[Musicbrainz-style] Style Council areas

[Don Redman]

On Tue, 17 May 2005 13:10:56 -0400, Alexander Dupuy wrote:

> I get the feeling that you think I'm trying to restrict and structure  
> and over-organize this thing.  Believe me, I'm not.  In any volunteer  
> organization, most of the difficulties lie in getting the volunteers to  
> do the work.  For some jobs, everybody is there without being asked.   
> For other jobs, you must appeal to their sense of responsibility and/or  
> duty.  The latter is the function of the areas and sub-areas.

Yes I had this feeling. We seem to be quite good at misunderstanding each  
other when, in fact, we agree :-)

In another thread you wrote:

> John Carter wrote:
>> There's style issues that come up that I feel passionately about, and  
>> issues
>> I don't care about.  Hopefully with a reasonably sized council, every  
>> issue
>> will have enough interested parties to discuss it properly & reach a
>> consensus that represents the wider MB community.
>
> I guess there's a bit of disconnect on what each of us mean by  
> consensus.  When I've been using consensus, I've been referring to the  
> MusicBrainz community as a whole (participating on mb-users and -style,  
> and the Wiki), not just the Style Council.
>
> I agree (and hope) that most of the time, "every issue will have enough  
> interested parties to discuss it properly & reach a consensus" - the  
> purpose of the areas, and "group of three" voting, is for handling those  
> cases where there aren't enough interested parties, or when consensus is  
> elusive.
>
> In the past when this happened, we relied on the StyleDude to step in,  
> but that is no longer an option; I think we've grown a bit too much to  
> depend on a benevolent dictator, and we need some formal process to  
> replace parts of the StyleDude's role.

I think the only difference is that I believe that a dedicated but loosely  
organized style council (or sub-communhity on mb-style) will deal very  
efficacily (sp?) with 90% of all style questions. They will reach rough  
consensus *on mb-style*.

We seem to agree with this. Now I understand you, that there should always  
be a person or goup that has the authority to issue this rough consensus  
*as a rule* to mb-users.
This is one point where I thought, that this might not be needed. But  
perhaps I am wrong.

The other aspect is that you
> think we've grown a bit too much to depend on a benevolent dictator, and  
> we need some formal process to replace parts of the StyleDude's role.

While I believe that the "benevolent dictator keeps an eye on a dedicated  
community" is a very efficient mechanism that scales quite well (at least  
to mb-style). Therefore I believe that the role of pondering over a style  
issue should be given to mb-style. The three benevolent dictators (the  
Ministers of Style as Christov suggested) should have the role of making  
the transition form "rough consensus" to "decision".

But that is my idea. Everybody knows that I am a great fan of soft  
security and that I argue against most formal structures when I believe  
that things *could* work without them. While most people argue for formal  
structures when they believe that things might break without them.

In this case I will stop doing so. Let's implement what you thought of.  
Yes, I had the impression that you wanted to overformalize things. I do  
not believe this anymore and I am confindent that things will deformalize  
themselves if need arises.

   DonRedman


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