Abd ul-Rahman Lomax abd at lomaxdesign.com writes (quoting my previous post):
>>First, at something like 800 pages, it is way too long. Much >>shorter alternatives to Robert's Rules have been written and >>used widely, especially outside of the U.S. One U.S. book I >>especially like is Cannon's Consise Guide to Rules of Order >>by Hugh Cannon (less than 200 pages), originally published >>in 1992. When meeting rules become as extensive as the >>latest version of Robert's Rules, they benefit people who have >>the time and patience to learn their details and harm people >>who don't. > >There is an assumption here, which is that there is no chair who >understands the rules and considers it his or her duty to help >members to use the rules to get what they want. I made no such assumption. In fact, one of the things Cannon emphasizes in his much more concise rules is the imporance of a good chair. The rest of your comments basically say that the rules will work fine if properly understood and applied by the chair and by all "factions" at a meeting. But a big problem is that they often are not well understood, and one reason they aren't is that they are unnecessarily and intimidatingly detailed and complicated. Furthermore, when strongly competing factions exist, it is very common for one to have a better understanding of the rules than the other(s) (or for one to to have one or a few people who understand them much better than anyone in the other faction(s)). This happens all the time in the real world, as opposed to the ideal world you seem to be writing about. It is also very common for people and factions who understand the rules better to use their command of the rules to get favored motions passed and defeat ones they don't like. In addition, I believe some of the rules are just wrong. The worst one is the rule that a motion to end debate cannot itself be debated. That rule, perhaps more than any other, is used strategically by people who are more interested in getting their way than in ensuring that a meeting is conducted democratically. In one meeting I participated in where an organization was doing a major revision of its constitution and bylaws, the use of that rule abruptly ended discussion of a proposal that would have changed an important aspect of the organization and might have greatly strengthened it. The provision deserved more debate than most of the other provisions that were discussed, yet because people at the meeting wanted to get finished, it was rejected after a very short and inadequate debate, following one argument against it that I felt was extremely unfair (though superficially persuasive) but that was not permitted to be answered, thanks to the use of one Robert's rule that I happen to think needs to be fundamentally changed. You totally ignored a possibility I was trying to express -- that there may be alternatives to Robert's Rules that would work better and result in more democratic meetings and decisions in most if not all situations. I believe there are. But they won't be discovered through debates about Robert's Rules. They will be discovered by open-minded and open-ended as well as thoughtful and well-informed experimentation with different kinds of meeting rules and decisionmaking processes. Such experimentation will have to be conducted by people who, unlike yourself, are willing to at least seriously consider that there may be better ways to conduct meetings. In fact, many alternative rules and meeting and decisionmaking processes have been experimented with and found quite useful -- and, in the view of at least some people, far superior to Robert's Rules. The fact that none of them has yet becomed as widely accepted doesn't mean they aren't better or that they won't someday become more widely accepted than Robert's Rules now are. -Ralph Suter ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
