5th October Matilda meeting

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PGA Hallmarks debate

This was a special meeting to discuss the PGA hallmarks, a joke report of the meeting was originally posted to the list and then later the following notes were sent to the list:

As has been mentioned, attendance was sparser than expected - about eight people, plus two email submissions. This may be interpreted as demonstrating that a fair few people don't really care either way, or are sick of the process. Anyway, it quickly became apparent that, because of the similar(ish) views of the attendees, no detailed debate on the pros and cons of the hallmarks would ensue. The possibility of just ratifiying the hallmarks was discussed, but one of the email submissions was interpreted as a block, and it was anyway felt such a move would be unacceptably divisive and may lead to some people feeling excluded from Matilda.

This discussion of the possible consequences of adpoting the hallmarks led to the conclusion that consensus on this issue is likely to prove impossible, because there are sufficent people with strong feelings on either side to block any move to just accept or reject the things. The possibilty of putting it to a majority vote at a Monday meeting was discussed and rejected as being against the ethos of Matilda, and as being likely to have the same exclusionary consequences as above.

The debate then seemed to coalesce around three possibilities. The first was to proceed with no guiding principles/mission statement/(someone help me with the phraseology here, i sound like Tesco or summat). It was agreed, though, that it is certainly desirable to have some such thing, possibly more for the benefit of people coming fresh to Matilda than for those already involved. The second was to attempt an adaptation of the hallmarks, keeping their broad force but diluting the elements that some find objectionable. This was also rejected as unlikely to come up with a useful result any time this century. Also, one of the main objections to the hallmarks seems to be that, well, they're not ours.

So, the third possibility: draw up our own guidelines from scratch. To some extent, this process has already begun, with the list of representative words agreed at the last wednesday meeting. It was thought that this process would be hard to manage in a large group, so a proposal was worked up to take to Monday's meeting:

A group of (about) five people to be set up to take that list of words and use use them as a basis to work up a set of guiding principles. These principles to be brought back to to a Monday meeting and ratified or sent back for further work. The group to include at least one person strongly in favour of, and one strongly against, the PGA hallmarks, so that the point of the arguments for and against those are taken on board in the process.

(There was also a second proposal, broadly related i think, but I've forgotten what it was - help, anyone?)

So, in conclusion: PGA hallmarks not adopted. Some positive progress made. Concrete proposal about how to move forward to be brought to Monday's meeting. Importantly, I think: a group of people broadly in favour of the hallmarks managed to talk themselves out of adopting them because of the potentially divisive consequences.