More on R6RS ratification

Given the preliminary results, it looks like R6RS will pass with a 66% margin (I predicted 70% a while ago). Strangely, official results haven't been announced yet, in violation of the announced schedule. More strangely, everyone seems to be quiet on this delay; I suspect that the nays are hoping for some last-minute deliverance handed down from the Steering Committee, but I'm surprised that the ayes aren't becoming impatient at this point.

The comments section provides a glimpse into the disastrous effects of a biased electoral process that requires justification from dissenters, but not from approvers. While most of the nays provide a detailed analysis of the draft (usually acknowledging its virtues where applicable), the "yes" camp, where it bothers at all to comment, seems to employ a pretty lax standard (including a few pearls that I won't quote in order not to offend the authors).

One comment that I found sad, yet funny states that "...Scheme needs a splash of 'worse is better' to move the language standard forward" — coming from a voter from New Jersey, no less.

On a personal note, I almost messed up my ballot. I sent my vote just before the deadline from my registered voter address, but I forgot to change the default email-address field of the ballot. My vote was rejected; I sent a corrected ballot, but only after the deadline, so it wouldn't count. I e-mailed Alan Bawden, who mentioned that "I did fix a lot of people's ballots in trivial ways... [including]... unbalanced parentheses, but I drew the line at actually altering people's claimed identities" (the email-address field apparently taking precedence over the originating address in the email envelope). Luckily, my vote was accepted after a short back-and-forth.

Update: the Steering Committee has ratified R5.97RS.

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Comments

A slip of 2-3 days in the "Dog Days of Summer" is nothing to get excited about, I think. Based on what Will Clinger said in his ballot, this would seem to be the least of the procedural issues in the whole process, especially as the Steering Committee has now indeed ratified R5.97RS as R6RtlfkaS ( see the top of http://www.r6rs.org/ ).

- Harold

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