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[top-politics] Re: Dance-Monkey algorithm
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At 04:33 PM 9/6/2006, Mark wrote:
> >ec: Sorry, where is coming that “if you need administrators”??? I do not > > need administrators!!! Parlement is a totally decentralized, P2P, > > system! Every one can be an administrator. No top administrator, > no “if you need > > administrators”!!! > >-M: I did question you about this trip. How is there a >command-hierarchy in a distributed system? Emmanuel, this one appears >completely bonkers to me. > >Communication and command are two different things.
Indeed they are. Command, in fact, generally inhibits communication.
FA/DP organizations don’t have command structures, as such. From the AA Traditions, “AA as such ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.” What does this mean in practice?
An AA meeting does have to decide certain things. It has to decide to pay the rent. It has to decide who is to facilitate meetings. (In AA, this person is called the “Secretary,” though the function is generally as a chair. There is also, typically, a Treasurer, who holds and disburses the meager funds that meetings keep on hand.) If the meeting starts to collect more money than it needs for the rent and to buy publications and coffee (this is about it for AA meeting expenses), it needs to decide what to do with it. So the meeting will either vote to do a thing or will delegate the authority. No commands are involved. The meeting will ask the Treasurer to write a check. The Treasurer can, and being an alcoholic, may quite well say, “Up yours.” Will they sue him? Not likely. The amount of money involved is typically so small that the meeting can raise it by passing the hat once. Or maybe twice. No, they ask him to do it. Usually he will. I knew of a meeting where the Treasurer simply spent the money on her own needs. Of course, that meeting didn’t give her any more money….
Okay, we have an online FA. There is admin, in spite of what EC wrote. Somebody has the keys to the domain. In an FA, that person is a trustee. They are trusted to manage the asset in their hands for the best interests of the group. Can the group command admin to do anything? No. Admin has the keys.
However, admin is “directly responsible” to the members of the FA. What does this mean? It means that, because of the structure of the organization, where people know and have direct contact information for each other, if they don’t like the way that admin is running the group, and admin refuses to recognize a vote of the members, they can simply take their marbles elsewhere. If the meeting is, say, a yahoogroup, they can start another, and those who want to move to the new one will do so, and those who want to stay, will do so, and quite a few will do both. How does this differ from any old mailing list? Well, the members can directly contact each other, either all of them, or at least those who have named proxies in a DP organization. The proxy structure dovetails with the fissionability that is standard for AA meetings. There are no significant assets to fight over. All that a meeting owns is an agreement with the provider of space for a time to meet.
Mature AA members don’t fight over control of meetings. Newcomers can and do. The oldtimers, if they don’t like the way a meeting is run, simply go to a different one, and they quite easily start a new one at the drop of a hat. Or, rather, at the passing of the hat….
The saying in AA is, “All you need to start a new meeting is a resentment and a coffee pot.” It is quite possible that the phenomenally rapid growth of AA (it grew until it essentially saturated its market, within a few years) was due to this ready generation of new meetings. A new meeting means another time and place available.
Okay, so I’m a trustee of an FA, and the FA votes to, say, abandon the FA traditions, in my opinion, in a way that I consider seriously prejudicial, and, perhaps with forged proxies, I suspect, but I can’t or don’t care to prove it. What can I do? Well, I’ve promised in at least one FA that I would probably turn the home page of the FA into a pointer. One prominent link would point to the “original” group, and other links would point to daughter groups. Someone who was referred to the FA would see, in NPOV language, what happened, and would be able to find the groups.
Why would I not simply do what the apparent majority voted for. Well, as a trustee, I’d consider myself responsible to all the members, not just to the majority. If there were any significant minority opposed to the change, their interests would be prejudiced by the simple implementation of it.
But another trustee might do it. The minority can still create its own meeting.
>-M: OK, I see Parlement and Wikis going this way, but I still don’t see >the rank and command hierarchies here. It won’t work without hierarchy.
DP creates the necessary hierarchy. And an FA/DP structure advises those who actually hold the keys. For example, admin at Wikipedia could be an example of the latter.
In AA, the central business is handled by AA World Services, Inc, a nonprofit organization. That organization, by its bylaws, does not accumulate more than a “prudent reserve.” For continued operation, they depend on continued contributions from meetings, usually channeled through intergroups. AAWS is a board-controlled organization. I think the members of the Board are elected at the annual AA Conference, which otherwise is only an advisory body with respect to AAWS. The Conference cannot command AAWS to spend a penny. But, of course, the Conference does represent the membership, the people who actually make the contributions. AAWS will usually follow a Conference consensus. Where the Conference is divided, the AAWS board simply makes its own decisions. The board is legally responsible.
AAWS is prohibited by bylaws, again, from accepting contributions and bequests of more than, I think, $1000. The system is specifically designed to keep AAWS “directly responsible” to the membership of AA, without being controlled by the membership.
And, it seems, it has worked quite well. Bill Wilson, himself, had bitter disputes with the board, though it seems it worked out in the end. He later described his own anger at the board as being on a “dry drunk.”
>-M: Lemming = one who is willfully contradictory.
That is not a lemming. That is an anti-lemming. Not necessarily better, by the way. Lemmings are not contradictory, they avoid conflict. They “go with the flow.”
+1
