Robert's Rules of Order (1876)
gutenberg.org
gutenberg.org
So one of the problems with Robert's (and the way it played into company law in NZ) is that it doesn't fare well faced with recursion .... our game play was roughly:
- someone makes an initial motion - say "I move a motion of no confidence in the chair under the 1873 Aged and Infirm person's Act" - this enrages the Chair, sowing discord, but they have to have a vote, chair steps aside - I move we hold a written ballot (required if asked for) - I'd like to nominate X as scrutineer - Someone else - I'd like to nominate Y - I move we hold a written vote on scrutineers (now we're off recursion can kick in) - I'd like to nominate A as scrutineer ... - Someone else - I'd like to nominate B .... .... and so on - you get the idea
Now pretty soon we're into silliness, the pompous board of directors running the meeting who always have enough votes to pass anything at an AGM, certainly more than these raucous hippies have .... but they're useless if you can't actually have a vote ...
Eventually the original chairman loses it, gavels the meeting back under his control declares all of the above a pile of rubbish and continues on with the previously carefully scripted AGM without resolving any of this .... but we have him, the accounts are adopted by a chairman who was not the chair, the rest of the meeting is invalid ... next step is to threaten them in court with an injunction freezing the accounts .... their secretary couldn't keep up with all the motions, we had a recording ....
Better yet, we had 100 individual shareholders, under NZ law at the time we could call a special general meeting every 6 weeks .....
Needless to say as we started buying shares of the second wine importer, all the rest of the companies stopped importing wine from SA ....
Is there a place on the web folks can read more about your time fighting apartheid?
The 1981 Springbok was probably the biggest thing that happened - I got arrested for blowing a whistle during a game (seems there's some silly rule that only one person at a rugby game can have a whistle or something, they couldn't find it when I got to the station and I was released without charge)
I only realised that we were invoking a form of recursion years later when I was working with a patent attorney on a patent and realised that his patent-english was a sort of programming language in it's own right, with variables and recursion and different meanings for little things like 'or' etc (but, as he explained, not infinite recursion, because that would require infinite dollars to file)
LOL that's genius!
I may not have explained just how red the chair's face went when we moved that motion (there is no "1873 Aged and Infirm person's Act", it was made up for the purpose, we didn't really need a reason to move a motion of no confidence in the chair) - we had all gone in with flowcharts of how we were going to do it written down on paper.
It all happened in the aftermath of the 1981 rugby tour
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/1981-springbok-tour
(having said this it was 40 years ago, I may have gotten some minor details wrong - it was however a grand social hack)
Well, wait, doesn't that make the whole exercise fraudulent? Here in the US at least, this tactic would only work once. You'd be faced with charges of disorderly conduct or trespassing the next time you tried citing a nonexistent law, whether you held shares in the company or not.
You might as well just skip the CS theory and call in a bomb threat every time they try to hold a meeting.
It's reasonable to assume that these folks may have significantly reduced NZ's imports of SA wine for at least a while.
The conservative govt that had encouraged the whole Springbok tour in 81 also was the same govt that so mismanaged the economy that it fell apart in 84, they were replaced by a left wing govt that brought in free trade and scrapped all these licensed etc (not the usual left/right narrative)
For literally all my life, I have thought of group debate as a thing where both sides try to convince the other of their stupidity, and the debate is only resolved when one side gives up.
Then in the middle of a paragraph about something completely different in the condensed version of Robert's Rules, the authors write
> Vigorous debate about the merits of a motion is central to the very idea of a deliberative assembly. When the arguments on all sides are fully aired, the group is most likely to come to a wise decision.
This is incredibly profound, and it seems like the authors just take it for granted.
You debate something so that everyone has heard the complications considered important by the group. Then when it goes to a vote, each person is able to consider this important information and form a judgment of their own.
In a group debate, nobody has to (or even should?) change their minds. It’s okay to have different priorities and think different things are best. Debate is not about admitting fault or changing one’s mind – it’s about informing the rest of the group about which arguments one thinks are salient to the judgment.
