response 120 of 299:

Aug 28 14:04 UTC 2002

Hmm.  In meatspace, we have the gavel to bang in the event of intractable 
arguing.  In a party environment, the noisetab could be disallowed except 
for a gavel bang noise permitted to the chair (and the /me noise for 
all).  

I agree that to some extent communicating fully via text only would be 
more of a challenge, but I do not thinnk that the tendency of people to 
be less focused and more argumentative online than in person necessarily 
means that this will be the case in a board meeting.  Keep in mind, we 
still have the :ignore command, in case observers attempt to be 
disruptive, and the board members have significant motivation to miantain 
proper decorum in the meeting.  Some of the most vigorous arguments in 
board meetings I've attended have been (primarily) between myself and 
steve and aruba, and I don't think that conducting them online would have 
made them any worse or more difficult.

Again, all I am suggesting is an experiment.  Trying this, regardless of 
misgivings, would be a significant step in the direction of developing a 
prtactical solution to this issue.  If if doesn't work, then that is also 
useful information which will better focus future discussions on the 
topic.

response 122 of 299:

Aug 28 14:23 UTC 2002

True, but that is a shortcoming of the idea rather than an advantage, for 
practical purposes...

response 126 of 299:

Aug 28 18:41 UTC 2002

re #106: Hahahaha!  You don't know your M-Net history.  I have attended 
Arbornet Board meetings lasting over 3 hours.

Arbornet has tried on-line meetings via party, and they didn't work 
well.  I didn't participate, but as I understand it, there were 
intrusive users making discussion hard, there were problems with 
getting everyone connected at once, and it just generally didn't work 
well.  That's not to say it wouldn't work fine for Grex.

I am in favor of resolving this, somehow, now that it's been raised and 
discussed as much as it has.  I'd like the goal to be to find a 
reasonable policy to integrate remote Board members into Grex 
operations, and I'd like to see it happen by the next Board meeting.

response 134 of 299:

Aug 28 19:28 UTC 2002

I'd be happy to try a !party board meeting.  I'd like to see
how it goes and even if it's a spectacular failure, we'll have
learned something.

response 136 of 299:

Aug 28 20:21 UTC 2002

I have never been involved with a board meeting that used teleconferencing
for more than one physically absent board meetings, but even one had
limitations, such as not being able to "recognize" that absent board
member when he wished to speak. Having all or a majority having to butt
in to be recognized sounds chaotic. The same is true in a party format.
A person cannot ask to be recognized and then have their full say, with
others paying attention to just that one person (unless it is agreed
upon beforehand and some way to be recognized in turn is used). 

This is not to say that it is necessarily chaotic, but I think it would
require more structure than is usually the case. One way is for the
chair to call upon each board member, in turn, to speak once to an issue.
I used this more formal process only a couple of times, but it is amazingly
effective for otherwise very difficult questions (my organization bought
a headquarters building this way). 

response 140 of 299:

Aug 28 21:06 UTC 2002

party automatically announces who the speaker is with each line entered.  
I agree that some ground rules would have to be set, but I don't think 
they'd have to be extensive, so long as they were agreed to by all 
attendees.

response 142 of 299:

Aug 29 01:33 UTC 2002

I think we should draw a distinction between remote Board members 
calling in via conference call, and an on-line Board meeting conducted 
via party.  I wouldn't want the failure of one of these ideas to 
automatically lead to dismissal of the other.

response 144 of 299:

Aug 29 03:06 UTC 2002

Re #114:  That's not a "conspiracy"; it's "majority rule."