The openSUSE rules do not currently say under what conditions a member, but non-board member can make a motion to the board. Nor under what conditions the board would in turn call on the whole membership to vote on the motion. Associations with formal rules have been in existence long before now. I have adopted the below rule (or bylaw in our case) from a legally recognized association I am a member of. I have changed the wording from the previous motion. I have also updated the support info below to a large extent. === I make a motion that the openSUSE rules be updated to allow for formal member petitioning. A formal petition openly supported by 10 members may be submitted to the board asking for an issue to be voted on by the membership at large. The petition must include the language of the vote to be submitted to the membership. Once submitted to the board, the board must call for a all members vote on the matter addressed in the petition. The vote must be initiated within 10 days of the petition and the vote must close within 30 days. If the matter being voted on concerns an improper sanction or appeal of a sanction, then the sanctioned person must be one of the petitioners. === details I serve on a board. There are times when board / member relationships are very tense. In my experience it is only a small handful of the membership that feels abused. Having the ability to petition for community votes is a way to both provide oversight to the board and to eliminate baseless claims that the board is not responsive to member concerns. Obviously this can make an issue semi-public as all members have to be informed of the issues at hand. If the matter is private or covered by NDA, the board will need to make its case in asking the members to support its decisions (or lack thereof) without violating privacy or NDA. In the case of a specific member's claimed mis-conduct it will likely be unavoidable that potentially private issues will have to be exposed to the membership, thus the portion of the proposed new rule that the specific member must be part of the group of members asking for a all members vote. It is my hope that this rule would rarely be invoked. Further although not addressed by this proposed rule, it is my belief that associations like openSUSE typically have annual meetings and at those annual meetings any member may make a motion and, if seconded, at that time all members present at the meeting vote. The association I am most familiar with uses "Robert's Rules of Order" to conduct these annual meetings. Admittedly we are often less formal about using Robert's Rules, but when things are extremely contentious we have hired a "Parliamentarian" to run the meeting precisely via the rules. ==== Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org