Dear all, we have a small issue with the Elder proposals, and I wanted to get your input on this. This is slightly technical so please read through the explanation first:
As a quick recap, our Elder voting system is working as follows: For a Master to be promoted to Elder, all existing Elders have to vote “Yes”. If even one says no, the vote fails. You can read up on the details on the voting page.
This is working fine if one Master is being proposed for Elder, but if we have 2 (or more) at the same time, it gets tricky. If two people get all the votes for Elder at the same time, they are approved on the requirements of the current number of Elders. But since one of them was proposed earlier, the second Master theoretically should also need the vote of the first proposed to get upgraded.
This was not so much an issue in the past where Elder proposals were quite rare, but with the 2 Elders we just upgraded and the ones in the queue now, we have 7 Elders proposed in one month! This will ramp up the numbers of Elders from 10 to 17 in a quite short time. It’s not a problem as such if all the users are worthwhile candidates, but the fact that theoretically 6 people become Elders with a LOT less votes than the next one who will be promoted is an issue from my point of view. In detail that means that the 2 Elders who were just promoted, they both only needed 10 votes of those who were already Elders before them. In fact, one of them should have needed 11 votes. But as the system currently works, they got both promoted in a batch without needing each other’s votes. Now we have another 5 people who need 12 votes, but according to the theory of the system, the first one should need 12 votes, the second one 13 and so on. If all the proposals currently in the system are approved, the next proposal would need the vote of all 17 (then) Elders.
There are 3 solutions to this:
- We don’t care. Just let people get promoted without all Elders to approve. If several people get proposed at the same time, there should not be a cascade of the just-upgraded Elders to have to vote for the ones that are still in the queue.
This is not recommended. It circumvents our base voting system. - Let’s just upgrade the first proposed, let them then vote for the next one in the queue.
This is technically possible, but a bit tricky. Once an Master is proposed for Elder promotion, all existing Elders get an email asking them to vote. When a Master is promoted to Elder, he does not know (yet) who else is right now being voted on. We would have to let the person know – fast. If this is late in the schedule of the next Elder proposal, the other proposed Master might time out and get denied. - Let’s prevent two Masters to be proposed at the same time. Only once a Master is promoted or declined, the next one can be proposed.
This is the most straightforward solution. It however slows down the Elder promotions, possibly substantially (up to 2 months). Specially if an Elder is voted down by someone: the system currently waits until the time given expires (which is 2 months) and only then takes the proposal out of the queue. This gives the person who voted someone down the chance to change their mind.
Generally I am for option 3 since it would make the Elder proposal something more special and not something done in “Bulk”. The consequence of this is that I would remove the other proposals and we would wait for one being promoted and then they have to be submitted again.
Opinions?