Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Yesterday was the deadline for submitting new proposals to the WSFS Business Meeting. A few proposals that I helped people draft did not actually get submitted in the end, and given how many things we actually have to discuss, I must admit to some relief. I currently count at least twenty items of new or continuing business, including a few things not listed below because they'll arise out of committee reports and are mostly routine.

( No More Bets )

The substantive business falls into two main categories. Links are to the Sasquan Business Meeting web site.

( I'm Giving You the Business )

There were no "surprise" submissions before the deadline. There were some things floated in the last few days, and I helped their sponsors with them, but none of them actually made it as far as being formally submitted. Some of them may have decided that waiting until next year is a more productive strategy, given the crush of proposals this year.

A few days ago I got a request asking that we establish in advance a social-media hashtag for online discussion of the WSFS Business Meeting. Seeing that as far as I can tell nobody is using it and it's relatively short, we'll go with #WSFSBM, so you can Tweet away with a standard tag.

This year's WSFS Business Meeting sees a new procedural motion available to members during the Preliminary Business Meeting only: Postpone Indefinitely.

( Why It's Not Just Objection to Consideration With a New Name )

Postpone Indefinitely (PI) is the lowest-ranking of the procedural motions. It can only be made when nothing but the main motion is pending. If it passes (2/3 vote required by WSFS rule), the targeted main motion is dead for the duration of the current Worldcon. Because it's not a direct vote on the main motion, it can be made at the Preliminary Business Meeting. (By WSFS rule, it can only be made at the PBM.) This means that the PBM retains, as part of its agenda-setting authority, the ability to kill new business before it gets to the Main Meeting.

Unlike OTC, PI can be made even after amendments or debate on the main motion, as long as nothing is currently pending or nobody else has the floor. Also unlike OTC, PI is debatable. The motion to Postpone Indefinitely (by WSFS rule) has four minutes of debate time, evenly split between those who think we should consider the main motion, and those who do not want to even discuss it at the Main Meeting. This means that the proponents of a proposal will have at least two minutes to make the case for why we should consider their motion. They won't be squashed before they even got to make an opening argument. They may well still lose and see their proposal killed before the main debate, but they will have had at least one chance to make a case. In all but the most obnoxious proposals, I think that's fair.

If anyone moves a PI this year, it's my intention to first recognize the person who made the PI motion, who will have up to two minutes to say why we shouldn't consider the proposal. I will then recognize the lead sponsor present of the targeted proposal, who will have up to two minutes to say why we should consider it. I will then put the question in the form of "Shall [the targeted proposal] be considered? Those who think we should consider it, raise your hands... hands down. Those who think we should not consider it, raise your hands... hands down." (Putting it in this form means you vote in favor of or against the main motion, rather than having to invert your choices. It's also the way we voted on OTC, so regular attendees will recognize it.) If there is a two-thirds vote against consideration, the main motion is postponed indefinitely and is thus dead for the duration of the current Worldcon.

Note that Postpone Indefinitely in practice is likely to apply only to new constitutional amendments. It can't be applied to amendments awaiting ratification, and there are few circumstances in which it would make sense to apply it to resolutions, since the PBM can take a direct vote on them.

I hope that this reborn motion to Postpone Indefinitely puts a stop to the unseemly jack-in-the-box behavior of people leaping to their feet to shout "Objection to Consideration" to all new business, since there is a much more civilized way to clear the agenda without making newcomers to the Business Meeting feel that they're being deliberately shut up and told to Go Away.

I'm going to surprise some people here with my opening statement: Robert's Rules of Order is too complicated.

( Background )

So if I dislike RONR that much, why am I such a champion for it? Because I tried once to introduce a simpler manual, and the members rejected it. Specifically, the book currently known as the Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure. (Hereafter TSC.) This book, previously known as Sturgis' Code, is a simplified form of American parliamentary procedure. In my opinion, it's actually closer to what the members of WSFS and Westercon want, with one big exception: Objection to Consideration. A fair chunk of the Worldcon Business Meeting Standing Rules modifies RONR to be closer to TSC.

