• My voiced objections have nothing; zero; squat; zip; nada; to so with whether I can change rules.

  That is as irrelevant to the debate as one person's precise, chosen, somwhat ecclectic, understanding of the degrees of separation between the terms "moral" and "ethical" in the wider social context.

  I intend to make no further comment on that red herring.

• What I spoke of was an absence of a percievable "mechanism".

  I to have seen some, albeit minor, changes in PM's way of working. However, these have (from memory) usually come about (from my veiwpoint) as (apparently) capricious gestures on behalf of one or two gods.

  Rather than a mechanism for socially pressured change, that smacks of "The Queen's Perrogative".

  Better that the 'rules' be laid out in clear, unemotive terms.

  It has been decided that...

  This is how it is.

  Rulebreakers will be sanctioned in the following ways:...

• I have remarked on the absence of a clear definition of the "rules".

  Many of those I personally find most objectionable, and moreover, those that seem to come up most frequently for scruitiny, are (at best) "defined" in terms of one or two people expressing their likes and preferences. Their personal take on what should and should not be.

  Not only are these (probably rightly) couched in terms of personal preferences; they often incorporate derisory, insulting and antagonistic phraseology aimed at those that disagree with their point of view.

  If this is indeed a community, then the former is sadly lacking as a mechanism for laying out the communities preferences for it governance--which is bad enough--but the latter should have no part in such statements of policy; if that's what they are?

  A cynic might suggest that the derision and scorn poured on those having the temerity to question the status quo, is as much about trying to supress those questions, as it is about an unhelpful and unwarrented outflow of personal emotions.

Alternatively, if the rules are mutable according to social pressure, do away with the "poured scorn" social backpressure mechanism of supressing debate in favour of a statement along the lines of.

Currently, the status quo on this is ....

The following alternatives have been considered, and currently rejected on the basis of a lack of sufficient social pressure to warrent the change.

I'd like to see it go further and have a mechanism that was transparent enough that it clearly allowed the community to register their opinion in a tangible way. I even think that the technical means for this is already in place for the most part.

I think it would be a mucher better use of the Voting booth than most of the polls I've noticed over the last year or so.

It might be necessary to restrict the voting to members--or not.

Some restriction on how often a particular issue could be the subject would probably be in order.

As now, the voted themselves would (as far as practicable) be anonymous, but those that felt the need to outline their reasoning could post subordinate to the vote node.

One benefit of this would be that subsequent posts calling for change could be easily and breifly referred to the last poll on the subject, where all the considered options, expressed opinions and weighted decision would be clearly laid out.

That would be a mechanism.

I submit that you're confusing "formal mechanism" and/or "transparent mechanism" with "mechanism".

Things happen. Things happen for reasons that are not always obvious or explained to everyone. The Monastery as a whole accepts or does not accept those things for reasons that are likewise opaque. I expect nothing else from an ad hoc system. Part of being ad hoc is that there aren't clearly defined and explained rules by which important things happen. The reasoning is inherent in the group dynamics (which are largely social).

You obviously would prefer that things happen for reasons that are obvious and clear, and likewise would prefer it if the community had an obvious way of providing tangible feedback. Clearly this would be a different state of affairs than the current one. However this doesn't mean that what exists right now is not a de facto mechanism.

Semantics shemantics, but--from my (long ago) Mech.Eng. background, a "mechanism" implies mechanical. This point here is connected to that point there. When this rotates, that swivels, and that other thing slides. Inputs and outputs are obviously related. Cause and effect are are clearly visible.

That maybe a restricted way of thinking--maybe too restricted for a dynamic and fluid environment of a web community--but it's the source of my gut-feel interpretation of the term "mechanism".

I'll grant you that there are some mechanisms that the realtionship between cause and effect, input and output are sufficiently non-linear, or non-determanistic that the relationship may be obscured.

1. To some this may be true for a car.

   Petrol goes in here, I get to work or the shops.

2. Or maybe the jet engine.
   • JP4 goes in here.
   • It gets ignited here in this flow of compressed air.
   • The pressure rise of the ignition acts on the turbine blades, causing them to rotate.
   • The rotation of the turbine blades rotates the compressor blades.
   • The compressor blades suck in the uncompressed air, compress it and supply it to the ignition chamber.
   • The pressure from the ignition reacts to provide forward motion.
   • The forward motion acts to supply air to the compressor blades.
   • The JP4 goes in here.

   But what starts the whole cycle? What sets it in motion? A catalyst is needed. These days it's an electric motor, in days gone by it might have been explosive cartridges.

   These mechanisms do not hold mystery for me.

The catalyst for social change is dissention.

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail
"Memory, processor, disk in that order on the hardware side. Algorithm, algorithm, algorithm on the code side." - tachyon