Meeting agenda items - contentious issues

There are a few issues on the agenda today about which there has been
some disagreement. I'll just briefly restate my positions:

6. Resolution 2004-10-15.iwj.1: Efficient Board Meetings (Ian Jackson)
- Amendment 2004-10-18.dbg.1 (David Graham)

If you want meetings to be preceded by discussion and drafting, so
that we can properly consider our decisions, I urge you to vote in
favour of my new Efficient Board Meeetings resolution. It clearly
places the responsibility for resolution drafting and timely report
writing, on the person who wants the item on the meeting agenda. It
places the responsibility for raising an issue in a timely way on
the person who cares about that issue. It also allows
in-IRC-meeting discussion of urgent issues.

If you want IRC board meetings to _contain_ substantial discussion,
including the real-time typing of reports to the Board, clamour to
speak, etc., then you should vote for David Graham's amendment. If
the amended version passes, there will be no requirement that
resolutions and reports will be drafted in advance. We will
therefore be forced into often-chaotic in-meeting drafting, and
hasty consideration of issues.

If neither version of the resolution is passed, then the existing
Efficient Board Meetings resolution is the status quo. This still
says that agenda items should be accompanied by a ready-to-vote
resolution; however it fails to provide clearly enough for the
pre-meeting discussion and is vaguer about the responsibility for
draftng.

> 7. Resolution 2004-10-15.dbg.1: Non-meeting voting (David Graham)

I'm still worried that a disgruntled board member might lose a vote
and then claim that it didn't count. The board cannot pass a
resolution which asserts that such future things will count.
Although a board member who voted in favour of this non-meeting
voting resolution would find it hard to later claim that they didn't
agree with it, we are unlikely to get unanimous affirmative
agreement from the entire board, and we'd have to get it again from
every incoming board member.

So, in the absence of some reassurance from Greg, I will be voting
against this resolution in its current form.

> 8. Resolution 2004-10-16.dbg.1: Committee Framework (David Graham)
> 9. Resolution 2004-10-28.dbg.1: Treasurer's Budget (David Graham)

These are both good and I will be voting in favour.

Ian.