It Takes It Out Of Me

     Already flirting with fatigue, chairing the writer's critique group yesterday left me tired and out of sorts.  It's fun nevertheless; the group are interesting people who write interesting stories, and they have good insight into how well a piece of fiction is working.  It's worth the effort.

     The entire club meets after an hour's break and this time, the business portion went down a byway that I find annoying.

     Robert's Rules of Order is a great way* to run group of any size over a few people -- especially if you stay in the well-greased tracks.  Take a little-used siding, and you can hear the wheels screech: despite multiple revisions, RRO uses specialized and somewhat archaic language that often requires an arcane specialist -- a parliamentarian -- to work out how to apply the rules (or sometimes, just to explain what Brigadier General Robert actually meant, a topic on which he published two books himself).  That's fine, except for one little hitch: the parliamentarian ought not be taking part in the particular debate in which such clarifications are needed.

     In practice, it's always the other way around: the participants in the debate address not only the specific and particular issue, but the rules as well.†  This runs headlong into things as (presumably) simple as the difference between "calling into question," an ordinary bit of language inviting debate, and "putting (or calling) the question," the term describing how the chair ends debate and puts a motion up for vote.  If the debaters are trying to wring victory from the rules instead of the merits of their position -- or are perceived by others as trying to -- it starts to feel like cheating.

     One solution is to name one (or better, several) parliamentarians, and hope at least one of them won't have picked a side when matters become contentious.  Another -- and one I have encountered on City Councils -- is for the chairperson themselves to handle the job.  That works well if the chair is strongly motivated and reasonably impartial (and has a loud gavel), and stinks on ice if they favor one side and lack the gift of persuasion.

     It's frustrating, and more so if you -- or in this case me -- happen to be cranky and impatient.  Ten or fifteen minutes later, the matter was resolved, but not before I began to think I could have just as easily stood in bed.  They had an interesting speaker later, so, so I'm glad I didn't.
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* It is not, however, the only way.  Many Quebecois prefer the Morin Code, which among other things has the advantage of not needing to be translated into French from some other language.  I like consensus-based decision-making, but it can be slow, awkward, and lacks -- much as you might expect -- any definitive central reference like, say, a single book.  Versions that insist on unanimity invite schism; versions that allow for small dissenting minorities can create festering resentment.  No system is perfect and RRO has the advantage of taking simple majority rule (for most things) as axiomatic.
 
† Complicating this, the most competent parliamentarians are liable to be people who have read for the law; and while there must be attorneys somewhere who do not enjoy spirited debate, I have yet to meet one.