[fc-uk-discuss] FreeCultureConstitution3 review

[Tom Chance]

On Thursday 16 February 2006 19:09, MJ Ray wrote:
> "David M. Berry" <d.berry at sussex.ac.uk>
>
> > btw consensus as a decision making process for the group is to be
> > avoided at all costs, in my experience, as it allows a single
> > individual to block anything and everything. [...]
>
> Yes, it stops an unpopular action being forced through in the
> name of the members. Variations such as stand-asides and lazy
> consensus usually mean it will work. What are the honest
> alternatives for a volunteer group? Majority rule is no
> solution. If a majority manages to impose an unpopular action,
> but prevent the minority from working against it, then that is
> truly success in making turkeys support turkey dinners.

Well lets look at the reality of FC-UK. What's appropriate now, and what 
changes do we see taking place over the next few years that we may need to 
take into account?

The way I see it were are currently an online project (PD Burn) plus a few 
small local groups (Reading, Deptford, Brighton?) plus maybe ten people who 
occasionally pipe up in questions, no doubt work on related issues in their 
own time and sometimes turn up to the odd meeting we have.

Positive thinking... in  few years time we'll have five or six stable local 
groups, PD Burn happily trundling along and a string of small, low intensity 
lobbying efforts (polite letters and the like) on people like the BBC and 
various government consultations. We have good relations with a few 
sympathetic institutions and work with them when lobbying.

Pessimistic thinking... everyone will slowly drift off and FC-UK will become 
another dead web site.


I'm not even sure about the kinds of decisions we'll be needing to make. I 
think with hindsight that our congress last October was a bit of a farce, a 
really adventurous but ultimately unrealistic approach to free culture 
campaigning. We could barely run one small campaign well let alone three 
ambitious ones without volunteer time put into getting significant funding 
and making really good connections with sympathetic institutions who could 
prop us up.

Running Remix Reading with all our other commitments is enough for the Reading 
gang. I really don't think we want an additional headache from FC-UK.


I can't think of a majority voting mechanism that would be appropriate. 
Consensus with opt-out seems generally appropriate, though perhaps people 
would rather we had some formal vote to help us block people going off an 
running, for example, an FC-UK campaign promoting non-commercial CC licenses 
and refusing to promote the more free counterparts.


No answers, just musings. I've said my piece on consensus before.

Regards,
Tom


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