[Spi-private] Publically viewable resolutions and increasing the visibility of board activity

MJ Ray mjr at phonecoop.coop
Tue Jan 2 02:37:00 UTC 2007


Neil McGovern <neilm at spi-inc.org> wrote:
> Taken from the by-laws:
>   "If the board decides not to consider an issue, the membership may
>   vote on the resolution."
>
> Now, for a vote, I need a proposal, which brings in:

You already have a proposal to the board, else there would not be a
resolution on their slate.

>   "Any proposal submitted to the secretary with N or more number of
>   seconds shall be put before the membership for a vote within 30 days."
>
> One of the points of this bit is to stop the potential for a DoS on the
> membership (and the secretary) on having to deal with loads of votes
> from automatic vote creation.

The board could vote to reject blocks of DoS-attempt proposals, which
would mean they don't ever reach the membership.  In short, unless the
board is stupid and refuses to consider the DoS-attempt proposals,
there is no DoS: just a bit of saving/uploading emails and one extra
vote each meeting.

> > However, this red-tape wrangling is beside the main point: why is the
> > board making member participation even more complicated?
> > 
> > Please, improve member communication before adopting these sort of new
> > rules and requirements.
>
> The whole point of this policy is to *improve* member participation and
> communication.

Then this policy is a contradiction because:

> The only real changes from how I've been doing things are:
> * resolutions must now be sent at least 48h in advance.
>   - Previously it's been 24h. Before I was secretary, it was none.

1. it lengthens a no-proposals-allowed period before the meeting
again.  This deadline is new this year and is unwelcome.

[...]
> * Resolutions must now also be sent to a spi list.

2. it makes it beneficial to DoS the lists (and the secretary) by
fraudulently claiming things are proposals, trying to lose the
real things in the noise.


Instead of yet more red tape for members, fixing some of the web site
bugs, more notice of meetings (including business) and conducting more
board discussions in public would be far better ways to improve member
participation and communication.
-- 
MJR



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