response 3 of 32:

Oct 24 12:58 UTC 2001

I have to disagree, Mark.  It's been the source of endless, sometimes
rancorous, debate in Coop, between those who think RRO should be mandated &
those who don't.

As far as board meetings go, though, it mostly hasn't been a problem.

response 5 of 32:

Oct 24 13:55 UTC 2001

It has traditionally been the job of the gavel-wielder to advance the agenda
during meetings and generally encourage people to stay on-topic.  

response 9 of 32:

Oct 24 23:36 UTC 2001

To expand a little on #3, I'd say that the advocates of mandating
strict RRO have been a vocal minority.

response 13 of 32:

Oct 25 03:07 UTC 2001

Good item, jp.

For a while, I've been curious whether there is any official division of labor
among the staffers, or whether they've just sort of hashed it out over the
years.

response 15 of 32:

Oct 25 03:12 UTC 2001

I think if board meetings were more contentious, adopting something like RRO
would make sense.  They are useful in assuring that everyone gets a voice and
that progress is made in an orderly manner.  However, since the board votes
on an average of about 3/4 of a motion per meeting, and since nearly all of
those are pretty much pro forma - everyone knows before we start that support
for the motion is unanimous - there is very rarely need for much formality.

The president bangs the gavel at the beginning and end of the meeting, and
usually introduces each agenda topic.  Discussions are usually freeform, but
if too much interupting gets going, the president may start recognizing
speakers who raise their hands to speak.  Sometimes the president will
intervene to suggest a digression be taken on-line and to get the discussion
back on track.  If the president has dozed off or is himself entangled in
a technical digression, other random people try to prod things along.

Motions are proposed by any board member who feels like it.  Wording is
fiddled with collectively, until the proposer and most everyone else is
happy with it.  Someone seconds.  When the discussion runs down, the
President calls for vote by show of hands.  (Only board positions are
voted by secret ballot.)

There is no motion to adjourn.  When we hit the end of the agenda and nobody
can think of any more new business the president closes the meeting.

I think that about covers how things customarily work.

Rane's argument was that while this is all fine as long as there aren't
deep divisions among the board members, having an established rule of
order is good to ensure things keep working in case that ever changes.
Furthermore, such a rule of order should be established *before* the
problems begin.  This is very sensible.  However, we haven't had any real
problems for a decade or so, so most Grexers seem to consider this to
be fixing the roof when it ain't even raining, and are pretty sure that
we live in a desert.

response 17 of 32:

Oct 25 03:27 UTC 2001

Re: division of labor among staff.

Staff members just find niches.  It's not exactly a matter of preference,
since most of us do at least some work that we consider annoying and
unpleasant, but feel that nobody else would do if we didn't.  This pretty
much covers Scott's backups, Steve Weiss's email answering, Valerie's
disk clean-ups, Steve Andre's reaps of abandoned user accounts and my
upgrades of software.  Steve Gibbard's network maintenance fell into that
category, and he was proven right since nobody has really been doing it
since he left.  I have no idea of Marcus's war against spam falls into
that category.

Basically, some things need to be done, and eventually someone gets so
pissed off that it isn't being done that they start doing it, at which
point everyone else flees the territory least it get foisted back on
them.  The basic requirement for being an active staff member is a
misplaced sense of responsibility.  Since there is nobody to assign
unpleasant work to staff members, you have to have the right mental
defect needed to assign it to yourself.

Of course, I also do some original software development, which I consider
genuine honest-to-goodness fun most of the time.

response 19 of 32:

Oct 25 16:53 UTC 2001

Can't you think of it rather as a challenge?  A war that you can sometimes
win battles in?  Steve Weiss appears to be enjoying at least part of his role
in answering emails for help.  He has correctly identified the languages of
a few help requests (Estonian, Slovene, etc.) that he asked for my help in
reading and answering.  He also somehow recently forwarded to me an email
addressed to webmaster@cyberspace.org asking for info on stainless steel
roofing!  I can understand how going to the Pumpkin at 2 am might be
considered unpleasant.

response 23 of 32:

Oct 27 20:33 UTC 2001

Consensus does not mean unanimity.  This board has moved forward without
consensus in the past.  Irrational concerns do not gaurantee paralysis
under consensus any more than a 5-4 split under Roberts Rules gaurantees
unanimity.

Whatever system the board is using needs to be one under which everyone is
comfortable and the board can make non-unanimous decisions and move on. 
Majority oriented procedures do not do this any better or worse than
consensus oriented procedures.