This.

I'm frankly still trying to decide how to vote on this one as the deadline approaches. It's looking like a choice for the lesser of two evils.

I agree with the arguments that *in principle* we shouldn't need lots of bureaucracy and that the possibility of "friendly" amendments can provide a disincentive for people to be careful and not rush to make and second motions, although maybe some of this will always happen.

OTOH sometimes amendments are desirable as we're voting on a motion that needs to be revised. I don't view the saving of maybe two weeks of time to pass a motion as a major factor for most situations that involve TB. However, if motions are going to be altered between the time that they're posted formally and moved and the time that the results are publicly announced and communicated to our CD, then I am firmly convinced that we need a formal procedure to do this.

I can recall three friendly amendments during my service on TB (about two and a half years). The first two were fairly innocuous even if they didn't lead to the results I wanted. In one case, the amendment was accepted but the motion failed. The second time, the proposer of the motion refused to accept a minor amendment that I thought was needed after it was pointed out by an "expert" in the TBT thread concerning the motion. However, the third instance--the general rental car forum--was a real mess because there were no formal rules and everything about it was done in an apparently ad hoc and arbitrary way, culminating in the "but we don't want this to be implemented for months" last minute addendum that was a complete surprise to some TB members. The process that was followed lacked transparency and collegiality. It made at least one TB member feel that (my own paraphrase to avoid quoting from a post in the private TBT forum) their opinions and contributions weren't valued. Other more minor but nevertheless important early comments were belittled as "typos" but continued to fail to be corrected in the formal motion as voting proceeded, even though it would have been very easy to correct the motion at that stage after the obvious "fixes" had been pointed out.

I don't want to see TB ever proceed this way again. The potential for damage to both FT and TB is too great, especially within an elected group of nine people from different backgrounds who should be working together to achieve concensus about how to best improve FT.

BTW, I had been clearly in favor of this motion until I started thinking about some of the arguments posted more recently in this TBT thread and then proceeded to re-read the motion once again very carefully and think about it. Now I'm not so sure because this change to the TB guidelines won't necessarily prevent what happened with the general rental cars motion.

Well said and completely agree.

Who is claiming they're opposed to this out of fear of abuse? :confused:

Nope, don't think I said it...

Did not see Canarsie post it either.

Another TB member who acknowledges a concern over a "slippery slope" but doesn't claim a "NO" vote due to abuse but a desire to vote on a motion they're satisfied with.

:confused:

I too would hope common sense will apply (perhaps four instead of for or too instead of two, to, etc.), but it does not always happen.

Good grief! What did happen with the general rental cars motion? (Or maybe, "What do you think happened?") The drafters forgot to change a "five" to "four," so I changed it. Uh, was there something wrong with that? Should we have revoted the motion? I don't understand the complaint. Maybe I'm just stupid.

And then, six of us agreed to add an additional provision to the motion. That's six votes, enough to pass a completely new motion! Rather than turn one motion into two, we added the provision to the motion already under consideration. If that's some kind of abuse, then I'm having real trouble seeing it. Again, maybe I'm just stupid.

A number of people reasonably objected to the ad hoc way that we proceeded on the rental cars motion, so nsx drafted a perfect procedure to formalize the process. Now that's a problem, too, apparently. Better to vote the motion down and start over again, I suppose?

I wonder if we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. No matter what we do, there will be people standing ready to criticize. So be it.

Bruce

:confused: During my 4 years on TB we did very little editing/improvement on an ad hoc basis after a motion was made & seconded. Probably as few as the times motions got scrapped entirely/voted down & restarted.

What's probably helped more than anything (some of which you spearheaded) is to post proposed motions for a period of time looking for input/tweaks/edits/oops did you guys think of this before ever getting to the seconded part where it becomes a formal motion & then we find out there were things we didn't think of which if we had would have gone into the motion before getting to the seconded stage.

Cheers.

I've been on TB for far less than most of the members, but my early observation is that nothing is more true than the bolded statement. We all have to be comfortable with our choices. I do not think that your vote is "right" or "wrong" in this case. You've substantiated your position, and I respect that. I just have a different comfort level.

Well said.

Cheers.

Sorry. I'm the nonvoter. I fell asleep while still trying to decide between yes, no, or abstain. I was sitting on a comfortable sofa, totally exhausted, with ipad in lap, re-reading this thread again, making final lists with pro and con columns, and drafting potential "why I voted as I did" statements as a way to help me decide. I woke up about an hour and a half after the vote closed.

I'm sorry, although the vote and its outcome would have been exactly the same if I had abstained.

Bruce - where does your power to amend motions come from in the TB Guidelines please?

Every power is not enumerated. The power to correct typos and similar obvious errors comes with the chairmanship of essentially any committee. We need to focus much more on substance and less on arcane procedure.

Bruce

Well, if nothing else this entire topic has proved that. ;)

I had an FTer say to me the other day on the phone. "Is this all TB does, d**k around with procedural crap? Why don't they focus on things like a new shared ride forum or renaming the Russia forum or sort out the title thing & actually do something that affects FT? No wonder FTers don't pay attention to TB."

I defended TB of course, but understood his point.

Cheers.

Well that's a load of crap. What does he call the rental car forum change? Furthermore, we're working on the shared ride forum idea right now, there's no need to rush things especially as there are a lot of details to hammer out.

If he has a good suggestion on the Russia forum by all means let's hear it. That's a really difficult question and rushing to finish anything so it comes out wrong is not a solution.

Oh and to say I'm disappointed in all this is an understatement. It was a really good motion and the fact that a TB member failed to vote is an embarassment for all of TalkBoard.

I concur and will go a step further: the rationale for not voting is more embarrassing and underscores why waiting until the last minute is bad form. And, really, this was a motion on which someone would "abstain"? I think TB members ought to have more conviction and courage than that. We owe more responsiveness to the membership.

I totally agree. Staying up very late in the hope that some gem of wisdom might be posted to influence your vote is just silly. If the one non-voter had simply bitten the bullet and voted a few hours earlier, we wouldn't be embarrassed -- and neither would she -- and we might very well have passed this motion!!! (I am not going to assume that she would have voted no, and she has not indicated how she would have voted if she hadn't fallen asleep.)

By the way, nobody has said this yet -- and a formal announcement will be forthcoming -- but the motion failed to pass on a 5-3 favorable vote. Motions need two-thirds support to pass, and this one had 62.5%, not enough. It's really unfortunate, in my opinion. People complain about ad hoc handling of amendments and corrections, so we write a procedure to avoid that and it fails to pass. What now? It's very discouraging.

Bruce