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I think democracy is almost the worst way to take decisions when it comes to scientific/engineering things. In an open source project, a single expert should be

I think democracy is almost the worst way to take decisions when it comes to scientific/engineering things. In an open source project, a single expert should be able to overrule the mass of users/contributors if his point is technically more correct. This is very difficult to consistently achieve in a democracy. I would love to see the results/conclusion of this research. We would finally get some data-backed insight into why/why not democracy is good for a software project.

softmodeling 11y ago
In principle, one tends to agree with the sentence about experts overruling the mass but in fact we don't accept this behaviour in economy or any other aspect of our lives. So, maybe it's the right to do it but I'd love to have more data (and confidence) on that. Also, it's not only about technical decisions but also regarding who decides what feature should be implemented next
- dudul 11y ago
  What do you mean "we don't accept this behaviour in economy"? I believe we very much let experts handle the economy. Or are you talking about the fact that it is a widely criticize state of affair?
  - oneJob 11y ago
    The Fed Chief is put there by elected officials. Same for Treasury. Same for most of the regulatory agencies. The economy is very much handled by fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policy, which is handled by individuals that are handled by elected officials. Seriously, the amount of basic misunderstanding of all things not programming related here on HN is starting to get to me. I can't read these threads without being compelled to correct such obvious errors. If you don't know what you're talking about, at least phrase it in a way so that it comes across as an opinion, or better yet, research before you type. It's ruining the quality of these threads.
    - rc4algorithm 11y ago
      It's not like de Raadt or Torvalds got arbitrarily dropped into their positions. People effectively chose them by investing usership and development effort into their projects.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > in fact we don't accept this behaviour in economy or any other aspect of our lives I think it's simply because this approach is more prone to abuse. A good dictator leaves democracy in the dust in terms of efficiency, but converesly a bad dictator can make everything go to shit at moment's notice. In economy/politics, it's a matter of life and death. In open-source software, the risks of dictatorship don't matter - someone can always fork the project off and do it better, but even if not, no one is starving or dying because of it.
js8 11y ago
Are you familiar with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet's_jury_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet's_jury_theorem ? It basically says that enough independent people voting can give better results than any single of them, which contradicts your theory. Your thinking is underlined by assumption there is one correct solution to arrive at. But maybe that's actually rarely the case.
- afarrell 11y ago
  To quote that article: """ This version of the theorem is correct, given its assumptions, but its assumptions are unrealistic in practice. Some objections that are commonly raised: ... * The theorem doesn't directly apply to decisions between more than two outcomes. """ Additionally, it does not take into account the cost of making the decision, which, under direct democracy, rises quadratically with the number of people that must debate and agree to the decision.
  - js8 11y ago
    I don't think they are that unrealistic. I think you would find, if you have n options, one of them is the correct one, and there is slight bias towards the correct one among the decision-makers, a similar theorem still holds (from the central limit theorem). Regarding the transaction costs, this is a different issue, but I would say that is an issue in any project regardless how things are decided. Nothing in the theorem itself requires the people to actually communicate, they can just become biased towards the correct solution on their own. It should be also noted that, in the real world, people can decide not to take the vote if they don't feel qualified to decide, further improving the results of the theorem. (I actually rediscovered the CJT myself when I was interested in how democracy works.) I think it would be nice to try this on college students, give them some knowledge test (or perhaps two - one in their area of expertise and the other outside their area), and compare the best individual results with the interpretation of the results through voting. I haven't seen anybody trying that, but I think many people would be surprised how well it works. :-)
    - afarrell 11y ago
oneJob 11y ago
This sort of sh*t scares me. Thinking that software is a purely technical endeavor where an expert can always be "right" and thus ignore non experts.
- afarrell 11y ago
  There are other options between unconstrained direct democracy and monarchy by someone who does not listen to colleagues. For example, a model wherein one person makes the final decision but is socially pressured to earnestly listen to the opinions of other members of the community often works well.
  - softmodeling 11y ago
    Exactly. Democracy does not imply that all members of the project (including non-technical users) have to vote every single decision. We could have elections and let elected experts to act unsupervised for a period of time, use liquid democracy (where you delegate your vote when you're not involved in a certain decision),...
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Well, because it is. What scares me is those constant attempts to turn software projects into social gatherings.
  - oneJob 11y ago
    Yeah, like GitHub. Can you believe how socialist their intro statement is: "GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over 12.4 million people use GitHub to build amazing things together." I mean, it doesn't use the word 'technical' once!
    - dingo_bat 11y ago
      While the language Github uses to describe themselves has become increasingly "social", and "sharing" and basically political, their success is backed by solid tech and innovation. All the sharing and social aspect of the website is a byproduct of the innovation and technical superiority (owed in part to git).

