Objections to process undertaken for #76

[sciwhiz12]

Recently, PR #76 was made, which sought to amend the existing RFC 0062: Quilt Community Collab by introducing a clause to allow for the early closure of votes when a threshold of majority votes in favor of a single option has been crossed.

While I have my own objections/contrary opinions to the actual content of that amendment (because of its eliding over vote changes), this issue is focused on the process by which the PR was merged through.

From the initial proposal of the PR (including the mishap of the earlier PR #75) to its merge, the process took an hour and some minutes. It was merged on the basis that it was a minor amendment, and that "[e]nough reviews have been cast".

I strenously object to this, on two points:

1. The timeframe between the amendment's proposal and its merging was extremely short -- a bit over an hour -- compared to the ordinary time it takes for most other PRs in this repository, which is usually on the order of days to weeks.

   This prevents anyone who isn't active, online, and having the capacity to review the prospoal within that short timespan from actually giving their own feedback, such as I. It heavily restricts that pool of potential feedback submitters to those who were informed of the amendement before its proposal, to those who were informed when the proposal PR was made, and to those who were in the specific timezone of those who made and merged the amendment.

   There is a reason why most if not all legislative assemblies have rules regarding minimum periods on the order of days between readings of bills, or lengthy prior notice for particularly impactful motions -- it is to prevent any single group with a sufficient quorum from fast-tracking a bill and preventing other members from debating or voting on the same.

2. Sufficient reviews alone are not a sufficient standard by which PRs to this repository are accepted and merged.

   That standard should be the revision of a proposal by "build[ing] consensus among the community and incorporat[ing] feedback from others"¹. As mentioned in my point above, both of these were foreclosed because of the extremely short timespan between the creation of the PR and its acceptance.

   A PR may have dissenting reviews or opinions given by others, but what matters is the concerns raised by those reviews/opinions are properly addressed. By saying that enough reviews have been "cast", that consensus-building has been subverted and those reviews are effectively treated as votes (with, again, an extremely short time to "vote", barring all those except who were participanting, active and informed at the time).

   And to note, all those who have reviewed that PR are staff members of Quilt (including its author). The wider community had no involvement in that process (nor could they involve themselves in that process due to the time restraint).

As a suggestion of a solution, any PR to this repository should be at minimum be left open for 24 hours, to allow people of all timezones (or work/personal schedules) across the world the basic potential opportunity to read through those PR and make their opinions known.

Footnotes

1. RFC 0001: The Quilt RFC Process, § Process ↩