Motion Muddle

[kevin_standlee]

I've been asked to try and explain the details of what happened at yesterday's Business Meeting, where the motions were flying around quickly. I hope to eventually try and do something about that, using my notes and the meeting video. But it was very complex, and I don't have the time to do it sufficient justice during Worldcon. Possibly if I'd sat down immediately after the meeting and spent an hour on it instead of going to eat lunch, I could have finished it, but not now.

Everything that happened yesterday was legal by the rules, but we did get a little deep into arcana, such as moving to suspend the rules to permit the introduction of motion to amend an amendment. Someday I will try and write the blow-by-blow account where it will probably sound more logical than it did while it was happening.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to ask: do you actually enjoy the minutiae of the arcana, or are all the intricacies and complications something you just have to keep on top of, in order to achieve the results you want? I understand that there are minds that revel in this kind of complexity, and I was wondering if yours was one of them...

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I guess the answer is "both of the above," for different reasons. The complexities of the rules are interesting as an intellectual challenge. For instance, I was told (back when I was an active member of the California State Association of Parliamentarians) that it is possible to get more than 100 motions into the "stack" of pending matters, if you followed a certain sequence. (In contrast, I don't recall WSFS or Westercon getting more than maybe five or so motions deep; certainly never more than ten.) But that's only Recreational Parliamentary Procedure, done for fun.

When it comes to getting the actual business of a deliberative assembly done, I'm not fond of complexity for its own sake. I'd rather concentrate on how to use the rules to accomplish certain tasks. There I try to bear in mind the philosophical principles of parliamentary law, which is designed to let an assembly reach a decision that represents the will of the assembly while balancing the rights of individuals, minorities, majorities, and absentees.

By the way, I have suggested to some people that you get a completely different perspective on things if you consider Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised to be the rule book for a particularly esoteric live-action role-playing game: SMOFLARP.