68 thoughts on “MACII August 20 Business Meeting

  1. @Heather Rose Jones: I feel your pain (having attended some past BMs in recent years). Bummer that you’re scheduled opposite Sunday’s meeting when that’s where all the meat is! (If you’re a vegetarian, maybe that’s a good thing, though. 😉 )

    I kept wishing for a peremptory procedure to determine whether a clear majority opinion existed *before* all the debates and motions and points of information and whatnot dragged out.

    But it is actually supposed to be debate, so people may hear things that change their minds. Circumventing it – despite the B.S. people throw up to slow down the process – IMHO would be a very bad idea.

    But I’m highly amused at your yellow/red card idea, which I’d love to see deployed against the small group of people (one already mentioned in these threads) that just throw up obstacles, delaying tactics, and derails (seemingly because they don’t believe business should be accomplished, as far as I can tell /snark). Probably not practical, but I like this idea. “Okay that’s the 3rd useless derail, X – gag yourself for the next 10 minutes while we actually debate & vote.” 😛

  2. Having attended all the sessions so far, I commend Roberts Rules of order for allowing an orderly process by which voices get to be heard. And I despise Roberts Rules of Order for providing an inexorable process by which isolated malcontents or clueless egotists can force simple issues into tedious, dragged-out delaying tactics even when the prevailing opinion on a topic will ensure an eventual clear landslide decision.

    Quoted for truth.

    Actually, I agree with all of @Heather Rose Jones’s comments, but this bit is the part I’ve been bitching about to my partner for the past hour or so. I think there are significantly more clueless egoistic than malcontents, but maybe I’m just cranky.

  3. @ Tash Turner and Kendall

    You are quite welcome! :-). I actually deleted some of the snark before posting… There can be too much of that kind of thing and toward hour 3 I get rather impatient.

    @ JJ

    If I get to speak on 3SV I may say something unfortunate. “The Puppies want to help us with our integrity. Well. Bless their hearts.”

    @Heather Rose Jones

    Yes, I’ve been noticing that Roberts Rules of Order are a technology for allowing a meeting to run smoothly while safeguarding the rights of all members. But the downside to safeguarding the rights of all members is that some of them want to use those rights to be heard to BE heard, even when their position has no hope.

    On the other hand some of the points raised in debate have changed my mind about how to vote on a measure. So those rights to be heard do matter.

    Oh yeah, when trilby guy came up and wanted the amendment (creators pick which works are dropped) to Nominee Diversity (one creator cannot have more than two items in a given Hugo category in a given year) EXPLAINED to him, I was ready to say something unfortunate.

    There were a couple of motions where I had lost track of what was happening and I sat those out and depended on the other members to make the right choice rather than hold up the whole damn meeting because I was typing instead of listening.

    And the scribbled amendment guy did try to send it by e-mail–I think that plan was defeated by the lousy wifi. (Actually it may be quite decent wifi overwhelmed by sheer numbers but overwhelmed it certainly was.)

    I also think his amendment defeats half the purpose of 3SV. Keeping griefers and porn and harassment OFF the ballot is part of what it’s all about and the amendment (don’t remove disqualified works; just add ones from farther down the longlist) removes that ability. So I want it to come for an up and down vote as quickly as possible in the hope the members vote it down so we can get on with this. Which was why I voted against sending it to committee–but the members overruled me on that. So we’ll see.

    Tomorrow is going to be a long day.

  4. This is streaming on you tube. To get to the 3SV Google “2016 WSFS Business Meeting – Saturday – Part 12”. Kate Paulk comes on at the end of Part 12 through the beginning of Part 13.

  5. It’s annoying sometimes to be in “the room where it happens”. Usually thanks to trilby guy and his brothers in spirit.

    The chutzpah of Paulk is amazing. I kinda wish someone had taken the low road and called her out on it. But then the male Puppies delegated the shit work to her this year (and gave her no support), so I guess she had to.

    Glad the voting rights will transfer. Having both bought and sold Worldcon memberships, they damn well ought to.

    Fully support a yellow and red card system. Trilby guy can stick ’em in his hatband.

  6. Trilby guy is called J. Just J. I tried explaining stuff privately Saturday. Hope it helped.

  7. I don’t mind Jay’s participation, actually. He’s the youngest person in the room (by about twenty years) who is regularly doing anything other than voting. He is the future of Fandom, and I think that his sort of involvement should be encouraged – even if it slows the meeting down a bit.

    At the same time, I really hope that everyone settles down today. It’s gonna be contentious, and a lot of parliamentary time-wasting from anyone will be hugely frustrating to everyone.

    I’d like to remind the assembled crowd that he gave up nearly half of the convention to be in that meeting. As did many of us. There are panels I would love to have attended and didn’t, because the business meeting is important.

  8. Eric: I think it’s no particular stretch to say “participation is good, but not that participation”. We have some obligation to see what impact our actions have on others, particularly when the reaction is delay and widespread annoyance.

    It would be one thing if his efforts led in the long run to a bunch of people saying anything like “Yes, that changed my perspective on these issues, and changed things for the better.” From accounts, what he’s actually doing is more a form of exhibitionism, which I don’t approve any more when it’s via parliamentary procedure abuse than I do when it involved stripping panelists.

  9. Heather Rose Jones:
    I kept wishing for a peremptory procedure to determine whether a clear majority opinion existed *before* all the debates and motions and points of information and whatnot dragged out.

    In a manner of speaking, there is such a thing – that’s what Postpone Indefinitely does (and also the now-sidelined Object to Consideration). Unfortunately these only work when the consensus is against a proposal. But I suspect consensus for a new proposal is less likely anyway.

  10. Re Trade Marks and Service Marks: They’re the same thing, except that trade marks are for goods and service marks are for services. WSFS provides services rather than goods, so WORLDCON, HUGO AWARD, and the Hugo Award Logo (plus some other terms) are service marks, not trade marks. They were all established as registered service marks in the USA many years ago. Earlier this year, the European Union Intellectual Property Office finished registration on WORLDCON and the Hugo Award logo. On Friday, we got word from our solicitors that EUIPO had completed the registration on HUGO AWARD.

    The last of the three registrations took longer than the other two because there were several European companies who had names with “Hugo” in them that objected to elements of our registration. We negotiated with them and modified our application to address their concerns, and concluded peaceful coexistence agreements with them.

    This all cost money. Fortunately, the very generous donation from Sasquan covered the additional legal fees that were on top of the registration fees covered by other grants and donations from various Worldcons and from individuals.

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