Governance Committee Meeting 1.1: Decision Making Process

I agree about striving for consensus. In terms of majorities, I think it's useful to think in 2 layers so that we don't get bogged down by absentee members:

- What % of eligible members need to vote on a rule in order for that vote to be valid? That is, what constitutes a quorum?
- Conditional on that quorum being achieved, what % of vote do we need to pass a rule?

So if there are 15 eligible voters, we might say that we require 2/3 participation for quorum, and then we require a 60% majority to pass a rule.
That way if we have a vote of 7-3 in favor of a rule, we can pass that rule, even though only a minority of eligible members actually voted for it.

Otherwise, unless we get extremely high participation rates on each vote, we're unlikely to pass anything.

The other thing I have been thinking about is if there can be a unanimous consent mechanism to expedite low stakes, noncontroversial intra-committee decisions like picking the facilitator and accepting the facilitator's agenda. Something like a motion gets a second and a third, and then no objections for N hours is a pass, or maybe something a bit more convoluted like after N hours work can proceed, but if there is an objection raised after M hours, we gotta backtrack. With such a system, a valid objection would be if one thinks it should get a full vote even if one supports the motion.

Do we need to define what's meant by "major" and "minor" point items?

Also had the same question regarding what constitutes a quorum.

And while the beauty of these threads is their free flowing nature and how conversations among members can happen within a larger thread/discussion I'm not sure how that would work as a governance process.

Can Robert rules be applied here? Are they even necessary?

Well, I think everything that comes out of the Governance Committee will eventually be voted upon by the general membership. The idea, as far as I understand it, is that the Governance Committee will discuss things and ultimately propose items regarding forum governance that would then have to be approved by the general membership (yes/no vote).

In particular, I think we will soon convene several sub-committees that will be tasked with developing proposals for various issues related to forum governance. Many will likely propose rules/procedures that will then be put to an approval vote of the general membership.

To take the example of choosing mods, I imagine a governance sub-committee will discuss things and then propose a process by which forum mods are chosen (now and in the future). Depending upon how we structure things, maybe the sub-committee proposal would have to be approved by the entire Governance Committee. In any event, there are several different ways this could go, but maybe the sub-committee/committee proposal would include a recommended panel of initial mods that the general membership would be asked to approve (yes/no vote). In other scenarios I could imagine the general membership being asked to nominate/vote on individual mods in some manner.

In general, I'm sympathetic to the consensus model. We'll need fairly extensive safeguards for the forum at large (but that's for later), but on this committee, I think we should respect a single blocking vote (noting that people can also elect to vote no but stand aside).

I don't like the idea of removing a committee member because they can't devote as much time here as some of the addicts. We should recognize that this process isn't going to be quick and reconcile ourselves to the pace.

If we did 3 or 4 sessions a year we would be able to cycle users who didn't realize the actual time commitment between sessions without actually having to go through a removal process which increases the chance that the user would still feel ownership and want to contribute to the community.

I think we should clarify our thinking regarding these "tiers". I'd suggest that things which are in the realm of facilitation be separated out from actual proposals... and let's drop the vague terms "high stakes", and "low stakes".

Things that are in the realm of facilitation should be the call of the facilitator(s). The perfect example is approving the agenda. IMO the facilitator could said: "Here's the tentative agenda, now is the time any peeps to propose additions -or- for any peeps to object. If there are no objections, and no additions, we are good to go after (x) hours". As far as I'm concerned, a facilitator is already empowered to make this kinda call, and we don't really need to formalize this kinda thingee.



Two items that we should quickly decide, if we can, for internal use in this committee are what constitutes a quorum (Q), and the minimum time the polls are open (H). IMO these two issues are largely independent of exactly how we make decisions, and are equally necessary if we choose a consensus backed system, a super majority, 50%+1, or any other such system I can imagine.

Traditionally quorum is set to half the voting population. Which is fine, although I might suggest rounding down a little and setting it at Q=10 instead of Q=12.

For poll open time, I am in favor of what kerowo suggested, a minimum of H=24 hours. IMO maybe more, but certainly not less.

As for how we decide things (consensus, 50%+1, etc/etc), I am in favor of having a "temperature check", aka straw poll, as recommended by whosnext. IMO the facilitator can call a "temperature check" on their own initiative.

Should we be discussing Q in terms of percentage of members rather than absolute numbers? Right now this committee has 22 people. Perhaps 5 stop posting here altogether over the next couple of months and another six lose interest in this committee. So now there are 11 members of this committee. If we've decided Q =12 we have a bit of a problem. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding and we've been talking percentages the whole time and the numbers 10 and 12 or just examples of what Q would be based on the current membership numbers

Wookie, that is definitely possible in Discourse. I'm going to quote your post over to their thread.

I agree with 48 hours for votes as well. I don't think that we should have to sweat missing a vote if we aren't here daily.

I don't put as much importance on consensus as others seem to do. I think its usefulness is mostly symbolical. If blocking consensus means another 24-48h of debate, then that's fine with me. Anything beyond can easily result in this committee being completely ineffective.

Basically, a facilitator is presiding at a business meeting. Business meetings have an order of business. As whosnext suggested, it's like Roberts Rules of Order. Except for us here, simplified, less formal, modified for (possible) consensus process, and modified for being online. That, and we are so far proceeding in an ad-hoc manner. We are in a certain way trusting in our facilitator to establish our ad-hoc order of business... and not to stir us wrong in general.



Some of these areas sure. I'd hope that several of us have some familiarity with traditional business meetings, as that would be a big help. In some areas, in particular what we need to do different because we are not face-2-face, and the "coming out of nothing" part, I don't have experience.



By the term facilitation decisions, I'm imagining things in general that would be in order for the presiding officer at a business meeting.

For example, let's use setting an agenda. Often some things have been added between meetings by email/etc, some might just be obvious to the officer, and there would typically be a short time for items to be added from the floor. From there, the officer could collate that list, and put it to "ayes" and "nays". No "nays" then off the meeting goes. If there are any "nays", then the officer could open the floor for discussion, and then a formal vote on approving the agenda.

What I suggested above was what I'd consider an online version of this example.

One quibble with your example however: Since the implied "aye"/"nay" is actually a form of voting, the hours that peeps could object should be at least as long as that allotted for votes in general. That time wouldn't be determined by the facilitator (after the ad-hoc phase has ended).



There is a "re-inventing the wheel" issue here.

What groups often do is adopt the meeting mechanics of some other already functioning group. For a group which is going to do traditional business meetings, that often means adopting Roberts Rules of Order (or any of the other functionally equivalent rules of order, such as Rusty's Rules of Order). For activist groups that want to do consensus process, there is no shortage of information on this topic on the interwebs, and they'll usually pick one of those to adopt. Also, often there will be a standing Process Committee, which is tasked with evaluating the efficacy of the current process, and proposing incremental improvements to the root that they feel would improve the current process.

One way to deal with this issue is to have agreement that (a) we'll use ad-hoc process temporarily at first, (b) affirm that we aren't setting a binding precedent, and (c) delegate such a Process (Sub-)Committee to investigate these issues, and propose a more formal process to end the ad-hoc phase.



Straw poles don't need to reach any quorum/have time limits/etc.

Voted "less consensus" but do not intend this to be a blocking vote. If the majority wants consensus then that's what we should do.