Subject: Re: [lojban] Why we should cancel the vote or all vote NO (was

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 21:58:23 -0500

At 11:44 PM 11/29/02 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
>Lojbab:
> > >But will you take it as a mandate for the general thrust or also for
> > >every detail?
> >
> > Yes. %^)
>
>I will vote against, then. If we were being asked "Do you prefer the new
>baseline policy to the status quo", I would vote Yes in a flash. But
>it looks like I'm being asked to give a mandate to quite a complex
>set of policies which were arrived at without me or most other Lojbanists
>being consulted. I'm sure that in constructing the policies, the Board
>members were at pains to take into account the general tenor of the
>views of the different factions, but that doesn't mean that potential
>arguments about specific policy points had a chance to get a fair
>hearing. If the specific points where I disagree with the policy (which
>I'll detail in a later message; they're not relevant to this message)
>had had a chance to be discussed openly and were rejected by the majority
>of open-minded thinking Lojbanists, then I would feel that the policy
>more truly has a mandate and represents consensus.

The Board has the responsibility to act on behalf of the membership in 
setting policy in between the annual members' meetings. If the issue had 
come up before LogFest, then it would undoubtedly have been debated at 
LogFest, and those attendees would have been the ones to make the 
decision. Instead, it fell to the Board to act. The voting members have 
the option to overrule and/or to rewrite the policy at the next members' 
meeting, and indeed the voting members will be the ones to decide and to 
declare that the byfy has met the conditions for the final baseline, next 
summer or whenever they feel those conditions have been met. But given the 
fact that several questions came up that required an answer in the short 
term, and the Board decided that the baseline question was too important to 
be left to me alone, the Board met to set a policy that answered the 
questions. Some members (especially Nick) felt that a mandate of support 
from the community would be needed in order for the byfy to complete its 
job quickly and efficiently.

>The Board could perfectly well have circulated a draft and solicited
>responses and discussion, and then retired to redraft in the light
>of those responses and discussion.

It took over 2 months to get done what we did, and that was a month and a 
half longer than anyone wanted it to take. My own work as President is 
largely paralyzed while I try to participate in on-line debates, and we've 
decided that for the organization to become healthy, I need to get my other 
job done (that always gets pushed aside), which is the organizing of the 
business aspects of the LLG so that I can delegate most or all of the work, 
and so that we can promptly deliver orders for books and materials, and 
resume publication of JL.

>I would like to propose to the Board that it belatedly do just that:
>cancel the vote, solicit feedback on the policy, with, say, January
>1st as a final deadline for commentary. Then the Board can reissue
>the policy, with revisions if they are called for, in the *informed*
>belief that the policy truly represents the best consensus. And then
>we can be asked to vote "Do you agree that this policy best represents
>the consensus of views and that it should therefore be made official?"

I am not willing to do that, though the Board could overrule me. If this 
policy is voted down, then barring some effort by someone else beside me, 
there will be no baseline policy at all until the next member's meeting 
(the approved baseline policy will exist in publication, but without the 
support of the members, it will have little significance; the fact that 
there is no policy will cause endless debate on Lojban List - endless 
because only a member's meeting would have sufficient import to bring it to 
a conclusion), there likely will be no byfy (Nick accepted the job 
conditional on a mandate of approval for the policy), and LLG will continue 
to drift for several months. Meanwhile, I'll try to get book orders and 
the address list caught up.

The point of asking for a mandate comes down to a question of whether the 
Lojban community is willing to follow the lead of the Board (and the 
President) and the byfy Chair. The byfy cannot act effectively if it 
cannot follow a single leader and work cooperatively to achieve prompt 
results. LLG as an organization cannot function if every decision that the 
leadership makes will be second-guessed, which is what has been happening 
for the last couple of years on the baseline and other matters. The Board 
is attempting to move into a role of active leadership to remedy this, but 
if the community does not have confidence in our leadership, we will not be 
able to do the job. I am not sure if LLG can operate usefully unless the 
Board can (and is trusted to) act decisively on behalf of the greater 
community.

But everyone needs to decide for themselves what they want the Lojban 
community and LLG to be.

lojbab

-- 
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org