Hi Dan,
On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 16:28, O'Donnell, Dan daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca wrote:
I think the changes are very good. The only things I can see are a) the
language in
the section about tie splitting is written quite broadly when you are
actually only
referring to election to the board: maybe something like 'in the event of
a tie among
candidates for election to a vacancy on the board, the succesful candidate
will be
decided by a simple majority of continuing members of the board.'
I held off answering for a bit partly because I was on holiday and partly to see if the community had any thoughts on this. That rephrasing probably does make it clearer. We'll consider modifying it inline with this before putting it to the community for a vote.
And b) personally, and speaking as a Canadian, I find a simple majority to
be a pretty
low bar for proposing amendments to the bylaws--surely nobody would want
to
proceed with a proposal that had a 5/3 split. Personally I'd recommend 6
out of 8 to
indicate that bylaw changes should be well considered and very consensus
oriented.
And that is precisely the reason that we set the majority needed for the community vote to be two-thirds of recorded votes. If there is a 5/3 split on whether the proposals are a good idea, taking it to the community for an RFC seems a fairly good step. (i.e. try to get feedback from the community as to whether this or that is the right thing to do.)
I don't think it is likely to be a huge deal in practice of course. And
notwithstanding
these suggestions, I think these are great proposals from a group that
has been
doing great work.
Thanks!
James Cummings Director of Digital Medievalist