I fear this thread now needs a bit of explanation to the community.
There is a public board vote. Some votes are explicit and clear:
Then there is a participation in the vote thread that has introductory and explanatory text, and then a “NO” preceded by an if clause.
This means I cannot easily summarize the vote and proceed. Instead, I remember such votes are not possible, but anyways I do research on this. This costs time and money and energy.
The outcome of that research is that if the vote is not a clear one, and in particular if it contains conditional clauses (which the word “if” is), it cannot be counted at all. It is to be treated as if it was not casted. This is not related to our rules of procedure, but to civilian law.
This is also logical. Imagine three people vote “yes” with such an “if” statement like
“If the majority supporst this obviously fantastic vote, I vote yes.”
and three others vote explictly “no”.
Is the vote valid? Was it casted? Was the decision approved? Is it undecided?
Now what if I simply had counted the vote and be “relaxed”, so to say? There would be a risk that others challenge it for this very reason. In result, no matter how it was summarized, someone could have complained. This is a situation one cannot resolve easily, which is why clear votes are so very important.
Now we have an ongoing discussion. This again costs time.
All this happens when we have other topics we could work on to further our mission:
For all these items, I would love to see a comparable “passionate” participation from everyone, instead of spending more time on the vote counting.
The vote was done in public. All board members comments are visible in public. Nothing is lost, nothing is hidden, nothing has been obfuscated. No matter how that particular message is counted or not, it does not change the outcome of the vote.
The irony is that from some I’ve repeatedly heard in the past to “Never challenge a board decision in public” or “Follow the chairperson and don’t challenge them”. Oh, the irony…
I would like to move on and work on actual problems, not on an academic discussion how to count votes, as this does not help us to further our mission, neither does it address our most pressing topics.
As for some of the words used here: Working at TDF you grow a thick fur, but this is not the communication style I want to see in this community.