I have no problem just reducing it, not everyone can vote timely but I wouldn't lower it either too much. I think decisions should take some time, but also not quite long. Around 60% would be good.

Not 50% though, I'd be wary of that.

half seems like too close to solidly agree on a vote. 60 is a good compromise that would be actually attainable. 55 i think is still too close of a majority.

i dont want to adjust it down too far, but i acknowledge that we're having issues reaching quorum. i would rather we find more ways to get people notified about active votes -- thin the deluge of information that stewards are being presented with, as it were -- rather than reduce quorum.

Adjusting it down slightly seems reasonable.

voting in ascending order; i think that it could potentially be contextual, and that we need to delegate more.

if we feel like it's an impediment, maybe we can take it downward in steps

I think the real answer is to start working on 2a again (which in its current draft eschews quorum entirely in favor of a longer voting period to better assure abstentions are deliberate), but meanwhile we're just too big and frankly I'm not sure even 50% is low enough.

I'd prefer we explore longer voting periods and delegation to subcommittees before lowering quorum in a stepwise fashion, but I'm not opposed to lowering it.

Several 24-hour votes were announced while I was asleep, and by the time I got off from work there were only a few hours left to try to cram and catch up.

if it's gonna get lowered id rather stair-step it

simple majority starts to feel too small and i feel worried it could not be representative of the super majority of the group. the rest feel like ok compromises. it sounds like maybe we could use an alternative voting rules for fast track items that fit certain criteria or do we feel that it’s important to move as a group on all items.

60% seems like strong enough agreement while being largely attainable

The real gate is that no one vetoes something so quorum isn't as important to me as just the pacing of decisions. It should exist to encourage participation in the process, but I don't feel strongly about the number. Stewards can participate effectively without voting on all or even most proposals: there's lots of other kinds of work to be done!

I'd give the groups a different name, and tbh I'm not sure if it's productive to break up and enforce a hierarchy

seconding sirocyl - maybe an informal title would be good

yeah, in principle having some form of "voting" and "non-voting" stewards (with an ability to switch between them as capacity allows) strikes me as one obvious way to keep the number of people voting to a manageable level.

we already have a few people who explicitly do not want to be voting stewards and that'd take the pressure off them to be involved in every decision

i like the idea of having a way for the stewards to signal their available for any given period of time.

i think it should be made clear that neither group has priority over the other when it comes to matters where both are required to agree on something. I know a lot of node operators and our technically minded individuals are just content to work on a problem until it's done, but they should still be allowed to object if it's proposed that we're going to do something that is infeasible for one reason or another.

Honestly, more defined roles for individuals within the League is not a bad thing at all, and I'm way for it. I know no one wants to add like ten roles to the Discord right now, but it would be nice to identify people by which of the stewardship roles they want to take on, even past quorum or non-quorum. I like to run tech support for people spinning up nodes and I sure as heck like to answer questions in Discord, but I also run my own node and want to contribute to the quorum. Not everyone should feel like they have to sign up for all of those things at the same time, but they should be able to help out where/when they can.

We would need to establish some kind of control for entering and exiting the quorum role, otherwise quorum counts would easily fluctuate based on whether stewards feel like having a quorum role for a specific thing or not. Monthly terms, maybe. Stepping off quorum should be easy, but we don't want people coming in and out constantly, and a rule will make that easier to manage than having to know it when we see it.

as I said in the other quorum thread, I think this should be handled by reopening 2a and working on our long-term methods (which again, as drafted do not have a quorum because this was all anticipated; longer voting periods are meant to make abstentions more reliably deliberate).

I'm fine with reducing (or removing!) quorum in the current temporary system, but this solution strikes me as unworkable because some of us move in and out of availability week-to-week. which means either:

1. we're always in the quorum group and frequently a cause to miss it

2. we're never in the quorum group and our representation is diminished even when we're fully available

3. the quorum group needs to be constantly updated with everyone's status, and we all have a duty to check in and keep it current

only (3) seems fair and that's far too much work to throw at a volunteer group, especially for something I view as entirely vestigial to our processes: consensus voting does not work the same way as affirmation voting, it's individual dissents that matter, not raw mass of approval.

i don't think that creating a different group is the way to go. i suggest the following: current stewards can choose to freely step back from their responsibilities at any time within reason, and they can choose to take on the responsibilities again without much complication, since we have already vetted them and we should be able to trust them. i don't think stewards need be able to be here without the responsibilities entirely, they can just not be stewards.

I think this issue needs further clarification on what the process of moving in and out of the quorum group would look like, and (echoing @isomorphism here) what the actual activity requirements will look like once the dust has settled.

I don't really want to create two different groups, only a way for stewards to opt out from quorum. i don't see a reason to divide it up formally

We're establishing more hierachy than we really need to function. I'm currently failing to understand why someone would want to remain a steward if they aren't interested in voting. Stewardship is a voluntary role, and I'd prefer it to be possible for people to step down and come back to that role whenever they feel they need to, rather than create two groups of stewards, with one having less say in discussions.

I think this can work very well but it needs to be clear that it is not a heirarchy thing. So terms might be need to be switched around and perhaps not as a different grounp and maybe a mode?

Part of my concern is the switch from active to inactive depending on selected relevant topics that may create a group bias.

I'm all for it, just a bit of complication.

I agree with wenchcoat that we should be looking at 2b again.

I am not completely opposed to the idea of having non-voting stewards and having some way to signal that a particular steward is going to be unavailable for a long period of time, but I also get the impression that that we're trying to apply quorum votes to decisions that would be fine being handled in a "doacratic" manner.

That's completely understandable, it takes a while for an organization/group to work out where that line is, and yeah, we're going to get it wrong on occasion, and people will be upset, and that will be a learning experience for the league.

A basic rule of thumb would be looking at the urgency and the stakes involved in the decision. In my experience with orgs, quorum consensus is appropriate for decisions that are low to medium urgency and have medium to high stakes.

Decisions that are low stakes of any urgency are best handled via "doacracy".

For high urgency and high stakes decisions, I found that it was more preferable for them to be handled by firefighting rules, where the first to arrive on "scene" does the initial size up of the situation and make the decisions necessary to lower the urgency and/or the stakes, if it is not outright solvable. The important thing is that the first responders are still accountable to the broader group for their decisions after the crisis passes or at least when the temperature is lowered enough that the broader group can take over decision-making. Part of the lessons learned process afterwards is the broader group identifying and implementing mitigations to prevent a repeat of that particular kind of high urgency & high stakes crisis that would require an extraordinary response.

i dont think someone who's a steward but mostly doesn't participate in stuff makes a whole lot of sense. i do think having a way to be like "im on vacation and i trust folks to make decisions without me" makes sense.

I don't really see the benefit to dividing things up. What role do non-quorum stewards serve? Personally, I'd rather step down entirely and step back up later.

I think more aggressive delegation to working groups might be a good first-line response to use here. Another might be approaching the idea of "stewards who aren't part of quorum for a given vote" as not even being two separate categories as much as being a more… procedural, ephemeral kind of deal — say, a simple mathematical way of determining that someone's not part of quorum for some given vote based on their recent attendance &c., but where even a single vote (or two, or something that's an incredibly low bar) could put them back into the "currently used in calculating quorum" set of stewards.

I'll admit I dunno, looking through responses and looking it over. I do feel like it might be best if we just have "active stewards" and "inactive stewards", but at least having some way to opt out of the quorum pool temporarily would be nice.

I guess my vote is best stated as "this is better than the current situation, but there may still be even better"