The agenda protocol, along with the are general rules for meeting protocols which can be applied to all meeting types, including wiki meetings F2F meeting and tele meetings.
Given that one has the authority to call a meeting, to do so requires two steps:
Everyone who is expected to or eligible to participate should be notified with sufficient preparation time. Sufficient preparation time depends on:
Three to fourteen days is adequate for small groups, the larger the group, the more time for notice of motions should be allowed. A deadline by which proposals must be submitted should be clearly indicated in the notice of meeting. A good rule of thumb is that if the notice of the meeting is given with a two month lead time, setting a deadline for proposals one month before the meeting would be suitable. For regular meetings, the time, date and location of the next meeting should be confirmed at the conclusion of the previous meeting.
Items to include in the notice of meeting:
A reminder two or three days prior to the event is strongly recommended.
the following steps should be followed rigorously (no changes or exceptions) at the start of all meetings.
If not already established the first order of business is to elect the functionaries of the meeting. All meetings require a:
Synchronous or "live" meetings require a
Some meetings require a quorum or minimum number of participants. Whether or not this quorum is met is the second order of business. The list of attendees (participants and visitors) should be recorded for the minutes.
The approval of minutes of previous meeting, or "past minutes", is strongly recommended but not essential as the third order of business. Often overlooked or handled too carelessly, reviewing the minutes of the last meeting allows the group to focus on ongoing plans and priorities, and recall items deferred.
See political virtues. If you don't have 'em, don't try to conduct a meeting. Learn 'em.
Any organization with good governance practices will have a system of regular reporting which forms the most important aspects of the meeting. Some reports will have "action items" for the meeting within them, others are for "information only". All reports presented to the meeting should be linked from the agenda (prior to the meeting). Short verbal reports regarding new and urgent developments should be confined to a short period of time, typically one to three minutes, depending on the gravity of the issue.
Next in the usual order is the discussion of old business, by the best practice of finish what you start. Items deferred for a second time should trigger some concern about why they were not put off to a time further in the future, and what is proving unpredictable about those items.
All motions raised since the last meeting, or during the last meeting (which typically must be tabled or deferred to allow time to consider them) constitute new business. This might include items that are confidential and thus did not appear on the public wiki meeting - see also in camera - however, some items simply can't be treated in this manner - an organization's constitution should for instance specify an officer protocol so that in camera items cannot be used to discuss or to exclude people, particularly those not present.
See also no gossip, a policy that applies in some for-profit companies.
A live meeting should end on time, unless all participants agree to extend the meeting to deal with issues not deferred.
At the close of an entirely asynchronous "web only" meeting, the secretary should close the meeting by recording that the agenda has become the meeting minutes, and either lock the page to prevent further edits, or designate an approved version as the "official minutes". Any business unattended to is automatically tabled to the next meeting.
Several parameters must be set in advance of any meeting, possibly with reference to type of issue being debated. In which case the category scheme that applies must be clearly agreed to. Usually, a given group will have only one set of parameters.
See discussion of "three to fourteen day" notice above. Two days is adequate for small groups on routine matters. The larger the group, the more time for notice of motions should be allowed. Any notice less than 48 hours must be considered abusive or indication of serious organizational problems, e.g. failure to delegate properly to an executive trusted to carry out urgent functions.
A typical rule, e.g. used by the LP Steering Committee is that "all invitees should be invited at least 3 days prior to the meeting and notice immediately placed on the wiki meeting, a link to which accompanies the invitation. For regular meetings, the time and date of the next meeting should be confirmed at each meeting. A reminder is posted three days prior to the event, and at least 24 hours prior to the deadline by which all motions should be posted. This is the 72/24 rule.
Quorum is the minimum number of participants who must be present and participating for decisions to be considered to be the decisions of the group.
Quorum may vary based on circumstances, e.g. new business not mentioned on any prior agenda may be permissible with all possible attendees present, but not if anyone is missing. See also quorum key.
The LP steering committee has a de facto quorum of all members minus one with a minimum of three, due to its unanimity minus one rule.
Rules also vary as to whether someone can cast a vote for another. Usually this can be allowed only when motions are not modified, or where there is broad interpretation of proxy rights.
The LP steering committee has no proxy rule since it permits extensive modification of motions and there is no way to determine how any person not present would vote on the new motion. Accordingly, it must have general proxy or none.
Threshold of agreement, e.g. unanimity minus one for small groups, unanimity minus two for larger ones up to about a dozen, and for much larger groups a percentage threshold such as 80% or 75% overwhelming majority, must be set in advance for each type of decision or size of group. Any ambiguity about this can be quite destructive.
