[Noisebridge-discuss] Consensus and the "old ways".

Dr. Jesus j at hug.gs
Mon Oct 5 18:35:03 UTC 2009


On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Shannon Lee <shannon at scatter.com> wrote:
> As Jason mentioned in his mail below, he and I, and others, had extensive
> conversations on Friday night and subsequently, and he and others have
> brought up some very valid concerns that should probably be dealt with, even
> if only to re-affirm that this is the way we do things.
> Here, as I understand it, are the specific concerns that we've seen
> expressed; I'm going to try to allow each concern to be voiced with a bias
> toward itself, regardless of my feelings on the matter.
> * Consensus is an expensive system.  Getting a single decision from the
> group requires a lot more cost, in time and emotional energy, than it ought
> to, and this means both that less people participate than would otherwise,
> and that old decisions don't get revisited because people are scared of the
> cost involved in the process.  Voting is cheaper.

I agree.

As you and several other people have suggested to me, I'm planning on
simply doing things from now on rather than asking for opinions on the
list.  Our letter to the IRS said we're in the business of creating
and learning and I'm now convinced that creating and then possibly
altering things one disagrees with furthers that mission more than
spending time smoothing ruffled feathers.  The wall is a perfect
example.

That being said, I am not convinced that the consensus system should
be eliminated.  Instead, if consensus is limited to the participants
in a project instead of anyone with an opinion, I think it will
function much more efficiently than we've seen recently.  I'm sure
many of you are familiar with the old saw that the productivity of a
meeting is roughly equal to the inverse of the square of the number of
people in it.  If there's truth to that then it stands to reason that
we will be more productive if consensus is applied sparingly, mostly
to small groups where flames have no place.



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