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Comment by lazzlazzlazz | Hacker News Reader

Why hasn't anyone re-written Robert's Rules in a manner that minimizes the rule exploitation/manipulation, but builds-in consensus-seeking activities?

Now that we've had 100+ years of game film on Robert's rules, you'd think we could find ways to rework the incentive structures, rules, and game theoretical elements so they're less likely to result in gridlock and procedural exploits.

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Because any system that lets you modify the rules is inherently broken. There’s some apocrypha involving Kurt Gödel and a loophole in the US Constitution that gets at this point [1]. But it’s really not the system’s fault, it’s the users’ fault. Any rule-making system worth writing home about is exploitable, because that’s the only way it’s useful.

[1] https://jeffreykegler.github.io/personal/morgenstern.html

Tabletop RPG systems have had multiple decades of being live laboratories for this sort of thing, have the benefit of stronger, sometimes more dedicated chair people (GM culture) than most parliaments/societies get a chance for, and yet have yet to solve for "Rules Lawyering" and rule exploitation/manipulating/min-maxing/etc.

The exploits mentioned in the articles were narrow votes with thin quorums.

You can require a larger quorum, at the expense of not always being able to get business done.

You can require all motions to be introduced at a previous meeting or anyway published before the meeting at the expense of not being able to complete business quickly. (This is commonly required for local governments in California, at least)

Great question! the article mentions some alternatives but they don't do exactly what you say.

Is it even possible to write such rules?

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