softmodeling 11y ago

In principle, one tends to agree with the sentence about experts overruling the mass but in fact we don't accept this behaviour in economy or any other aspect of our lives. So, maybe it's the right to do it but I'd love to have more data (and confidence) on that. Also, it's not only about technical decisions but also regarding who decides what feature should be implemented next

dudul 11y ago
What do you mean "we don't accept this behaviour in economy"? I believe we very much let experts handle the economy. Or are you talking about the fact that it is a widely criticize state of affair?
- oneJob 11y ago
  The Fed Chief is put there by elected officials. Same for Treasury. Same for most of the regulatory agencies. The economy is very much handled by fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policy, which is handled by individuals that are handled by elected officials. Seriously, the amount of basic misunderstanding of all things not programming related here on HN is starting to get to me. I can't read these threads without being compelled to correct such obvious errors. If you don't know what you're talking about, at least phrase it in a way so that it comes across as an opinion, or better yet, research before you type. It's ruining the quality of these threads.
  - rc4algorithm 11y ago
    It's not like de Raadt or Torvalds got arbitrarily dropped into their positions. People effectively chose them by investing usership and development effort into their projects.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
> in fact we don't accept this behaviour in economy or any other aspect of our lives I think it's simply because this approach is more prone to abuse. A good dictator leaves democracy in the dust in terms of efficiency, but converesly a bad dictator can make everything go to shit at moment's notice. In economy/politics, it's a matter of life and death. In open-source software, the risks of dictatorship don't matter - someone can always fork the project off and do it better, but even if not, no one is starving or dying because of it.

js8 11y ago

Are you familiar with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet's_jury_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet's_jury_theorem ? It basically says that enough independent people voting can give better results than any single of them, which contradicts your theory. Your thinking is underlined by assumption there is one correct solution to arrive at. But maybe that's actually rarely the case.

afarrell 11y ago
To quote that article: """ This version of the theorem is correct, given its assumptions, but its assumptions are unrealistic in practice. Some objections that are commonly raised: ... * The theorem doesn't directly apply to decisions between more than two outcomes. """ Additionally, it does not take into account the cost of making the decision, which, under direct democracy, rises quadratically with the number of people that must debate and agree to the decision.
- js8 11y ago
  I don't think they are that unrealistic. I think you would find, if you have n options, one of them is the correct one, and there is slight bias towards the correct one among the decision-makers, a similar theorem still holds (from the central limit theorem). Regarding the transaction costs, this is a different issue, but I would say that is an issue in any project regardless how things are decided. Nothing in the theorem itself requires the people to actually communicate, they can just become biased towards the correct solution on their own. It should be also noted that, in the real world, people can decide not to take the vote if they don't feel qualified to decide, further improving the results of the theorem. (I actually rediscovered the CJT myself when I was interested in how democracy works.) I think it would be nice to try this on college students, give them some knowledge test (or perhaps two - one in their area of expertise and the other outside their area), and compare the best individual results with the interpretation of the results through voting. I haven't seen anybody trying that, but I think many people would be surprised how well it works. :-)
  - afarrell 11y ago

oneJob 11y ago

This sort of sh*t scares me. Thinking that software is a purely technical endeavor where an expert can always be "right" and thus ignore non experts.

afarrell 11y ago
There are other options between unconstrained direct democracy and monarchy by someone who does not listen to colleagues. For example, a model wherein one person makes the final decision but is socially pressured to earnestly listen to the opinions of other members of the community often works well.
- softmodeling 11y ago
  Exactly. Democracy does not imply that all members of the project (including non-technical users) have to vote every single decision. We could have elections and let elected experts to act unsupervised for a period of time, use liquid democracy (where you delegate your vote when you're not involved in a certain decision),...
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Well, because it is. What scares me is those constant attempts to turn software projects into social gatherings.
- oneJob 11y ago
  Yeah, like GitHub. Can you believe how socialist their intro statement is: "GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over 12.4 million people use GitHub to build amazing things together." I mean, it doesn't use the word 'technical' once!
  - dingo_bat 11y ago
    While the language Github uses to describe themselves has become increasingly "social", and "sharing" and basically political, their success is backed by solid tech and innovation. All the sharing and social aspect of the website is a byproduct of the innovation and technical superiority (owed in part to git).