The percentage of agreement needed to pass a proposal

There are many possible variations on this.

If 80% of people basically agree on something, but a minority of people really really disagree with it, rather than an 80% threshold, the group might be better served with a protocol that requires revision of the proposal until there is rough consensus (i.e. people might not agree with a decision but they could live with the result).

I know this is just complicating the matter. Another (still complex) way to think about it may be to distinguish between different kinds of decisions: decisions that don't have dissenters might have one threshold, and a decision with dissenters may be elevated to a different threshold.

I also say this without being fully familiar with the Loomio functionality, so maybe I'm overthinking something that is already accounted for in the design.

From what I can tell, the discussion process is intended to drive the group to consensus. Once the parties engaged in the discussion feel they have sufficient support, a proposal should be created.

In this instance, I am fine with someone "proposing 80% of the people agreeing will constitute acceptance of a proposal", for instance four (4) agrees and one (1) disagree with any number of abstains would pass. Right now it looks like three (Ernie, Greg, and myself) would agree with this proposal.

My concern is 80% is fairly high bar, which might result in few proposals actually being passed, so we would need to have a venue to decide upon stalled proposals.

To Greg's point, if someone really, really disagrees with a proposal, they could request a venue such as the next Code for Miami meeting to discuss the proposal. However, even in person meetings will not necessarily drive a discussion to consensus, and sometimes making a decision sooner is more important than getting consensus.

So some thoughts to that:

My concern is 80% is fairly high bar, which might result in few proposals actually being passed, so we would need to have a venue to decide upon stalled proposals.

So the thought of that is that if it's not 80% but still worth talking about then maybe it's finding consensus. Like, if a proposal fails then it could be a matter of a series of small yesses (like this link from Loomio on how other folks have done proposals). And of course if people are really NOT down with it, there's the BLOCK option but that's for pretty big deals.

I also don't want to complicate matters. Anything complicated and I think people just straight up won't do it. My concern was more... "so uh what happens if a proposal passes with 51%?"

If there's a block option, that addresses half of my concerns.

Beyond that, I think there should be a clear process to revisit and change such rules in the future. With such a process for revising rules in place, it lowers the stakes of having to make such decisions before we have enough experience to feel confident knowing what is best.

(As for the precise number - if others agree that 80% is too high a bar, 2/3rds seems to be the next lower rung above bare majority.)

(I study institutional design and governance modeling... far from an expert in this, I do NOT have all the answers... just really interested in it.)