IrcCouncilChanges: Decision making & coverage.

[Elizabeth Krumbach]

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 3:55 PM, Joseph Price <pricechild at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> "Decisions will be made by a majority of voting IRC Council members
> when at least three and more than half of the total members have
> voted."
>
> This caused several issues whilst I sat on the council. I would
> propose that all decisions require approval by at least half the total
> members on the council. ie if only 3 members are present, then all 3
> would have to '+1' the decision. Two +1's and one abstaining would not
> suffice.
> This would avoid situations where 3 members attend a meeting, and a
> motion is passed with approval by 2 of those. The absent 2 may then be
> found to be against this decision.

+1

The idea of having "quorum" is important in other governing councils,
so regardless of who is attending a meeting for a vote in a council
with, say, 5 members, you need 3 +1 votes to pass a motion. Many
boards/councils are forced to defer voting if they can't meet quorum
at a meeting.

> "The Ubuntu IRC Council (''IRCC'') is the team governance council for
> the the Ubuntu IRC channels on the freenode network. " & "The IRC
> Council is the group that is ultimately responsible for the governing
> the IRC channels and interfacing between IRC and the rest of the
> Ubuntu community and governance systems."
>
> I don't think that these two sentences are define the scope of the
> IRCC well enough.
>
> Examination of http://freenode.net/group_registration.shtml would be a
> good start to understand how projects work on freenode. Does the IRCC
> look after xubuntu's irc community, mythbuntu's, fluxbuntu's,
> randombuntu's? I think that a limit has to be set here in order for
> the group's governance to be effective. Of course future projects
> could be added when needed. Projects should want to use the ubuntu
> namespace in order to gain the benefits that being part of the Ubuntu
> IRC Community brings.

As I understand it, the Scope page defines what core channels the IRCC
are *directly* responsible for:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IrcTeam/Scope

I also know that "officially according to freenode" the IRCC is
responsible for the -ubuntu namespace, but it turns out I don't know
how far that extends or what "governance" role the IRCC has over these
(now hundreds?) of channels. I agree that clarifying this for everyone
would be worthwhile.

Thanks for your input!

-- 
Elizabeth Krumbach // Lyz // pleia2
http://www.princessleia.com