BUIP079: Publication of BUIP vote and election dates in advance

[torusJKL]

BUIP079: Publication of BUIP vote and election dates in advance
Submitted on 19th November 2017 by torusJKL

Motivation
Bitcoin Unlimited needs a healthy voting participation.
Many members might not be very active on the forum and some have missed voting announcements.

Objectives
Implementing a system that will give people the possibility to check less often and still be able to know about all voting dates.

Solution
Voting dates will be published at least 12 months in advance. Members would need to check not more than twice a year and mark the dates for themselves.
Setting the dates remains the discretion of the secretary but there need to be a minimum of 4 dates per calendar year.
The blank-voting dates of Switzerland (https://www.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/va/vab_1_3_3_1.html) could be used as a reference.

Task
The BU Articles document, Article 2, IV will be amended with he following:

Voting dates are published at least 12 months advance notice on the BU communication channels. Each calendar year shall have no less than 4 voting dates spread over the whole year.
Dates can be removed if they are not yet within the advance notice window.
If there is no BUIP ready for voting on a predefined date than the voting will not take place and the date will not rescheduled.
The predefined dates can be used for votes, elections or both at the same date.

 

[torusJKL]

@solex Please add this as a draft to the BUIP list. If there is a number collision please change it to the next available. Thanks.

 

[theZerg]

You are proposing that the voting dates be set 1 year in advance, but that the content of that vote be determined later (based on existing BUIP rules)? Please clarify this in your BUIP.

My concern would be that this might slow down our ability to get stuff done. We do post vote announcements to other public locations (reddit, for example)...

 

[Norway]

Maybe we should have an opt-in alert service. Email, or even better, SMS.

 

[torusJKL]

Yes, the voting dates would be fixed in advance. Members can submit new BUIPs as before and they will be put up for vote at the next predefined voting date.

In 2017 there were 4 ballots scheduled.
If 4 per year seem too few and too far apart than more could be set and skipped if there are no BUIPs ready. 4 being the minimum.

As this BUIP would change the Articles I will let it rest some more and think about the wording. I plan to put it up for vote only next year.
[doublepost=1511209742][/doublepost]

Maybe we should have an opt-in alert service. Email, or even better, SMS.

Those are all good ideas and maybe we should have the option to call for unplanned votes in addition to the scheduled ones. But those should only be done if there is an issue that could not wait at all.

 

[kostialevin]

I like voting mechanism but it could be too slow in some situations (as for the latest Cash hard fork). My opinion is that votes should be done whenever they are needed and maybe called with an additional email to all the members.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Maybe someone can sent a Satoshi to a given address, for those using BUCash, with a public message "Voting time!"?

 

[solex]

Changing the articles raises the bar a lot as it requires a 75% majority to pass.

For general info. At the start of each vote session I do PM a lot of the members to let them know about it. To avoid spamming people, this excludes those who have been active in discussions and threads about the BUIPs, and otherwise likely to know that a vote is scheduled.

 

[torusJKL]

I like voting mechanism but it could be too slow in some situations (as for the latest Cash hard fork). My opinion is that votes should be done whenever they are needed and maybe called with an additional email to all the members.

Emergency development can always be done on the authority of the lead developer. This is what happened with the new DAA. There was no BUIP for it and no membership vote.

Members would have the possibility to draft a blocking BUIP if they don't agree with the emergency development and that one would need to wait until the next available date.

At this point we already have multiple events coming together.

• bug fix or new feature is needed on short notice (and is developed by BU)
• a BU member does not agree and drafts a blocking BUIP
• the next voting date is after the date the bug fix / new feature is needed

I think the chance of such an accumulation of special circumstances to be very low.
And for the exceptional chance that this does happen we could give the president the authority to call for an emergency voting.

 

[torusJKL]

For general info. At the start of each vote session I do PM a lot of the members to let them know about it. To avoid spamming people, this excludes those who have been active in discussions and threads about the BUIPs, and otherwise likely to know that a vote is scheduled.

I know that you do all you can to let people know.

But nothing beats a predefined date.