The LP steering committee uses U-1. This means in practice a consul model when three members participate, in which the two chief editors can overrule the third participant.
A group so large as to require 50%+1 agreement to 2/3 agreement is too large to use this LP agenda protocol and must consider using Bonser method at least, majority rule at worst. In these cases an agenda protocol can serve to prepare the agenda or referendum question or party list for that larger meeting, but cannot actually make the decision.
An open position protocol, for instance, may rely on an agenda protocol at several phases where a small group takes charge of the meeting's conduct or drafting of final platform proposals to be ratified by the larger group. This is treated as several meetings each of which uses the LP agenda protocol, but which requires an overall governance structure, e.g. process committee. The GPNS policy committee and simpol steering committee are two examples of organizations applying this kind of an approach.
Debate by edit is the recommended method for wiki meetings: motions are issues, and amendments are positions. Arguments on pre-standing positions may be restricted to those raised online.
An IPA or issue/position/argument fuses with we/will/must in a wiki meeting. That is, the issue is something "we" have decided to do something about, the position is one we "will" take, and arguments will focus on what "must" be done to achieve those goals with that group, and often include arguments that it is difficult or impossible with only those who are participating, committed. Being more exact:
Any agenda item exists to reflect the fact that we who participate raise issues.
Any whereas statement is actually a partial issue statement and should be in neutral point of view - especially the title of any policy resolution.
Such items should be labeled as issues using heading level 2 - reserve tikiwiki heading level 1 as always.
Agenda items may be edited by anyone capable of following this protocol: if these are few, only voting participants in the meeting must necessarily be allowed to edit. It's important that no significant points are ever removed once raised: in particular, absolutely no links to other pages may ever be removed as this alters the related issues that are being considered. A good rule of thumb is that if the related issues list of the most closely related page includes a concept, it should be linked in the agenda item statement if any voting participant thinks it is relevant. That is not to say that the voting participant must be the person who edits it or adds it into the item.
Rationale: who's we must default to be inclusive: issues are not defined by the people voting but rather by the people affected. Tolerating a high level of input to issue statements is a good rule for policy and it is for the organization itself.
Any motion exists to take a position: to offer it up as the group's position: what "we will" do. Motions may be fragile and must be carefully stated and handled and present clearly the exact action proposed.
Any be it resolved that statement must be in sympathetic point of view and given tikiwiki heading level 3.
Any other positions that affect or illustrate or debate, but are not themselves, motions should simply be treated as positions with argument pro and argument con. Many of these indicate that the motion itself may not address the whole issue.
To endorse, that is, to indicate that the "we will" includes yourself, add your signature to the "endorsed" line with any notes or reservations:
Amendments should be labeled as such, numbered, and represented as tikiwiki heading level 4. Do not change the original motion. Propose amendments either:
Unless it is very fragile, keep a motion simple to allow for lots of clarification. If you wish to "approve in principle" while allowing further amendments, indicate that you approve ‘’with all amendments. Any endorsement is invalidated by an amendment, and must be separately "endorsed as amended". If you wish to make approval of a motion conditional on an amendment passing use only with'', e.g.
In favor: MLP (with amendments 1,3), EDT (with all amendments), JKL (only with amendment 3)
Opposed: DGH
Abstaining:
Or list separately under the amendment:
A friendly amendment is one that the initial endorser accepts, but, that person is not the only one who speaks for or to the amendment. If two people have endorsed, both of their permissions are required to hide the original form. They signal this ideally by editing and adding their signature to the new amended form.
Rationale: There is no separate status for friendly amendments since there is no need for them when people are respecting the above protocol: friendly and unfriendly amendments are absorbed into the IPA-like protocol.
The we/will/must structure includes entailments labelled "must" that will appear either in the motion or some supporting argument. For instance, to state as an argument con that some high-overhead effort is implied by taking on some commitment, then to decide to do it anyway, is to take on that effort as one of the "musts".
All arguments appear in the page eventually when it becomes the meeting minutes, so, pre-structuring them is ideal:
Arguments should be labeled argument pro and argument con but can also be bulleted or in prose form, and can follow either the motions or the amendments. When an argument is not part of a position, or backs multiple positions, or is pro for one position and con for another, it should have its own label.
All consensus decision making has a threshold such as unanimity minus one, unanimity minus two, or a percentage threshold such as in the Bonser method.
This many people in agreement (not abstaining) is required to make a motion an actual decision. Only motions and amendments that pass are adopted. Only these are enforced by the chief editors.
