Re: Consensus vs Voting (RE: [ga] DNSO General Assembly call to change seating rule)

[Weisberg <weisberg@texoma.net>]

"Gomes, Chuck" wrote:

> Now to your point about whether you should have called for the vote.  I
> think that was fine.  As I stated earlier, I just don't believe that the
> results of the vote should be interpreted to be a GA rough consensus
> position.

Agreed.  Indeed, Harald has indicated  his own appreciation for this concern.
Now, we need  to follow up by developing procedures and criteria, as Chuck has
suggested.

> On the other hand, to report that the active participants on the
> GA list during a specified period of time reached a rough consensus on the
> the two points.  Communicating that to the NC would be appropriate.

Unless there has been a defined response (e.g. "agree/disagree") to a stated
proposition (as is now occurring in this case), I would prefer that list
officials do no more than represent their own opinions.   If there has been a
poll, the results should speak for themselves.  If not, there is a lot of room
for interpretation of what was said.

There should probably be a form of report for poll results, which includes the
proposition, the response, the period of consideration, and, possibly, the
number of members (more for outside consumption than for the board which is
presumably aware of our membership).

> ...And I think that
> in the next year it will be critical to work on this, that is, to establish
> clearly defined consensus building criteria.

Isn't  that only an issue where there is a "binding" or "affecting"
vote/result?  If we are only expressing an opinion, wouldn't the raw numbers
suffice?

However, I do agree that there needs to be better definition of "consensus"
where that has a determinative or binding effect.  I support specifying
different majorities for determining different subjects.

FWIW, I will indicate my agreement with the two stated propositions in a
separate post.

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