Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Whoever the chair recognizes as the maker of the motion to Postpone Indefinitely is, by existing rule, given precedence in speaking. (This isn't a special WSFS rule; it's built into the system. Any person making a debatable motion has the right to be the first person to speak to it, even if other people want the floor.) Therefore, it doesn't matter if fourteen people leap to their feat screaming "Postpone!" The Chairman isn't going to recognize fourteen people simultaneously, only one of them.

The fact that the other people who wanted to kill the motion are unhappy doesn't bother me that much. They are almost all certainly Usual Suspects, and they should have more understanding of business. If the motion to Postpone Indefinitely fails, then the proposal goes onto the Main Meeting and you can debate it there. Remember that the question on PI is not whether you actually favor the main motion; it's whether you think we should spend any time discussing it.

I'm not recommending making Objection to Consideration debatable; it's a useful motion about once a decade when a real crackpot shows up with a personal axe to grind, and such people do not deserve consideration. I'm recommending that we stop using sledgehammers on things where a broom would be more useful. In return for giving up a tiny bit of floor debate at the Preliminary Business Meeting (whose main purpose is to keep the Main Meeting agenda manageable anyway), we as Worldcon runners give ourselves a bit more credibility with the rest of fandom and stop looking like we never want to hear any new ideas, never, no way, no how.