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

Shannon Lee shannon at scatter.com
Tue Oct 6 04:26:32 UTC 2009


So, please take the following as the Notes of a Participant Observer, rather
than the Word of Authority, as I am merely presenting my ideas of how this
process works, not trying to dictate how it goes.  If I'm wrong, I hope
someone who knows more about it than I will tell me.

"All of them at a new meeting" seems like the right answer.

Decisions last until we change our minds.  Yes, if you want to keep bringing
something up at every meeting, you can totally do that.  The whole point of
having a consensus model is that everybody pretty much agrees with
everything we decide, otherwise we wouldn't decide it; if you want to change
what we decided before, bring it up.

Even better, simply *doing* whatever it is you want to have done, without
having a bunch of discussion, would be the preferred method.

As a practical matter, I imagine that "how difficult it would be to take
Noisebridge to a voting system" would depend on how many people you got to
go along with it and how willing you were to put up with a pissed off
minority of holdouts.  When it comes right down to it, I suspect that one
holdout wouldn't be enough to keep us on the current track -- wouldn't have,
as you put it, the moral authority -- but I bet ten holdouts would.

In order to get me, personally, to go along with changing to a voting
scheme, you'd have to convince me that it was worth the effort -- it is
going to be a bunch of work, most of it not done by you, to come up with a
new scheme, to get everyone to agree on it, and then to implement it, and I
don't see a lot of benefit in it.

I get the strong impression that the people who are in favor of a voting
scheme mostly want to have a say in the decision making process, but don't
want to be actually engaged to the extent that you have to be in order to
participate in our current process.

I like the fact that what few group decision we make are made by people who
are fully engaged.  I don't want it to become easier for people to make
half-thought-out snap decisions.

I think there are a lot of ways we could adjust the current process to make
it more amenable without ditching it -- limiting consensus items to once a
month, for example, is an idea that has come up quite a bit.

--S

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Crutcher Dunnavant <crutcher at gmail.com>wrote:

> Given that the consensus process requires only those present at one
> particular meeting to agree to a thing in order to apply it; at what point
> does an existing decision become un-tenable? How many people must disagree
> in the future before a decision can be reversed? All of them at a new
> meeting?
>
> There are clearly members who do not agree with the consensus process.
>
> As a practical matter, how many of us do you feel would be sufficient to
> change it? Do you feel we would need to justify the change by the old
> process, or the new? Would a single hold-out be sufficient to block a
> transition to a voting system? Would this individual hold sufficient moral
> authority?
>
> It has been said during this discussion that a willingness to have one's
> mind changed is a necessary contribution to the process. I don't object to
> that, but I feel it goes both ways. I'd like some actual feedback on my
> questions, they are not rhetorical. What would be sufficient to convince?
> What would be sufficient to change?
>
> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 6:23 PM, Paul Boehm <paul at boehm.org> wrote:
>
>> I felt much more comfortable at other Hackerspaces and Hacker
>> Organizations i was involved with, that had voting. Voting didn't
>> actually happen that much, and the whole process was much slimmer and
>> streamlined, but i felt that everyone felt much more included.
>> Noisebridge claims consensus, but feels really aggressive in it's
>> decision making - to me it's process by attrition, with a lot of
>> people not attending the meetings anymore.
>>
>> Both at metalab and ccc, there was much less endless arguing, much
>> less concealed aggression, and also a much more non-hierarchical
>> distribution of power.
>>
>> I really like noisebridge and the people there - a lot of my friends
>> and cool projects are there, but I'm not coming to noisebridge
>> meetings anymore, because i find the decision making process
>> unbearable.
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 1:18 PM, David Kelso <david at kelso.id.au> wrote:
>> > Generally I keep out of these discussions, due to the vigor with which
>> > they are fought.
>> > I would just like to add a +1 to Crutcher's statements, specifically:
>> >
>> >> People don't always agree. Sometimes they stop fighting, if you yell at
>> them
>> >> enough. You haven't convinced them, you just beaten them down. I'd
>> prefer a
>> >> vote over the abuse. That's what I want changed.
>> >
>> > I'm not much of a fighter. There is a reason I don't turn up for
>> > meetings any more. This conversation itself is a proof of how hard it
>> > is to suggest a change without a lot of resistance.
>> >
>> > I would much prefer a voting system.
>> >
>> >>
>> >> On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 10:48 AM, Shannon Lee <shannon at scatter.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> If you believe that dissent and discord are reasons to abandon a
>> decision
>> >>> making process, then I'm afraid that you're right, consensus isn't
>> going to
>> >>> make you happy.
>> >>> The discordant yelling is part of the process.  It's how you know
>> we're
>> >>> actually talking about something people care about; it's how you know
>> that
>> >>> compromises are being cooked up.  I would be a lot more worried about
>> the
>> >>> state of our organization if this stuff wasn't being discussed to
>> death.
>> >>> I think that the kind of quick up-and-down votes you're talking about
>> >>> would just serve to either (a) short-circuit the process of actually
>> making
>> >>> a group decision or (b) give he illusion of having made a decision
>> when in
>> >>> fact everything's still up in the air.
>> >>> Back to my previous question, do you actually have something you want
>> us
>> >>> to do that's being prevented by the consensus process?  Or are you
>> just
>> >>> upset by the chaotic nature of it?
>> >>> --S
>> >>> On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Al Billings <albill at openbuddha.com>
>> >>> wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> We've already got people bitching about this thread all over IRC and
>> >>>> elsewhere so I'm officially giving up on this for 24 hours (at
>> least).
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I would suggest that anyone who hasn't ALREADY replied on this topic
>> >>>> and has an opinion should do so just for diversity and variety's
>> sake.
>> >>>> Otherwise, it's just five or so of us doing rounds.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Al
>> >>>>
>> >>>> _______________________________________________
>> >>>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>> >>>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>> >>>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> --
>> >>> Shannon Lee
>> >>> (503) 539-3700
>> >>>
>> >>> "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science."
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Crutcher Dunnavant <crutcher at gmail.com>
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
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>> >> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>> >> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>> >>
>> >>
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>> >
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>
>
>
> --
> Crutcher Dunnavant <crutcher at gmail.com>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>
>


-- 
Shannon Lee
(503) 539-3700

"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science."
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