[Noisebridge-discuss] A note on membership and consensus

[jim]

     (I agree, with a note)

     My experience is that for the purpose for blocking
is to protect some activity or other interest that is
necessary to the blocker's involvement in the community,
NOT for the purpose of inhibiting things that one
disapproves.



On 05/07/2015 08:41 PM, Rubin Abdi wrote:
> Hi there.
>
> This past Tuesday I participated in our weekly meeting and noticed some things I'd like to point out now that I've had some time to reflect on them.
>
> Being a member of Noisebridge is awesome and an excellent thing you should all do! You help support the community here at Noisebridge, and the community recognizes you back as someone worth while, responsible and amazing. What does membership get you? Well other than all the community stuff I listed above, at this point you also get recognized as having enough responsibility to keep the space open beyond our usual hours and the ability to participate in our consensus process.
>
> What membership is not: The only thing you get from membership is to block consensus.
>
> What does that mean? Well, let's ask first, what is consensus?
>
> Consensus is the process of the whole community helping to make good sounding decisions that everyone is happy with. This includes being open to having discussion about consensus items that some folks in the community don't feel comfortable with in their current form, and being ok to alter the items to make them work with everyone.
>
> I've noticed recently that consensus is described as the process of bringing up ideas until someone blocks them, and those someones are only the membership. The process of consensus should never get to the point where someone says in a meeting "I block this," ever. Be proactive, have discussions, try to work out issues, come up with a better plan, move forward. Be awesome, be excellent, be open minded.
>
> Anyone is allowed to bring up items for consensus.
> Anyone is allowed to participate in discussion about them.
> Members are the ones who consent on them.
> Members can most totally (and have many times in the past) advocate for anyone who isn't a member regarding their views on the  consensus item.
>
> So please, I implore the community to think of membership not as you get to say no at a meeting, but as being an awesome supporter of the community (and you're reading this and aren't a member yet, you should become a member too!), and that consensus is more a process of making awesome decisions together with the community than a process of saying no.
>
>
>
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