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Re: [ddlm-group] Vote on moving elide discussion to COMCIFS. .


On Monday, February 21, 2011 7:40 AM, Herbert J. Bernstein wrote:

>[...] I did indeed repeatly
>object to the process being followed, especially the failure to
>consider and discuss Ralf's original proposal, and have repeatedly
>asked for COMCIFS votes on many issues, including this one.

I am not prepared to judge whether correct procedure was followed in delegating the discussion to the DDLm subcommittee instead of holding it directly at the COMCIFS level, nor whether there are other procedural grounds for objecting to James's planned course of action.  COMCIFS business seems in general to be conducted with only loose regard for procedure, however.

>[...] I
>believe it is best for COMCIFS "approval" to include discussions,
>as it has in the past, and not a simple up-or-down vote.

This group devoted considerable discussion to Ralf's original proposal.  Most of the voting members of COMCIFS participated in the discussion, and an up-to-date record of it has continually been publically available.  Ralf himself was kept apprised of the discussion and had every opportunity to participate if he had wished to do so.  We did not reach a consensus, at least in part because of members' substantially different technical assessments of the proposal's merits, but the proposal received all due consideration.  I see no reason to believe that continued discussion will lead to a consensus, whether among DDLm members, among voting COMCIFS members, or among the members of the intersection of those groups.

>Right now, it is not clear to me that we have either a consensus or
>at least a majority of COMCIFS in favor of anything on the
>triple-quoted string issue.

Given the number of proposals that were at one time on the table, it is unlikely that an absolute majority for any one of them is achievable.  James has essentially applied a run-off election procedure, which is an eminently reasonable way of proceeding under the circumstances.  Please recall:

On Sunday, January 30, 2011 6:41 AM, James Hester wrote:
>So our top preferences are as follows:
>
>Herbert: P, otherwise F with conditions
>Brian: F' and E, P least preferable
>James: F' and F, P unacceptable
>Ralf: P best, A,B,E,F,F' OK
>John W: A, B or F' (my interpretation of minimal changes - John feel
>free to say otherwise)
>
>It appears that all but Herbert would be prepared to vote for F', and
>even Herbert is prepared to consider F.  No other proposal reaches a
>similar level of acceptance among voting members (and I note that
>non-voting members are also strongly in the F/F' camp).  I would
>therefore like to focus discussion on F' and F as the two choices most
>likely to succeed.

Note that Ralf voted, David abstained from voting, and only COMCIFS voting members' rankings were explicitly summarized.  John W's vote was somewhat ambiguous with respect to ranking proposals A - F' relative to each other, but I don't see a way to construe it as ranking proposal P other than last.

There are a variety of ways to score multi-candidate voting, but with a majority of votes from voting COMCIFS members preferring every other proposal to proposal P, none of the scoring methods I know choose P to advance to a run-off vote, much less as winner.  And that's the vote cross-section most favorable to proposal P.


John


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