It has been noted that we lack a clear SOP to guide the parameters for voting in the OBO Foundry. Below, I've gathered what I could find on discussions regarding this topic.

NOTE 1: Below are just snippets of (mostly) suggestions. So far as I could tell, the discussions given below did not impact other discussions (which is to say that some of these were specific to the issue at hand and not necessarily meant for an SOP on Voting Protocol itself).

NOTE 2: I did not include the many times our minutes said something like "X will create a ticket and we'll vote next meeting". I do think the implication is that we generally do restrict our votes to meetings. By the way, we do routinely vote on matters of the web site.

NOTE 3: I restricted these notes to only our 'rolling' agendas, which began at the tail end of 2019).

Suggested in the context of various voting discussions

1. Only active members can vote (Note: It was suggested that attending meetings is not sufficient to determine 'active')
2. Guests would not be able to vote on decisions.

In the context of admitting new ontologies, this discussion

SOP question: should we admit based on consensus or majority vote?
Darren: we don’t usually come across this case with disagreement
The opinions of the people that reviewed should be weighed higher than the other opinions (falls on consensus side)
Nico to follow up next time with a vote about whether to admit and to follow with ontology developers.
Do we only vote with those who are present? (Nico says yes)
Alex D.: Require a ⅔ vote.
Bill D.: If only voting with those present, how many members must be present?
Chris S.: Prefers public, transparent vote on github

In the context of new members for the Ops Committee:

DRAFT: If someone is interested in becoming a member of the operations group, they should contact an existing group member, who explains to them that being a member will require committing to do some work. They agree (or are not considered). The current members are then asked via an email on obo-operations if anyone objects to adding the candidate member.

• If conflicts arise, we move to the decision process described elsewhere (first trying to find consensus, if not possible, ask for a formal vote with the majority of active members)

In the context of OMO (unclear the precise issue)
We call a vote with a timeline (2 weeks)
At least 5 supporters per vote