[Spi-private] Publically viewable resolutions and increasing the visibility of board activity

[Neil McGovern]

On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 02:37:00AM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> Neil McGovern <neilm at spi-inc.org> wrote:
> > Taken from the by-laws:
> >   "If the board decides not to consider an issue, the membership may
> >   vote on the resolution."
> >
> > Now, for a vote, I need a proposal, which brings in:
> 
> You already have a proposal to the board, else there would not be a
> resolution on their slate.
> 

A resolution is fairly distinct for a proposal for a vote, IMO anyway.

> The board could vote to reject blocks of DoS-attempt proposals, which
> would mean they don't ever reach the membership.  In short, unless the
> board is stupid and refuses to consider the DoS-attempt proposals,
> there is no DoS: just a bit of saving/uploading emails and one extra
> vote each meeting.
> 

There is a DoS, you're just moving it's target. If it was implemented as
above, I could send 200 emails to the board every month, and they would
need to be voted on.

> > * resolutions must now be sent at least 48h in advance.
> >   - Previously it's been 24h. Before I was secretary, it was none.
> 
> 1. it lengthens a no-proposals-allowed period before the meeting
> again.  This deadline is new this year and is unwelcome.
> 

MJ, you suggested 48h yourself above. The aim of this is to allow:
a) sufficient time for the membership to comment on a proposal.
b) allow the membership to look at the agenda with enough time to see if
   they want to attend a board meeting.

Of course, if people think that there *shoudn't* be a time limit, I can
remove it, but then I seem to get complaints that there wasn't enough
notice.

> > * Resolutions must now also be sent to a spi list.
> 
> 2. it makes it beneficial to DoS the lists (and the secretary) by
> fraudulently claiming things are proposals, trying to lose the
> real things in the noise.
> 

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Could you give an example with
the previous ways of doing things, and the new one?

> Instead of yet more red tape for members,

I don't see this as extra red tape.

> fixing some of the web site bugs, bugs, 

Certainly a good goal, yes. This is, however, a seperate issue.

> more notice of meetings (including business) and conducting more
> board discussions in public

Erm... how can I post notice of meetings with business without a
timelimit on when resolutions should be submitted by?

One of the points (as I pointed out above, but you snipped) of the "send
to a list" idea above is that this ensures that board discussions happen
in public.

Neil
-- 
Neil McGovern
Secretary, Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
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