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

[MJ Ray]

Neil McGovern <neilm at spi-inc.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 02:37:00AM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > 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.
>
> A resolution is fairly distinct for a proposal for a vote, IMO anyway.

Indeed.  So we should not apply the seconding requirements for a
proposal to a resolution the board has decided not to consider.

The board's three choices on each issue under consideration are
essentially yes/no/refuse-to-consider in some manner and style, where
refuse-to-consider allows the membership to vote.

> > 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.
>
> There is a DoS, you're just moving it's target. If it was implemented as
> above, I could send 200 emails to the board every month, and they would
> need to be voted on.

Then the board votes once to reject all 200 email proposals.  The
board can compress many-to-one, so it's not a very good DoS attack.

> > > * 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.
>
> MJ, you suggested 48h yourself above.

When?  I took 48h from the proposal and rewrote it as a guaranteed
service for things arriving 48h ahead and discretionary postponement
for things arriving later.  I do not support a hard 48h cut-off.

> The aim of this is to allow:
> a) sufficient time for the membership to comment on a proposal.
> b) allow the membership to look at the agenda with enough time to see if
>    they want to attend a board meeting.

That aim would be satisified by issuing the agenda notice earlier.
Imposing a deadline on member participation does not meet it.

The board can always postpone detailed decisions for more
information/discussion, as they have been doing repeatedly on some
proposals.  (I really don't understand how the domain vote got
polluted by a 'should decide it once-and-for-all' meme.)

> Of course, if people think that there *shoudn't* be a time limit, I can
> remove it, but then I seem to get complaints that there wasn't enough
> notice.

There should not be a time limit.  It is not necessary for issuing
notices.  Please do not link issuing notices and member participation.

> > > * 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.
>
> I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Could you give an example with
> the previous ways of doing things, and the new one?

Current way: secretary receives proposals, refers things to lists as
appropriate.  Only proposals passed to lists by the secretary are
necessarily real, which makes them pretty easy to spot.

Proposed way: proposers sends proposals to lists, but only those also sent
to the secretary are really proposals.  The rest are just noise.

> > Instead of yet more red tape for members,
>
> I don't see this as extra red tape.

These are new, increasingly-complex policies for things that were
fairly informal before.  If it ties members up like red tape, it's red
tape.

[...]
> > more notice of meetings (including business) and conducting more
> > board discussions in public
>
> Erm... how can I post notice of meetings with business without a
> timelimit on when resolutions should be submitted by?

Please see my previous message explaining wider participation items.
Please don't link notice periods and participation deadlines.

> One of the points (as I pointed out above, but you snipped) of the "send
> to a list" idea above is that this ensures that board discussions happen
> in public.

It encourages resolutions to be posted to a public list, but how does
it ensure that board discussions happen in public?

> On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 04:22:56AM -0800, Don Armstrong wrote:
> > I suggest changing this to resolutions must be submitted 24 hours in
> > advance of the publication of the meeting announcement which must
> > occur at least 4 days before the meeting and include the full text of
> > the resolutions to be decided at the meeting as well as the schedule
> > of the meeting.[1]
> > 
> > Resolutions which do not meet the deadline would be automatically
> > defered to the next meeting. [I suppose exceptions could be made for
> > emergency resolutions, but those should be few and far between, and
> > should probably require a non-regularly scheduled meeting to be called
> > anyway.]
> > 
>
> This seems sensible to me.
> Any comments?

The automatic deferral is superior to the dropping-on-the-floor.

It is unnecessary to link member participation deadlines with meeting
notice periods.

Hope that explains,
-- 
MJ Ray - see/vidu http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Somerset, England. Work/Laborejo: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
IRC/Jabber/SIP: on request/peteble.