2008/9/8 Andrew Turvey raturvey@yahoo.co.uk:
ok, I'm going to be frank. I hate this way of making decisions. Doing it on IRC or the email list might be quick and dirty but it means that the decisions are not easy to understand, record or justify. I've asked half a dozen questions and none of them have been readily answered. Saying "that's what we decided" frankly isn't good enough. It's no way to learn from past mistakes, and easily descends into bickering - like we've seen just recently.
I suggest all decision making is done on the wiki. All past decisions need to be put up there - with explanations and justifications so they are open to challenge. All decisions should be affirmatively made and agreed.
Demanding any one of a set of arbitrary choices really isn't helpful. You may think that the wiki makes the most sense while other users are going to think the mailing list or IRC are better choices. I personally prefer lists, because most wiki sites are blocked for me at work. I would be surprised to learn that other people don't have the same problem.
One thing that maybe needs to be worked out is the idea of a "quorum" or the minimum number of volunteer participants that are required to make a binding decision. This is definitely going to be required once you hold an AGM, but it makes sense that you get used to the idea now. If a quorum is present at a time and place that's accessible to most people (and well advertised) people shouldn't complain about "I wasn't there, so this isn't valid". If any business is expected to get done, and any progress expected to be made, you're going to have to accept that some decisions will have to be made with less then 100% of all possible participants in ways that aren't convenient to everybody. Those are the breaks of the real world.
--Andrew Whitworth