This hits at a key problem in dysfunctional companies ... since there is often no clear "right answer" people will do dysfunctional things like delay decision making until there is a clear, unambiguously best choice (which may never happen) or force through their preference because other, better, choices have trade offs.
there's no need or requirement for consensus for the community to move forward; there's only a need to acknowledge that the community must go one.
This assumes both sides are acting in good faith and share some common goals. If one side has (say) convinced itself that the the other side is evil and duplicitous then this no longer works because 1) everything the other side says is viewed through the lens of evil and duplicity and 2) this evil and duplicity needs to be combated by any means necessary, up to and including presenting arguments that the first side knows are wrong but which it believes in good faith could allow it to prevail against evil and duplicity.
And then there is the meta problem, which is that as soon as one side falls into this hole it typically drags the other side down with it.
There are literally millions if not tens of millions of American voters who at least profess to believe in the substance of what I have just written. Maybe they're all just trolling but I doubt it. I just have a hard time picturing them saying, "Ha ha, April fools! You didn't really think we were serious, did you?"
They can go meta and debate the goals first, then use logic to reason what they suggest objectively works. If the "wrong" side is unable to provide equivalent reasoning for their points, then it's obvious?
And if the "right" side is unwilling to go about it systematically and wants to engage in warfare, perhaps that speaks for their confidence in themselves.
Debate works when each side thinks that the other side might have something worthwhile to contribute despite being wrong, even if that contribution is nothing more than capitulation. But if the other side is evil (rather than merely wrong) then even capitulation is no longer a viable option because evil cannot be allowed to merely resign and go about its business. Evil must be eliminated.
Obviously. That's why I put them in quotes. I was just following the example in your comment where there is a self-righteous "right" side, and the "wrong" side is wrong from their perspective.
I think the shared goals consensus and the logical reasoning I described is what makes it painfully obvious to wider public if there is true malice. Why not the "right" side use it?
Only if it has been shown in this way that the wrong side is actually wrong, but the imperfections of the system let them act and do evil, then warfare (which is what you seem to be describing, more or less) might be the next step.
No, you weren't. I very deliberately avoided the use of the words "right" and "wrong" to describe the two sides.
Whether the evilness of the "wrong" (with quotes) side matches reality or is a product of the non-evil ("right", with quotes) side's fallible model of the world was unclear from your comment, and I left it as such.
It looks like you aren't arguing with my main point, which is applicable to any side that thinks it's "right". I sincerely hope this approach prevails over abusing debate mechanics that you describe.
> If one side has (say) convinced itself that the the other side is evil and duplicitous then this no longer works because 1) everything the other side says is viewed through the lens of evil and duplicity and 2) this evil and duplicity needs to be combated by any means necessary, up to and including presenting arguments that the first side knows are wrong but which it believes in good faith could allow it to prevail against evil and duplicity.
and pay particular attention to the passage that I highlighted here.
My point it is not an inevitability, if it happens it is at best regrettable and preventable, at worst the self-righteous side is in fact being the evil one by abusing the truth seeking mechanism.
So, kind of like the efficient markets hypothesis, you have to ask "under what conditions will deliberative debate lead to better decisions?" Because sometimes the group makes the wrong decision.
On a small scale, I’ve found using some of these techniques effective for getting engineering groups to consensus and getting parties who disagree with the decision to have felt heard and ok with the direction agreed upon.
https://libcom.org/article/how-hold-good-meeting-rustys-rule...
I use that bit of my high school education more than most of my actual classes.
Like someone else mentioned in another comment, I experienced Robert's Rules during speech and debate class when we did model UN.
However, I also got a second dose in a place that might surprise some, Ag classes. Future Farmers if America also uses Roberts Rules for their meetings and competitions.
1. Assume that one person gets to talk at a time. Give them a reasonable time limit to communicate.
2. Different sides take turns in a discussion.
3. Rules for the discussion are under debate, but changing the discussion rules is much more complicated for good reason. Try not to do this unnecessarily, but there are rules for that. There is an arbitrary level of "meta" here, where discussions-about-discussions-about-discussions can arise, and the rules are designed to work under these complex scenarios. But its rare to actually ever need them.
