[aur-general] Fix the Bylaws?

[Kaiting Chen]

On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 2:56 AM, Kaiting Chen <kaitocracy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Apparently there are some people who think the bylaws are broken. On
> another readthrough it seems to me that the entire document could be
> streamlined substantially, and definitions could be made more explicit
> (especially in the matter of activity versus inactivity).
>
> In addition it is my personal opinion that the whole idea of the quorum
> should be reworked. According to Robert's Rules of Order, "should
> approximate the largest number that can be depended on to attend any meeting
> except in very bad weather or other extremely unfavorable conditions.". In
> the case of an internet presence where inclement weather is not an issue it
> seems to me that all active Trusted Users should be required to participate
> in a vote; if an active Trusted User does not vote then this should be taken
> as a sign of unwarranted and undeclared inactivity.
>
> Also I believe that it would be nice to include a clause indicating that
> the requisite numbers of votes for a vote have been achieved the vote should
> be allowed to end prematurely. For example if there are thirty Trusted Users
> and twenty of them vote for the addition of a Trusted User by the second day
> of the voting procedure then it should not be necessary to extend the vote
> to the full seven days because no amount of nay's can effect a negative
> outcome. In this case the five day delay that would result from a strict
> adherence to the current bylaws is wasteful inefficiency.
>
> In fact it is my desire that the bylaws resemble as closely as possible an
> already established system for such proceedings such as Robert's Rules of
> Order. --Kaiting.
>

Sorry for all the mail regarding the bylaws but let me take a quick moment
to go through one extremely broken case of the current procedure.

Let's take falconindy's vote as an example; at the moment he has seventeen
votes for, one vote abstain, and zero votes against. There are thirty
Trusted Users in total.

Let us now assume that the remaining twelve Trusted Users are against
falconindy becoming a Trusted User. In this case if each of them vote nay,
then there will be seventeen votes for, twelve votes against and one vote
abstained, which means that falconindy will be accepted as a Trusted User.

However, if these remaining twelve Trusted Users are smart and adamant about
their desire to block falconindy's application, they will simply *not vote*.
A sixty-six percent quorum requires that at least twenty Trusted Users vote;
if quorum is not reached for two consecutive votes the motion fails.
Therefore by not voting these twelve Trusted Users will have effectively
voted nay, and falconindy's application will not be accepted.

This seems incredibly broken to me. --Kaiting.

-- 
Kiwis and Limes: http://kaitocracy.blogspot.com/