Robert's Rules of Order
I&#x27;ve been thinking about how modern social networks have turned us ignorant of working together in real life.<p>A lot of people in practice do not talk out decisions anymore. They instead go to the internet, look up other people&#x27;s arguments, and use that as the basis of their decision-making. In effect, the internet has replaced Robert&#x27;s Rules of Order as a form of cultural organization.<p>----------<p>* Instead of &quot;Everyone has 2 turns to talk per meeting&quot;, we have upvotes, like and subscribe for more visibility.<p>* Instead of deciding upon whether an issue is dead and moving on (60%+ vote to kill debate), we have trolls to shout down an argument and get people to leave.<p>* Instead of a chairman trying to balance everyone&#x27;s need for discussion, we have algorithms and influencers fighting to the top of attention hierarchies.<p>-----------<p>We don&#x27;t need Robert&#x27;s Rules because we can organize a perpetual online discussion on any subject we want. Alas, we&#x27;ve lost something... Parliamentary Theory taught that minorities deserve a discussion (even if they inevitably lose the vote). Forcing everyone to hear the minority&#x27;s discussion points before voting is fundamental to Robert&#x27;s Rules.<p>Now Roberts Rules are unwieldy, they&#x27;re slow. Forcing everyone to sit around and listen to everyone else talk one-at-a-time just doesn&#x27;t scale to Internet-sizes. But we also can&#x27;t leave our debates and discussions to online technologies.<p>Yes, &quot;some meetings should be emails&quot;. But meetings and conferences (as per Roberts Rules) existed for over a hundred years for a reason. Minority voices matter. The modern internet (Reddit, Youtube, TikTok, etc. etc.) doesn&#x27;t give a voice to the minority, so everyone constantly is feeling silenced.<p>--------------<p>Social Networks _have_ made things more convenient. And I think Hacker News proves the importance of moderators to lead discussion (Hacker News is very barebones in terms of social networking features, and instead relies upon the heroic efforts of moderators to keep us on subject).<p>Good discussions need leaders. Roberts Rules were mostly a set of rules for how leaders should lead discussions. A modern version of Roberts Rules would likely be more about how to be a moderator and how to ensure everyone gets a fair shot at the online discussion.<p>But I&#x27;m also not convinced that any social network has truly figured out the proper political theories with regards to how discussions to evolve in the online space. Roberts Rules had centuries of inspiration and political theory study, we&#x27;ve only had social media for a few short decades at best.