4. Ensure that a quorum has been reached before starting a meeting. If your group is composed of 10 people try to have at least 6 people show up, otherwise its a failed meeting and nothing can possibly get done.
5. After every meeting, send out meeting notes in an email. At the start of every meeting, discuss the previous meetings notes and vote to finalize those notes. Only the written record counts, not people's memories.
6. If an issue is settled / voted upon, do not revisit it until the next meeting (or later).
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Its not Roberts rules themselves that are important. Its:
1. The paradigm of having meta-rules, for how to discuss about the discussion. Any conflict will naturally become meta over time, and knowing how to resolve disputes despite a meta-nature is important. (Or at least, knowing that someone 100+ years ago thought of the problem, and there's a set of 100+ year old traditional rules that seem to avoid that problem).
2. Giving everyone a fair turn during the discussion: meeting quorum, alternating discussion points, time limits.
3. Giving forward progress: settling debates, finalizing discussions, etc. etc.
Every aspect of Roberts rules can be voted upon and changed by a group. IE: its the rules of the group that matter, not the rules as written by Robert 100+ years ago.
This is a lost art, and so is being able to accept these decisions with out becoming the resistance.
Eventually they browbeat dissent into discontent when they could have had an entire team of "I've been heard and now I support the group"
Agree on the value of teaching Roberts rules. While contributing to a consensus-building technology (https://pol.is), I ended up on a call with a historian of Roberts Rules. He made the really memorable observation that Roberts Rules is essentially a social technology for deliberation at scale, which has the important property of preserving and protecting minority voice in consensus processes. It's notable that we now make a lot of things we call "social tech" whose algorithms do no such thing
They have been good caretakers of the tradition. But many good government types take issue with the fact a private family controls the by-laws of so many organizations.
I got to listen to a city attorney go on and on for an hour about how inappropriate it is that city meetings are legally bound to follow the dictats of a family who doesn’t know the city exists.
But then again, there’s no actual scandal so far.
If you have some giant organization where you must implement stuff like this, then fine. If you have a small organization where you don't have to, then meetings should have a facilitator leading the meeting, and then should flow essentially like a conversation.
However, we have had situations over the years where it really mattered whether there was quorum, how an emergency meeting could be called, the scope of authority of the executive board, whether phone/write-in/proxy votes counted, etc. Formal procedures often don't matter--but sometimes they do.
In the presence of good faith, formal rules aren't needed.
Much like methane and "thou which smelt it", I get very cynical whenever anyone calls for formalization.
One alternative I've really liked is Cannon's [0]. It's got all the essential elements and clearly explains how to escape the rules and run meetings largely as conversations.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Cannons-Concise-Guide-Rules-Order/dp/...
One speaker at time/don't interrupt people.
Decisions are made only after everyone's had the opportunity to discuss/speak
Proposals need to be specific/defined
Majority rule but minority rights.
Robert's Rules of Order (1876) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23688430 - June 2020 (60 comments)
Rethinking Robert's Rules of Order - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21157398 - Oct 2019 (56 comments)
SHAMROCK: [scribbling on a legal pad] The Roberts Rules say we gotta have minutes for the meeting right? These the minutes.
STRINGER: Is you takin’ notes on a criminal f*** conspiracy?! What the ** is you thinking man?!
Once you master the rules of order, you can declare everybody and anybody else "out of order" to control any formal meeting.
A simplified version, Rusty's Rules of Order[0] is used by the IWW. It's worth checking out if you're unfamiliar to Roberts' Rules or need a quick refresher.
[0] https://libcom.org/article/how-hold-good-meeting-rustys-rule...
A lesson also learnable from top civil servant (good grief, I sound like a headline writer) Sir Humphrey in "Yes, Prime Minister" (episode "Man Overboard"): "Ah, Prime Minister... It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member's recollection of them differs violently from every other member's recollection. Consequently we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any decision which has been officially reached will have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials and any decision which is not recorded in the minutes has not been officially reached even if one or more members believe they can recollect it, so in this particular case if the decision had been officially reached it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials. And it isn't so it wasn't."
