[Compcomm] Deciding a name

Sun Jun 10 18:52:59 EDT 2007

On Sunday 10 June 2007 21:19, Kristian Lyngstøl wrote:
> On 6/10/07, Nicholas Thomas <nick at lupine.me.uk> wrote:
> > On Sunday 10 June 2007 19:26, Kristian Lyngstøl wrote:
> > > Many people are not satisfied with how we're voting on a name, we
> > > should respect that.
> > >
> > > I therefor suggest we void the current vote, and restart the process.
> > > To make it fair and democratic, this is how I suggest we do it:
> >>
> >> ( .....)
> >>
> > > Input on this?
> >
> > Sounds like not-a-plan, because we'll likely end up with no name
> > whatsoever.
>
> Then we need to figure out a new name.
>
> > With the current poll, just under 1/4 of voters aren't happy with the
> > choice of names available (i.e. voted "none of these"). And, you know,
> > that's not particularly great, but it's not particularly bad, either.
>
> Out of all the voters, I don't care what most of them say, because
> most of them are NOT involved with this project except as users.
>
> Rico and Mike have both contributed with actual work, I care more
> about their opinion here than random users.
>
> > To keep it short - the arguments against coral as a name are spurious, as
> > has been discussed in great detail both here and elsewhere. It's a name,
> > it has significant community support, and I think that if the poll ends
> > with it in the lead, we should respect that and go ahead with the rename.
> > 9 hours vs. 19 days... come on.
>
> If it takes 19 days to reach a decision everyone who has actually
> ALREADY contributed to the project can be reasonably satisfied with,
> then that's a small price to pay. That this wasn't done from the start
> is not an excuse.
>
> The poll has put all the "filtering" responsibility on one person, who
> hasn't had any set rules helping him. That's not fair for him, or the
> community he's working for.
>
> As you should know, I do not care too much about the actual name, but
> I do care about the process of picking it. And this vote has been
> horribly random, not planned and not agreed upon before it was set up.
> In short: it is a forced decision by a minority of the project that
> many people are willing to go along with just to get it over with. It
> shouldn't be that way.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Kristian

Moving to the ML, as requested. IRC log attached. The real action (from my 
PoV) started around 9-10pm

My argument against voiding the poll is relatively simple. It's not a perfect 
poll, and effort could have been made to engage greater segments of the 
community, it's true -- for this reason, I'm OK with the idea of extending 
the poll to allow a greater proportion of the community to have their say. 
But I am against voiding it. Hold on to your hats, now...

Pre-merge, it was agreed that the name would be chosen by a democratic vote. 
That means that if davidr wanted to weigh in, or Quinn_Storm, they'd have as 
much say as SmSpillaz. One person, one vote.

We had a name suggestions thread with 20 pages of community discussion. Some 
people (notably from the old 'compiz' camp) weren't involved in this, it 
seems. We then had a name choice poll with the most popular of the names 
given in the name discussion thread, + the "none" option, which required an 
absolute majority in order for it to win. In the event that "none" won the 
vote, a second poll with a new set of names was to be set up. Again, 
engagement on this particular area was less than satisfactory.

Now it gets a little philosophical. Bear with me. Every possible name was 
catered for, because of the inclusion of the "none" option. Therefore, any 
lack of engagement prior to name choice would not have affected the poll. 
Therefore, the poll is valid. 

Why is this so? Let's take a simple example. 10 possible names; 1,000 votes, 
distributed evenly. 5 choices + "none" in the poll. "none" gets 50% of the 
vote (technically, this would be a loss of none, since it's not a majority, 
but that's a sheer technicality and we can all agree that in the event 
that "none" got exactly 50% of the vote, it would be taken as winning). So 
now we have 5 names left in our theoretical namespace. Same 1,000 votes; each 
name has a doubled number of votes. Obviously, it's a tie.

The important things to note from this example: Every name, in the absence of 
any other factor, got an equal number of votes, in the end. Which is to say, 
the probability of a given name being selected, disregarding factors external 
to the vote, is equal.

Moving back to our real example, we have a theoretically unlimited (but finite 
in practice) number of possible names, and an unspecified number of votes. 
Vote choice is determined by a wide variety of different factors. The ONLY 
factor that we can account for is voter preference - that is to say, we can 
assume that a user voted for a particular name (or "none", which is, in 
effect, the same as voting once for every other name in the pool) because 
they wanted that name to win. We can assume that because that's what the poll 
told users to do.

Everyone still with me? Good :)

People now want to void the poll. They argue it is invalid because a 
proportion of the users weren't involved in choosing the name, so their views 
weren't represented in the poll. I argue that because every possible name has 
been included in the poll, the poll is valid, and so shouldn't be voided 
(note that I'm not arguing that the selection method is perfect, but that it 
is valid). Again, I have no arguments with giving the poll more time to run, 
although I think that more than 24-48 hours would be excessive.

Important note: Invalid arguments against this line of reasoning are any that 
include "but the users would have been affected by X because Y". Without 
asking - and receiving responses from - a representative sample of the 
voters, we can't make any such argument. The only reason I can make the 
assumption that voters have voted for their preferred option is because 
that's what the poll told them to do. We know that users are affected by all 
sorts of things, but without any evidence to back up any argument that 
involves second-guessing users' motives, there's no point delving into it.

But at the end of the day, you guys do whatever you think you should. If you 
don't believe the poll is valid, we can talk about it and maybe agree 
(although I think the above argument is pretty iron-cast). If you believe the 
poll is valid and want to void it anyway... well. Then we've got nothing to 
discuss.

/Nick
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