On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 6:54 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
[...] And if changes were proposed to this present system, who (or what entity) would approve and implement them?
on 1/31/11 10:14 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
The community, by consensus, for approval. Whoever chose to participate and was allowed to do so, for implementation.
This may have worked when the Community was the size it was in the beginning, but how, with such a enormous Community that has evolved, do you determine consensus?
Part of the greater problem is that self-selection by interest (our current mechanism for involvement in change and implementation) does not select for competence or for agreement with the consensus (or with what the consensus stands for).
We lack a functional dictator (or president) to cut the knot and enact efficiently; Jimmy might be able to do so, but burned a lot of his "street cred" with the community writ large with the incident that led to reductions in founder bit authority. I personally disagree with that, but I see a clear problem with community accepting his fiat now. Facing any significant opposition his position would not be an effective tiebreaker.
People stop trusting their leaders, when their leaders stop trusting them. It¹s a cautionary tale.
I have lived in communes in the past; some still flourish today. Its members are the definition of anti-authority thinking. But the ones that succeed are led by persons just as anti-authority in their beliefs as the rest, but have the interpersonal skills and trust of the community to lead it toward achieving its commonly-agreed-upon goals. The needs and wishes of the Community must come first. A leader merely assures that every Member has a voice, and that that voice is heard as distinctly as all of the rest. That leader can also assure that, if there is a hole in the roof, the group stays focused on finding methods of fixing it, rather than spending countless hours arguing about why everything inside is getting wet.
Given the size and complexity the Project has attained, such a leader is needed.
Aaron Sorkin said: "Choosing a leader: If we choose someone with vision, someone with guts, someone with gravitas, who's connected to other people's lives, and cares about making them better; if we choose someone to inspire us, then we'll be able to face what comes our way, and achieve things we can't imagine yet."
And I will add one more. The ability to separate their thoughts and ideas from themselves. When this is accomplished, the person can defend the former without feeling they must defend the latter.
It's time.
Marc
I stand ready to respect wisdom, but not authority. So if someone steps up and proposes changes that make sense I'm behind them all the way. As far as someone who thinks they can tell us all how to think, well, no. We'll make any change that makes sense. What are your proposals? (Other than having a great leader)
Fred Bauder