I've been working on it for over a year and we plan to release sometime in the next 6 months. We take RR and make it the basis for a meeting operating system. The rules can be adjusted so that you can use a lightweight set of rules if it suits you better, hence the name "Meet Robbie".
Any feedback on the idea is much appreciated. (and sorry for the shameless plug. I can't resist)
In high school some 30 years ago, I was voted in to student council, and somehow became the parliamentarian (President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, and the lowly Parliamentarian).
Eager to wield the little power I had, I was a stickler for the rules. Until someone made a motion to suspend Robert's Rules of Order for the duration of the meeting, which was quickly seconded and approved with all but one vote.
Separately, I heard a story that in the Midwest, a rich man was ticketed for speeding, and hired a big shot attorney. At the trial, the defense attorney moved that the charges be dismissed. The old judge looked down at the prosecuting attorney, the defense attorney, and the defendant. He then called a vote, which passed 2 to 1 and the charges were dismissed.
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/streamlining-the-actual-pro...
1. There must be sufficient representative diversity on the committee.
2. No agent on the committee should be allowed to buy/bribe other agents to form a persistent (all powerful) majority bloc.
3. To combat issues with (2) all such blocs should be (re)considered as reduced to single agents with a single vote.
Imho, the situation (2) seeks to combat can happen in the real world, with clear evidence of agents no longer being independent in any meaningful sense; so additional strong requirements for transparency surrounding a process are needed, maybe enforced in the committee charter.
The spinoffs are either an attempt to dumb it down or a cash grab by Robert's heirs.
Taught me a lot about procedure and how it can be used as a tool (or a cudgel).
but the smug pronunciation nitpicker insisted "Robert" was pronounced the French way, i.e. https://www.howtopronounce.com/french/robert
I’m francophone and I pronounce “Robert” the English way.
Just to point out, if you refer to "the Oxford dictionary", people are likely to think you mean the immensely prestigious Oxford English Dictionary, not the completely irrelevant Oxford Learner's Dictionaries.
The important thing to understand is that the rules are mainly for exception handling and are borderline irrelevant on the golden path. Most of the time, committees don't even think about the rules because everyone understands motions, seconding, and voting. Groups often operate in de facto ‘suspension of the rules’ and just talk through issues semi-formally until it’s time to take a vote. That’s actually the optimal outcome in most settings.
The true test of the rules is when disagreements arise about the form of debate rather than subject matter. Sometimes there is a legitimate procedural question but often this comes up when the apparent minority decides to start maneuvering because they believe they are going to lose. In the real world, this tends to play out in one of two ways depending on context:
1. This is a highly professional body with a parliamentarian at the meeting (or at least somebody plausible like a general counsel) who can call the balls and strikes, or the chair is—at least in principle—considered competent to rule by enough people present. A ruling is made and the body moves on.
2. This is an amateur body (which includes most government bodies below the state/province level and the vast majority of private committees/panels/boards), in which case people will resolve the issue as humans usually do. Namely, either the meeting will fall apart and be unable to conduct business or the most influential or aggressive parties will win regardless of what the rules say.
"But the body can just resolve everything properly by reading the rules!" -- well, theoretically.
But think back to the last time you played one of those byzantine German board games for the first time. Now imagine that nobody at the table really cares about board games and are not used to reading game rules. Further imagine that some parties are willing to defect from the spirit of the rules in order to raise esoteric legal and procedural objections, waste time, and filibuster outcomes they don’t want.
Real meetings have time limits, and while the U.S. Senate might stay up past midnight occasionally, regular people who have to wake up for work in the morning and who are giving up family time for a thankless volunteer position generally will not tolerate taking 5 hours to unwind the call stack in a hostile proceeding. So again, the loudest and most assertive parties tend to wear everyone else down. In that case the rules are at best useful for establishing in the record that procedure was not followed, which is only really useful if the issue can be escalated to the courts, appealed to a higher body, or revisited in a subsequent session.
Others in the thread have suggested simplified rulesets, and I’ll recommend Rosenberg’s Rules of Order which was designed by an experienced judge specifically for smaller meetings. But the truth is that almost any set of rules will work for amateur bodies if parties operate in good faith, and almost no set of rules will work if not.