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Proposal Details

Proposal ID	308
Proposal	Amend List Etiquette Policy in Proposal 186
Presenter	Green Parties of Rhode Island and Utah
Floor Manager	Holly Hart
Phase	Closed
Discussion	08/13/2007 - 08/26/2007
Voting	08/27/2007 - 09/02/2007
Result	Failed
Presens Quorum	34 0.6666
Consens Quorum	80 0.6666 of Yes and No Votes

Background

An obstacle to the further growth and development of the Green
Party of the United States is the nature of conversation on
the email lists used to conduct the Party's internal business.
List traffic is dominated by a small percentage of the delegates
to the GNC and the nature of the conversation too frequently
turns off and drives away productive activists. This is in
contrast the deliberations of the Green National Committee
conducted at face-to-face meetings.

A key difference between the email list and in-person meeting
conversations is that the in-person meetings have rules in place
for who may speak, how long they may speak for, and how often
they may speak. People may not speak again until everyone
else has had a chance to speak. This is different on email,
but there are ways to make the conversation more deliberative
and less dominated by the loudest or most prolific voices.

Based on the passage of resolution 186, the email lists used
for the conduct of internal Party business already have forum
moderators who have helped move some of the least productive
posts off of the email forums. Even still excessive postings by
a few individuals have contributed to a dysfunctional culture in
our on-line work. The goal of this proposal is to have people
respond a bit more slowly and with more measured responses,
to save up all of their answers for the day to one post so
that they are not instantly responding emotionally to posts.
It is expected that this will reduce list traffic and help
all of the GNC use their Green time more productively.

There are a variety ways to improve the communications on the
Green National Committee lists beyond relying upon the forum
managers, one suggestion is to have list participants who think
it is important to have an ongoing and more rapid conversation
about a particular subject to have private conversation among
themselves and then if appropriate post a summary of those
thoughts through one person to the list.

But until such time as we reach a more perfect union, we bring
the following resolution to amend and update resolution 186.

Proposal

A Resolution to amend the GPUS National Committee Listserv Protocols
and Policies; to prohibit excessive postings to internal lists used to
conduct Party business; to define excessive posts; to provide for
exceptions; and to provide for related rules to implement such policy.

A Resolution of the
Green National Committee of the
Green Party of the United States

Resolved, that the GPUS National Committee Listserv Protocols and
Policies, adopted November 13th, 2005 is here amended in Article III.,
related to "Posting Guidelines", by redesignating Sections E., F. and
G. as Sections F., G. and H. respectively and by inserting a new
Section E., to read as follows:

E. Excessive Posting.

1. Except as provided in paragraph 2., of this Section, no
person with access to the Green National Committee votes or
national affairs lists may post more than one post a day to
either list on any topic or thread. GNC list members may
respond to each of the many threads once per day without
invoking any action by the forum managers. Simply changing
the subject line while otherwise making multiple posts on a
topic or thread shall constitute a violation of this rule.

2. The Floor Manager designated to manage the floor
consideration of a proposal may without being limited by the
provisions of this Section address procedural questions related
to the consideration of a proposal. Any presenter designated
by a sponsoring Caucus or State Party, without being limited
by the provisions of this Section, may respond to direct
questions or factual errors raised in debate on a resolution
before the Green National Committee. Notwithstanding the
exceptions provided by this paragraph, each Floor Manager and
proposal presenter is urged to consolidate their responses to
such questions so as to minimize the number of posts made on
any single day on a topic or thread.

Resources

Contact Person, Greg Gerritt, gerritt@mindspring.com

References

GPUS National Committee Listserv Protocols and Policies
http://gp.org/cgi-bin/vote/propdetail?pid=186

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