Governance Committee Meeting 1.1: Decision Making Process

I am ambivalent between the proposed structure and more consensus, but my vote is currently on the current structure.

Could you clarify if this decision making process is for committee business, community adoption of committee proposals, or both?  I mean, I'm not opposed to using one system for both, but I think people who may want different standards should know which they are supporting.

I used "could agree to something like this" rather than "would agree ..." in order to gauge where we stand re that sort of hybrid model, but not commit anyone to supporting that proposal in particular.

The first thingee Google found for me is this guide: Consensus Decision Making. It's a little on the long side, but I took the time to read it through, and it seems to make sense IMO. It also has a further reading section at the end. There is a Wikipedia Consensus decision-making page, which as I read it today seems to offer a reasonable summary, and discusses various pros and cons. As always YMMV with Wikipedia over time. In the interest of not being a "leader" I'm going to urge others to take the initiative, read up a little, and realize there is no one true one way.

As for the "modified" part regarding two hard-blocks to block. Well, to be frank, I'm concerned that enough people aren't going to believe that unanimity is practically possible, and that lack of belief may limit the "buy-in" of our community to the process, which would be a bad thing. Also, I'm only experienced with face-to-face groups. I'll readily agree I might be exhibiting the same fear of the unknown I just mentioned above. But I guess I fear an unknown which, because it takes almost no effort on the interwebs to block out of, say, spite (as opposed to face-to-face, where you have to keep dragging your behind to these meetings, and can't ignore other's reactions), that either this will actual happen, or again, fear of this happening, even if unfounded, will limit "buy-in" which would again be a bad thing.

So... I'm going to advocate a two blocks option to (partially at least) alleviate these fears, real and/or imagined. However, I'm certainly not stuck on this two block option, and can be dissuaded. I think it's a good conversation to have. 

I guess I’m unclear what the point of a blocking vote is? If we aren’t requiring Unanimity that is. Seems to be over complicating up/down votes for proposals, what am I not seeing?

Did you read one of the linked articles on consensus?  To me, asking for a consensus standard to pass measures is like a statement that unanimity is an aspirational goal, but it's not going to be achievable in practice every time, and as such there are mechanisms to move forward even if there is still some opposition, such as asking people to stand aside, so that the record can show that they disagreed even if they don't want to block a proposal, and raising the threshold of a blocking opposition.  But still, angling for consensus means that every objection should be listened to, and the group should try to incorporate that feedback into the proposal to get them on board rather than just steamrolling dissent with a 50%+1 vote.

Let's chat a little bit about that, while we are waiting to see if gregorio will facilitate/etc.

1. It's certainly within the realm of possibilities that consensus process, in general, just isn't a good match for us here. However, I certainly don't think it's obviously the case, or even that it's at all likely the case. I strongly suggest we don't just rule it out a priori.

2. Instead, I strongly suggest we give it a try. We can always change our minds, and try something else (like 50%+1) if it doesn't work out.

3. For a lot of us, there will only be personal experience with 50%+1-centric decision making. Anything else can seem strange, bizarre, even crazy perhaps. I'm going to suggest that we all "let go", so to speak, and embrace the unknown, to a certain extent. We really should each strive to have a "we can do this" personal attitude.

4. I'd like to put a stake through the "Bumble Bee" objection. I'm referring to the old story that scientists had determined that Bumble Bee's shouldn't be able to fly... but of course we can tell with our own eyes that Bumble Bees can indeed fly. Likewise, consensus process has a proven track record of working IRL, and scaling up as needed. Large protests, scaling up to 100k activists, have been organized using cnsensus process. It's considered the gold standard among us real world activists. It's been pretty much the ubiquitous go-to since the late 1970s for doing real world activism. It works. Again, it might not be a fit for us, because of something about us. But please... I'd like not to get bogged down into discussions of "it just can't work in theory" from "first principles".

5. Lots of folks are going to be incredulous that unanimity can be reached among all but the smallest groups. I'm just going to ask those folks to have an open mind. In practice, I feel you will be quite surprised. Remember... we've already 2-0 in achieved unanimity among 300+ potential voters. Now sure, these two questions were hardly contentious... but I'm going to guess that there are more than a few who, up until we did it, who be of the opinion that even this was impossible. As a practical matter, trust me on this, in our present committee that has ~20 members, reaching unanimity shouldn't be a problem.

6. Remember: unanimity != consensus process as a whole.

7. I'd like to touch on the word "efficiency". Every time you hear that word, some questions should pop into your mind. Like: efficient doing what, and efficient to whom. Sure 50%+1 with top-two runoffs might be "efficient" in producing decisions per hour, and that "efficiency" works to the advantage of those who can hold a 50%+1 caucus together. But... why is that a good metric? How about being "efficient" in making sure every single member of the community can get a full listening of their concerns? How about being "efficent" that minority viewpoints are included in the final decessions? How about being "effiecient" in assuring that the final decision is somewhat agreeable to all?

8. Yeah, expect to take more timr. That time issue will get better with practice and experience, and any better decisions that are arrived at will save time later by not having to be revisited. But really we should just happily embrace spending more time.

9. Learning consensus process is a in real life skill that will make us better at doing real life things. It's worth learning as a goal in-and-of itself.

10. And finally... this is another trust me thingee... when there has been difficulty reaching consensus, and then a consensus is reached, it can often release a feeling of pure joy. In real life, people often cry with joy, and there's a lot of hugging/etc. It's a "high", if you will. A "high" that 50%+1ers really can't experience.

Based on the straw poll and the posts in the thread, we seem to be moving towards a hybrid that involves:

1. An attempt to build consensus over a certain period of time, and if that fails (i.e. someone blocks agreement)
2. Moving on to a traditional up-and-down/Yea-or Nay vote that will be open for a certain length of time and require a certain percentage of Yea votes to pass

Does anyone object to how I've characterized things above or wish to add to it?

Does anyone object to the hybrid model and wish to argue:

• against seeking consensus?
• against voting instead of using a more consensus-oriented process?

If there are no objections (or, to speed things up, even while we wait to see if there are any objections), I'd like to suggest we begin  generating a proposal.

I get that we have to make decisions on the decision-making process in order to tackle the important stuff, but we have been empowered for a full week and we haven't even had a binding vote yet on our decision making process which is frustrating to me as a committee member. I'm not blaming anyone for this, I just think we all got into the weeds on the discussions on this stuff and it's the type of thing where everyone's opinion is a little different.

Thus, I move that gregorio does his best to put up proposals for binding votes that fall somewhere in the middle of all of the suggested ideas (using his best judgment) as soon as he has the time, with the hopes that by Thurs/Fri we can have a process approved and start having binding votes on the issues we're tasked with addressing.

I second cuse's motion (in the event that a "second" has some value in this thread at this juncture in the committee's lifespan).