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Comment by statstutor | Hacker News Reader

Allowing every participant a set amount of time to speak during each motion, no matter whether they are engaged with the motion, is individualist. It's most often abused by individuals seeking to filibuster the later motions on the agenda, against the democratic will of the group.

An alternative would be that points for and against a motion could be agreed collectively in advance of the formal decision-making meeting, and communicated in a way which does not interrupt the voting session. A system which worked like that would potentially be much more respectful to everyone's time (since everyone doesn't have to sit through one rogue senator's bullshit).

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A successful filibuster (in organizations where that is allowed) generally requires either UNlimited speaking time, a group of opponents (not one individual), or both. Generally it's both.

Classic filibusters aren't really possible under the current edition of Robert's Rules of Order, which include the following:

1) No one can speak at one time more than 10 minutes. 2) Anyone who has not spoken gets to speak before anyone who has already spoken. 3) No one is permitted to speak a third time to a motion.

You seem to be saying that, within that version of the rules, an individual has a right to speak to every single motion for 20 minutes.

If you have four motions on the agenda and an hour to cover them, that single person can comfortably guarantee that we ain't hearing the fourth motion.

That would be untenable for local community organisations that I have been a part of. Every such org has that one individual member (and their pals) who would rather raze it to the ground than not get their way.

> If you have four motions on the agenda and an hour to cover them

Then the meeting goes for an hour and 20 minutes instead. Happens all the time.

Or the fourth motion is the first order of business at the next meeting. Or...

> Then the meeting goes for an hour and 20 minutes instead. Happens all the time.

My original comment was objecting to the parent claim that this is respectful of people's time.

That's interesting, because the marxist, separatist, feminist utopias of the 1960s, which valued the collective above all else, followed this form of speaking. A stick would be passed around the group, and the person holding the stick was the only one allowed to speak until they wished to pass the stick. What would you say to them?

It's the same basic idea: you take turns to speak, rather than all trying to speak at once or the person with the loudest voice simply talking over everyone else.

In the context you describe it sounds like they had not had to deal with someone who loves the sound of their own voice and wanted to talk for an hour about how great their home business is and they think everyone should join in their ground level opportunity.

> That's interesting, because the marxist, separatist, feminist utopias of the 1960s, which valued the collective above all else, followed this form of speaking. A stick would be passed around the group, and the person holding the stick was the only one allowed to speak until they wished to pass the stick.

AFAIK, that was most true when those organizations were in the “forming” stages as part of the shared process of building and getting buy-in on a new community, but generally faded in the groups with any longevity either through formal abandonment or because informal norms governing surrender of the stick evolved as groups matured.

It's a great approach if it worked for them; protest and activist groups started with that approach but have changed their processes because of the problems mentioned by the sibling post.

People interested in this topic may like the book Direct Action (https://www.versobooks.com/books/2331-direct-action) on the history of protest movements.

Given that talking sticks are an historic Native American concept (my search led to the relevant Wikipedia page), I read this comment to somewhat corroborate the article's claim that white supremacy is relevant to meeting rules.

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