On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 07:36:20PM -0700, Andreas Raab wrote:
> Juan Vuletich wrote:
> >This community doesn't even have a consensus on the way to make 
> >decisions. These are not my words, but they say what I think: 
> >"Historically, decisions have been made by the people screaming the 
> >loudest or the longest. We need to work out a way to fix this and to 
> >come to a process by which we can make decisions that are acceptable to 
> >the community at large." Only when there is a process set up to make 
> >decisions, and it is applied to issues like this, you can say there is 
> >consensus. This has not happened yet. And I do really hope it will 
> >happen this year.
> 
> Me too. I'll even go out on a limp here and attempt to make a proposal: 
> I think that in most situations both sides of an issue honestly believe 
> that their opinion is the majority opinion. And that both sides cannot 
> possibly fathom the idea that their view might be a vanishingly small 
> minority opinion, where the opposing party pretty much sees that as a given.
> 
> So perhaps a starting point is to try to replace screaming with getting 
> a better picture about what the opinions on an issue really are. In 
> other words, for potentially controversial issues we (the board) could 
> organize a poll if there is an actionable proposal on the table. The 
> board could then use the result of the poll as a guide to see whether to 
> approve the proposal or not.
> 
> How do people feel about this? Would this be an acceptable way to come 
> to a conclusion? The idea is that someone *will* make a decision (the 
> board) but only if there is a concrete proposal on the table which 
> necessitates the decision, guided by the community opinion. It doesn't 
> mean that all proposals get polled but for the controversial ones I 
> think this could really help both sides understand whether or not the 
> (mostly silent) majority agrees with them or not.

I like the idea of taking a poll to get a picture of what the opinions
on an issue really are. I also think that it should be clearly understood
that the outcome of the poll is not binding, but is (as you said) a guide
to be used by the board in making a decision. Occasionally the board
may make unpopular decisions; that is part of what we have entrusted
you to do. So I like the proposal, given that the poll is clearly treated
as guidance and nothing more.

Dave

p.s. I have nothing against democratic processes, I just don't want to
end up with :_= as the assignment operator ;)