Some years ago (during the Spokane Westercon, as it happens), I pushed hard to get TSC adopted as the parliamentary manual for Westercon business meetings. The rules on amending the Westercon bylaws were easier then, and I managed to get my way, by a single vote. But the following year, I wasn't able to attend the Westercon in Hawaii, and the Meeting changed things back to RONR. I usually know when I'm defeated, and there are limits to how many times I'm prepared to invest effort in a losing cause. The people who show up and vote voted to stick with the older, more complicated rules, probably because they already know how they work, and they feared any change that might require them to learn anything new, even if it was easier. I understand that. Westercon and WSFS Business Meetings tend to be fundamentally conservative in the sense of "reluctant to change," not in the US political philosophy sense.

So change comes slowly and incrementally. Abuse of Objection to Consideration, and the unseemly behavior of people deploying it against every single proposal, led to the WSFS Business Meeting agreeing to make OTC a higher hurdle (3/4 vote instead of 2/3) and allowing the use of Postpone Indefinitely (previously banned under WSFS rules) as a motion with limited debate, allowing for a short debate about why something is worth discussing, but allowing 2/3 of the members to kill the proposal after that short debate.

WSFS rules are complicated because the people who attend the meetings have effectively voted for complexity, but also because some of the complexity is required to protect the rights of members, both individually and in groups, and including the members who aren't even at the meeting. If you have a better way for deciding how we should run things, the onus is on you to propose something. As long as you just complain that "it's too complicated," without proposing something both easier and workable, don't expect to be taken seriously.

Besides the WSFS Constitution, which governs the selection of Worldcon sites, the operation of the Hugo Awards, and other incidental matters about Worldcon organization, and the Standing Rules, which regulate the WSFS Business Meeting, ( Discussion of WSFS minutae )

If you would like a copy of the 2008 and 2009 Resolutions and Rulings of Continuing Effect report, write directly to me (you can write to my LJ handle @livejournal.com if you don't have my e-mail address, or send me an LJ message) and I'll send it to you. The files are in MS Word 97 (DOC) format or PDF. If neither of these work for you, let me know what does and I'll try to convert to that format.

I spent today doing as little as possible. Aside from going down to the BASFA meeting tonight and putting in a 6 km walk after breakfast, I napped, read e-mail, and mostly didn't do a bunch of the things I thought I'd get done this Labor Day weekend. I did, however turn in my marked-up draft of the WSFS Business Meeting minutes. I now have a somewhat better idea of what happened during the Pluto Motion, thanks to pmcmurray's note-taking.

You think I'm joking? When you're presiding, it's often very difficult to follow the parliamentary big picture, because you have to concentrate on the immediate situation. It wasn't until I went back through the meeting minutes that I could elaborate on why I did the things I did, in footnotes. (Assuming Pat agrees to leave them in.)

I made one ruling that is technically against the letter of one rule, and one ruling that was flat-out wrong. The first, IMO correct, ruling was to allow a motion for the Previous Question when there was no debate time left. WSFS rules say this motion (which shuts off the debate and the making of lower-ranked subsidiary motions) is out of order with less than one minute of debate time left. Well, zero is obviously less than one, but I've ruled that the intent of the rule is to prevent wasting debate time, but you can't waste debate time when there is none left; however, you can pester the meeting with undebatable subsidiary motions like Amend and Refer to Committee. Therefore, Previous Question has a substantive purpose, which is to shut off those subsidiary motions and bring the question to a vote. Besides, as I've observed in footnotes, the motion Suspend the Rules has the same vote requirement (2/3) as Previous Question, so one could move to Suspend the Rules and move the Previous Question anyway.

The one I didn't get right was a point of order raised that there had been no substantive debate on the Pluto motion, on account of all of the debate time had been used up by technical arguments and subsidiary motions. I ruled the point not well taken on account of the Previous Question having been ordered; however, there is a WSFS rule that says that in such cases we're suppose to allocate two minutes substantive debate to each side of the question. Well, I'm not sure how well I could have enforced this rule in light of the bloodthirsty mood some of the members were in, but I think I would have liked to have seen some actual debate instead of a twenty minute display of parliamentary gamesmanship.