket 0" concept, I don't think that we used a two vote process. I
> don't see this as substantially different.
> 
> The most important thing for us to do is not bicker over which rules
> were correct at various points in the past, but instead we should
> attempt to agree on rules that work for the Forum going forward. That
> could be either interpretation of simple majority, or possibly some
> more complicated scheme (can we somehow shoehorn instant-runoff voting
> into the process? ;) ).
> 
> -Dave
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> mpi-forum mailing list
> mpi-forum at lists.mpi-forum.org
> http://lists.mpi-forum.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/mpi-forum

-- 
Dr. Rolf Rabenseifner . . . . . . . . . .. email rabenseifner at hlrs.de
High Performance Computing Center (HLRS) . phone ++49(0)711/685-65530
University of Stuttgart . . . . . . . . .. fax ++49(0)711 / 685-65832
Head of Dpmt Parallel Computing . . . www.hlrs.de/people/rabenseifner
Nobelstr. 19, D-70550 Stuttgart, Germany . (Office: Allmandring 30)