Most groups assess whether this threshold has been met via voting. Actual voting requires a committed signature to appear - some mark made only by the person with authority to make it.
Voting on motions can be conducted either by placing one’s name or initials immediately following the motion including the numbers of any amendments that you approve of. When the vote is complete, these will become actual signatures so that plans can be compiled from commitments directly in the meeting minutes.
A signature is necessary to formally endorse motions. This does not mean one's initials, which appear in lots of places, it means a specific tag, i.e.:
While it's fine to use just initials until the meeting, and final approval, no LP:plan can be compiled from commitments without such distinguishable signatures. You can also attempt to _commit_MLP to something, which he should quickly discover and accept or reject.
Rationale: extremely reliable distinctive tags that are reviewed every day to find new commitments not tracked in the plan, are absolutely required to keep the OP business and marketing plan and other OP:plans up to date. The small number of people involved and committing can very easily learn the few open politics web tags required.
[+] Related links
Bonser Method - deliberation and voting for medium to large groups.
visioning protocol - a group visioning process.
budgeting protocol- a bugeting process.
Living Agenda - an integrated wiki based agenda and decision protocol.
GROOP - the General Rules Of Online Procedure
decision protocol - how voting is conducted and agenda items are decided.
visioning protocol - a group visioning process.
budgeting protocol- a bugeting process.
Living Agenda - an integrated wiki based agenda and decision protocol.
GROOP - the General Rules Of Online Procedure
decision protocol - how voting is conducted and agenda items are decided.
Agenda Protocol
wiki meeting agendas can be created quickly using the wiki meeting template[+] call meeting
Given that one has the authority to call a meeting, to do so requires two steps:
- Notice of the meeting.
- Deadline for proposals.
Everyone who is expected to or eligible to participate should be notified with sufficient preparation time. Sufficient preparation time depends on:
- number of attendees
- distances to be traveled (if any)
- gravity of decisionmaking involved.
- organizational rules or precedents.
Three to fourteen days is adequate for small groups, the larger the group, the more time for notice of motions should be allowed. A deadline by which proposals must be submitted should be clearly indicated in the notice of meeting. A good rule of thumb is that if the notice of the meeting is given with a two month lead time, setting a deadline for proposals one month before the meeting would be suitable. For regular meetings, the time, date and location of the next meeting should be confirmed at the conclusion of the previous meeting.
meeting notices
Items to include in the notice of meeting:
- coordinates of the meeting.
- who is invited, or eligible to attend.
- a link to the wiki meeting, and minutes of the previous meeting.
- a link to the ruleset or rules of order under which the meeting is conducted.
- instructions on how to RSVP or decline attendance
A reminder two or three days prior to the event is strongly recommended.
[+] start meeting
the following steps should be followed rigorously (no changes or exceptions) at the start of all meetings.
[+] 1. call to order
[+] 2. elect functionaries
If not already established the first order of business is to elect the functionaries of the meeting. All meetings require a:
Synchronous or "live" meetings require a
- chair to handle the participants and allocate time to specific items
[+] 3. roll call / quorum
Some meetings require a quorum or minimum number of participants. Whether or not this quorum is met is the second order of business. The list of attendees (participants and visitors) should be recorded for the minutes.
[+] 4. approve past minutes
The approval of minutes of previous meeting, or "past minutes", is strongly recommended but not essential as the third order of business. Often overlooked or handled too carelessly, reviewing the minutes of the last meeting allows the group to focus on ongoing plans and priorities, and recall items deferred.
[+] conduct meeting
See political virtues. If you don't have 'em, don't try to conduct a meeting. Learn 'em.
[+] reports
Any organization with good governance practices will have a system of regular reporting which forms the most important aspects of the meeting. Some reports will have "action items" for the meeting within them, others are for "information only". All reports presented to the meeting should be linked from the agenda (prior to the meeting). Short verbal reports regarding new and urgent developments should be confined to a short period of time, typically one to three minutes, depending on the gravity of the issue.
[+] old business / deferred items
Next in the usual order is the discussion of old business, by the best practice of finish what you start. Items deferred for a second time should trigger some concern about why they were not put off to a time further in the future, and what is proving unpredictable about those items.
[+] new business
All motions raised since the last meeting, or during the last meeting (which typically must be tabled or deferred to allow time to consider them) constitute new business. This might include items that are confidential and thus did not appear on the public wiki meeting - see also in camera - however, some items simply can't be treated in this manner - an organization's constitution should for instance specify an officer protocol so that in camera items cannot be used to discuss or to exclude people, particularly those not present.
