Worst System (Except for All the Others)

[kevin_standlee]

The WSFS Business Meeting is taking a fair amount of abuse for using a parliamentary rules manual (Robert's Rules of Order, the most common, but not the only such manual) for its formal decision-making process.

WSFS actually manages only two things of significant importance: The Hugo Awards rules and the rules for selecting future Worldcon sites. (There are other things, which I can detail upon request.) Everything else about how Worldcons are run is done by the individual Worldcon committees.

So, before I hit the road for El Paso, I leave this question before you all: Direct Democracy as WSFS practices it is extremely messy. If you were allowed to change things to suit yourself (other than simply saying, "I'm King and You'll All Required to do what I say when I say it"), how would you change the governance process for the Hugo Awards and Site Selection rules?

Come up with a better system that doesn't have the flaws you perceive are present in the current system. Please.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

There are some (IMO) good and not-so-good ideas here.

- Allow participation in the BM by proxy

See my comments elsewhere about the fundamentally undemocratic nature of proxies in groups that have unitary membership. (Stock corporations are different.) Better to just have a Congress of WSFS and be done with it; it would IMO be vastly more fair.

- Disallow amendments that are "hostile to, or even defeat, the spirit of the original motion" (RR11 163:18)

Well, yeah, but RONR also (as I recall; my copy is in the car packed away right now on my return road trip) uses the example of striking out "commend" and inserting "censure" as a valid germane but hostile amendment.

- Second ratification of constitutional amendments by mail (with ballot distributed in a PR for the next Worldcon, as with the Hugos) instead of at the next BM.

I really want this one. I'd administer the election parallel with Site Selection, not the Hugos, with the balloting closing at 6 PM on the third day of the convention and the results announced at the Site Selection Business Meeting. While I think this would be good for WSFS, the difficulty of getting the Business Meeting to give up any of its authority has kept me from investing the points necessary to try it. If I thought I had sufficient support from people who will show up and vote in two consecutive years, I'd be willing to spearhead such a drive. (OTOH, I'm chairing two years from now, which would put me in the position of having to recuse myself in Spokane when and if the motion comes up for ratification.)

- Require new business to be referred to a committee appointed at the relevant BM, perhaps with only single ratification (and no amendments) if a committee reports positively

We sometimes do something like that, but only if the proposal is technically flawed or if competing proposals are submitted. I think that if we had the programming time to have "hearings" on each proposal, we could at least get people to the point where they think they've had a fair chance to make their case even if they lose.

- Generally do more business in committees, reserving the BM or paper mail for providing direction to the committees and not for specific spelled out rules changes

This pretty much is happening incrementally. See how two new special committees were created to deal with YA and with the Membership Matters this year, and how various committees were tasked with working through the Best Dramatic Presentation Spilt over a ten year period before we finally managed to get something (a compromise) that could actually get the votes. In addition, there is the Hugo Eligibility Rest of the World Committee, which ended up using a bunch of this year's Meeting's time on account of they couldn't reach consensus on things and ended up with a bunch of competing proposals, but at least the technical issues had been worked out first and the BM mainly just had to pick between proposals and then decide whether it liked either of them.

[billroper]

I agree that ratification by popular vote of the next Worldcon is a good idea. Since the amendment isn't subject to further change at that point, there's no technical reason not to do it that way.

As you observe, though, the political reasons are a bit of a problem. :)

[totient]

Well, yeah, but RONR also (as I recall; my copy is in the car packed away right now on my return road trip) uses the example of striking out "commend" and inserting "censure" as a valid germane but hostile amendment.

Roberts totally allows doing this. The BM should not, and really neither should any deliberative body that requires submission of new business in advance -- it defeats the purpose of the advance submission requirement.

[totient]

a Congress of WSFS ... would IMO be vastly more fair.

Perhaps more fair, but a lot harder to achieve while preserving any of the other things anyone likes about the BM.

The trouble with proxies in fandom (I say as the clerk of an organization that makes extensive use of them) is that people give proxies to their friends without sufficient examination or discussion of how those proxies will be voted; the most popular people then get their way. However, from actual experience, the extent of this problem depends on the seriousness of the business. It distorts the Nomic game that some fraction of the membership is playing, and the less popular Nomic players get all upset about that. But when proxy senders are motivated by an issue they care about rather than by some perception that they ought to participate in business that doesn't actually matter, they are more careful in selecting their proxy holders and in communicating their preferences. So the issues that matter are ultimately settled fairly.

[delosharriman]

I'm not going to argue in favour of general proxies, but I think there's an argument to be made for a form of restricted proxy. Whether there's any practical way to implement such a thing, I'm still considering. The gist of the idea is simply (hah!) that someone could introduce proxies designated for a specific item of business. Now, it's entirely possible that this would require a total rearrangement of WSFS procedure, perhaps to the extent of holding the Preliminary Business Meeting at the end of the previous Worldcon, or advancing the deadline for submissions a couple of months so that they could be printed in the Progress Reports. In the latter case, at least, the restricted proxy might be limited to "interposition" votes, either for or against the Objection to Consideration. Thus, if there are enough people who feel that an item either should or should not be considered by the Business Meeting, they can get their way. This would provide a significant palliative to perceived disenfranchisement, since it seems that the quashing of business via the OtC is a matter of greater complaint than the resolutions actually reached by debate, but on the other hand it is a very useful bit of procedure..

Actually mail-ballotting might work as well as proxies in this application.