[Foundation-l] Policy modification (was possible reconsideration)

[Ray Saintonge]

Jesse Plamondon-Willard wrote:
> Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> I think that if the will of the community goes against the decision of
>> the committee, perhaps it is time for the committee to reconsider.
>>     
> I agree that community consensus on the policy should override
> committee consensus. However, there was no community consensus; we had
> a dozen or two people voicing conflicting opinions and proposals about
> whether to keep, remove, or replace that clause in the policy. Where
> there is a complete lack of community direction on that clause, I
> think it's within the committee's purpose to maintain the current
> policy.
>   
Absolutely, assuming that the policy was properly adopted in the first 
place.  Keeping and removing are clear options, but each proposal to 
replace needs to be viewed as a separate option.  It's not enough to say 
that we need to replace something without saying what we want to replace 
it with.  If the replacers have a conflicting variety of proposals let 
them work out an agreement among themselves.  In parliamentary procedure 
this is what the sub-amendment process does.  Only after the 
sub-amendments have been sorted out does the amendment come up for adoption.
> If we were to strike out policy for which there is no community
> consensus, the result would be the same because we'd be forced to stop
> processing ancient languages until we had a policy under which to do
> so. However, I think holding requests in limbo indefinitely is a bad
> practice.
>
>   
The first expression here seems ambiguous as to whether the original 
policy had no consensus or the striking out had no consensus.  If there 
is no policy the processing of each affected language would need to be 
treated as a separate issue with the full range of the usual arguments 
being repeated.  I do agree that keeping requests in limbo is bad.

Ec