On Mar 12, 2009, at 10:36 PM, 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.
>
> Cheers,
>  - Andreas
>


What you are describing is basically a proposal->comment period- 
 >voting process that seems like a sensible way to proceed.  Though  
you might want to think about having the board always making a call  
(unless it's absolutely necessary that some action be taken) in the  
event of a split vote (and what constitutes a majority opinion)... if  
there is no clear consensus and nothing *needs* to be done, sometimes  
no action is the right course.

Thanks,
Phil