See also no gossip, a policy that applies in some for-profit companies.
[+] close meeting
A live meeting should end on time, unless all participants agree to extend the meeting to deal with issues not deferred.
At the close of an entirely asynchronous "web only" meeting, the secretary should close the meeting by recording that the agenda has become the meeting minutes, and either lock the page to prevent further edits, or designate an approved version as the "official minutes". Any business unattended to is automatically tabled to the next meeting.
parameters
Several parameters must be set in advance of any meeting, possibly with reference to type of issue being debated. In which case the category scheme that applies must be clearly agreed to. Usually, a given group will have only one set of parameters.
[+] notice
See discussion of "three to fourteen day" notice above. Two days is adequate for small groups on routine matters. The larger the group, the more time for notice of motions should be allowed. Any notice less than 48 hours must be considered abusive or indication of serious organizational problems, e.g. failure to delegate properly to an executive trusted to carry out urgent functions.
72/24 rule
A typical rule, e.g. used by the LP Steering Committee is that "all invitees should be invited at least 3 days prior to the meeting and notice immediately placed on the wiki meeting, a link to which accompanies the invitation. For regular meetings, the time and date of the next meeting should be confirmed at each meeting. A reminder is posted three days prior to the event, and at least 24 hours prior to the deadline by which all motions should be posted. This is the 72/24 rule.
[+] quorum
Quorum is the minimum number of participants who must be present and participating for decisions to be considered to be the decisions of the group.
Quorum may vary based on circumstances, e.g. new business not mentioned on any prior agenda may be permissible with all possible attendees present, but not if anyone is missing. See also quorum key.
all members minus one with minimum three
The LP steering committee has a de facto quorum of all members minus one with a minimum of three, due to its unanimity minus one rule.
[+] proxy
Rules also vary as to whether someone can cast a vote for another. Usually this can be allowed only when motions are not modified, or where there is broad interpretation of proxy rights.
no proxy
The LP steering committee has no proxy rule since it permits extensive modification of motions and there is no way to determine how any person not present would vote on the new motion. Accordingly, it must have general proxy or none.
[+] consensus
Threshold of agreement, e.g. unanimity minus one for small groups, unanimity minus two for larger ones up to about a dozen, and for much larger groups a percentage threshold such as 80% or 75% overwhelming majority, must be set in advance for each type of decision or size of group. Any ambiguity about this can be quite destructive.
U-1
The LP steering committee uses U-1. This means in practice a consul model when three members participate, in which the two chief editors can overrule the third participant.
supermajority
A group so large as to require 50%+1 agreement to 2/3 agreement is too large to use this LP agenda protocol and must consider using Bonser method at least, majority rule at worst. In these cases an agenda protocol can serve to prepare the agenda or referendum question or party list for that larger meeting, but cannot actually make the decision.
example: choosing positions within a party
An open position protocol, for instance, may rely on an agenda protocol at several phases where a small group takes charge of the meeting's conduct or drafting of final platform proposals to be ratified by the larger group. This is treated as several meetings each of which uses the LP agenda protocol, but which requires an overall governance structure, e.g. process committee. The GPNS policy committee and simpol steering committee are two examples of organizations applying this kind of an approach.
[+] followup
[+] How to debate by edit in a wiki meeting
Debate by edit is the recommended method for wiki meetings: motions are issues, and amendments are positions. Arguments on pre-standing positions may be restricted to those raised online.
we/will/must
An IPA or issue/position/argument fuses with we/will/must in a wiki meeting. That is, the issue is something "we" have decided to do something about, the position is one we "will" take, and arguments will focus on what "must" be done to achieve those goals with that group, and often include arguments that it is difficult or impossible with only those who are participating, committed. Being more exact:
[+] we raise issues as agenda items
Any agenda item exists to reflect the fact that we who participate raise issues.
Any whereas statement is actually a partial issue statement and should be in neutral point of view - especially the title of any policy resolution.
Such items should be labeled as issues using heading level 2 - reserve tikiwiki heading level 1 as always.
[+] anyone can edit
Agenda items may be edited by anyone capable of following this protocol: if these are few, only voting participants in the meeting must necessarily be allowed to edit. It's important that no significant points are ever removed once raised: in particular, absolutely no links to other pages may ever be removed as this alters the related issues that are being considered. A good rule of thumb is that if the related issues list of the most closely related page includes a concept, it should be linked in the agenda item statement if any voting participant thinks it is relevant. That is not to say that the voting participant must be the person who edits it or adds it into the item.
Rationale: who's we must default to be inclusive: issues are not defined by the people voting but rather by the people affected. Tolerating a high level of input to issue statements is a good rule for policy and it is for the organization itself.
[+] motions offer positions on what "we will" do
Any motion exists to take a position: to offer it up as the group's position: what "we will" do. Motions may be fragile and must be carefully stated and handled and present clearly the exact action proposed.
Any be it resolved that statement must be in sympathetic point of view and given tikiwiki heading level 3.
Any other positions that affect or illustrate or debate, but are not themselves, motions should simply be treated as positions with argument pro and argument con. Many of these indicate that the motion itself may not address the whole issue.
To endorse, that is, to indicate that the "we will" includes yourself, add your signature to the "endorsed" line with any notes or reservations:
[+] keep amendments separate
Amendments should be labeled as such, numbered, and represented as tikiwiki heading level 4. Do not change the original motion. Propose amendments either:
- formally: by noting exact deletions and insertions you would make.
- informally: by making suggestions or clarifications that can be reasonably understood by all.
[+] each amendment is a separate motion
Unless it is very fragile, keep a motion simple to allow for lots of clarification. If you wish to "approve in principle" while allowing further amendments, indicate that you approve ‘’with all amendments. Any endorsement is invalidated by an amendment, and must be separately "endorsed as amended". If you wish to make approval of a motion conditional on an amendment passing use only with'', e.g.
In favor: MLP (with amendments 1,3), EDT (with all amendments), JKL (only with amendment 3)
Opposed: DGH
Abstaining:
Or list separately under the amendment:
- "endorsed as amended: (signature) (signature)"
[+] friendly amendments too
A friendly amendment is one that the initial endorser accepts, but, that person is not the only one who speaks for or to the amendment. If two people have endorsed, both of their permissions are required to hide the original form. They signal this ideally by editing and adding their signature to the new amended form.
Rationale: There is no separate status for friendly amendments since there is no need for them when people are respecting the above protocol: friendly and unfriendly amendments are absorbed into the IPA-like protocol.
[+] Argument, consensus, dissensus
The we/will/must structure includes entailments labelled "must" that will appear either in the motion or some supporting argument. For instance, to state as an argument con that some high-overhead effort is implied by taking on some commitment, then to decide to do it anyway, is to take on that effort as one of the "musts".
[+] arguments appear
All arguments appear in the page eventually when it becomes the meeting minutes, so, pre-structuring them is ideal:
[+] pros and cons
Arguments should be labeled argument pro and argument con but can also be bulleted or in prose form, and can follow either the motions or the amendments. When an argument is not part of a position, or backs multiple positions, or is pro for one position and con for another, it should have its own label.
[+] voting and consensus
All consensus decision making has a threshold such as unanimity minus one, unanimity minus two, or a percentage threshold such as in the Bonser method.
This many people in agreement (not abstaining) is required to make a motion an actual decision. Only motions and amendments that pass are adopted. Only these are enforced by the chief editors.
Most groups assess whether this threshold has been met via voting. Actual voting requires a committed signature to appear - some mark made only by the person with authority to make it.
Voting on motions can be conducted either by placing one’s name or initials immediately following the motion including the numbers of any amendments that you approve of. When the vote is complete, these will become actual signatures so that plans can be compiled from commitments directly in the meeting minutes.
[+] sign to commit yourself
A signature is necessary to formally endorse motions. This does not mean one's initials, which appear in lots of places, it means a specific tag, i.e.:
- _signed_MLP meaning "_user_MLP signed this" and thus commits to it
While it's fine to use just initials until the meeting, and final approval, no LP:plan can be compiled from commitments without such distinguishable signatures. You can also attempt to _commit_MLP to something, which he should quickly discover and accept or reject.
Rationale: extremely reliable distinctive tags that are reviewed every day to find new commitments not tracked in the plan, are absolutely required to keep the OP business and marketing plan and other OP:plans up to date. The small number of people involved and committing can very easily learn the few open politics web tags required.
[+] dissensus
Ideally, those of a dissenting minority should record their opinion, with a prediction of what negative consequences will follow from adopting the motion. Each group or subgroup will define, for itself, what other obligations entail.
It is quite acceptable to troll after the fact saying:
However please include the link to the dissensus itself, so that others can verify that you did in fact tell them so.
[+] post-decision trolling
It is quite acceptable to troll after the fact saying:
- "I told you so"
- "this was predictable, and in fact it was predicted"
- "this was inevitable given that..."
- "you ignored what must be done in order to achieve this"
However please include the link to the dissensus itself, so that others can verify that you did in fact tell them so.
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