Talk:2025-12-02 AGM Agenda/Constitutional Changes/Special Resolution, An upper limit on meeting quorum

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Summary of my thoughts

As can likely be seen from the discussion so far, I'm fairly opposed to this change. I do not think it passing will be detrimental to the space, but I believe long term it could have some negative impacts. I'd like to summarise these below.

• The current requirements are already slim, and will comfortably be surpassed by the meeting this evening. We are expecting to have a check-in count of at least 90, with a quorum of 73. 50 is much lower than this.
• The proposed change does not scale with the space over time. We may have fewer members one day, or many more. 50 could be concerningly low if we had 1000 members.
• We should be encouraging membership engagement and ensuring we have guardrails in place to ensure democratic processes.

-- Aaron (asj) 13:24, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Is there actually a problem?

The current requirement is already quite slim in my view. I find it slightly disappointing that so much encouragement is required. Currently, only 360 members are voting members, which is only slightly more than half of our membership, and only 20% of those are currently needed to make the meeting quorate. With a bit of effort last year, we had 94 members checked-in (attending or proxied), which was 32 more than we strictly needed. Even with a more relaxed quorum, as proposed by your change, I suspect we'd still need to do the same amount of "nudging" to get people to attend. -- Aaron (asj) 20:02, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree that 20% is slim. Part of the challenge may be the capacity of the AGM venue, or that attendance must be in person. Have or should other options for encouraging and facilitating attendance be explore first?

-- Tryst (Tryst) 17:32, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Attendance doesn't need to be in person - attendance includes proxies, which only takes a couple of minutes for people to sort out. Do you have any suggestions for encouraging people to attend?

-- Aaron (asj) 20:21, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Venue size is not a issue, we used to use Antenna before COVID and that can easily handled our needs before we introduced the reduced needs via Non/Voting rules, Carousel fits where we are at currently but we could always go back to a bigger space.

--'RepRap' Matt 22:33, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

I have to agree that I don't think this resolution is needed. The change to Voting/Non-Voting members I think solved this issue. I am a non-voting member this year, so won't impact the quorum either way. The 50 number seems fairly arbitrary - I understand that it is trying to maintain the protection against small groups taking over, but in reality with the 60% majority clause for constitutional changes, this reduces to 30 people needed to take over.

If we are unable to find 20% of *active* members who are willing to either attend or proxy their vote, then there is a much bigger problem at the hackspace than quorum!

James (talk) 09:15, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

Some numbers

Current Members peaked at 729 in March 2020

Current Members 676,        20% of that is 136  (our original requirement before we introduced Voting/Non Voting after the 2019 AGM)
Voting Members  359,        20% of that is 72

72 of 676 is only 10.6%

50 of (current)  676 is only 7.4% of members
50 of (our peak) 729 is only 6.8% of members

2019 AGM (pre V/N) 
Current Members was 711,   20% of that was 142
Voting Members was ~401,   20% of that is 80 

Per the 2019 AGM we knew we had issue with quorum, one of the the main aim's of the V/N rules was to reduce the number but still keep the number proportional to the size of the membership, we ruled out even proposing a 50 upper limit. -- 'RepRap' Matt 20:48, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Would not meeting quorum be a bad thing?

The space doesn't run itself, it requires contribution from a large number of members (and not only people on teams, lots of people help in lots of different ways). Getting the opinions of as many members as possible is important to ensure we are heading in a direction membership are comfortable. If we are not quorate, we cannot get those views, and if we make ourself quorate by lowing the requirement, we are more likely to miss things. Is it wise to lower guard rails to prevent that? In the worst case, we get to send a disappointed email and give those that didn't turn up a "kick up the backside" - it might even be healthy. -- Aaron (asj) 20:02, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Given the changes to have people be a distant member (and it's selectable by them not just those who use their card) the quorum is already quite low for what should be a member-led organisation. I also don't think we've had real trouble since sorting proxy votes on the website (although it'd be good to just allow anyone who shows up online count + be able to vote as I note below) meaning it is a lot more achievable. Andrew Armstrong (talk) 11:23, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Yeah definitely agree. I'd like to find a solution making voting online possible. I doubt it'll happen while I'm a trustee though. It would require changes to 5.6 ("Any vote during an AGM or EGM may be conducted in secret at the request of any member"), and that alone could be problematic to change.

I'm not too worried about achieving quorum this year. It'll require just as much nudging as before, but I'm pretty confident we'll reach it.

-- Aaron (asj) 11:44, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Definition of attendance

I don't think a definition of attendance should be added in this clause. It could be added elsewhere, although it likely isn't necessary at all. Proxy votes count because it's stated in the articles of association. -- Aaron (asj) 20:12, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree that it's not needed, if it was it should be elsewhere and worded differently.

--'RepRap' Matt 22:35, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Surely attendance should count if attending virtually via Zoom, rather than physically in this age.

-- (Ian Turner) 22:40, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

That's a change I'd been keen to see. I don't think there's anything explicitly preventing us from counting those that attend online. The main issue is voting. We generally just go for a show of hands / fingers. Sorting out OpaVote etc for this kind of thing would be a pain and incur additional expense.

-- Aaron (asj) 22:57, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

You can do votes on Zoom and hands in the room, tends to work when doing much more technically challenging meetings with 100+ online attendees and dozens in person. It just needs someone able to manage the voting and poke people to vote online. As long as you don't need to record who voted for what it works great. I'd also prefer it to be another - different - item to vote on though! Andrew Armstrong (talk) 11:02, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Awkward phrasing

I have nothing to say about the actual change itself at this time, but I do think that the phrasing is rather awkward.

A more clear and concise phrasing would be "An AGM or EGM will be quorate if 20% or fifty (50) voting members attend, whichever is lesser."

Gsuberland (talk) 05:41, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Adding a response here just to note that Tim has improved the wording since.

--- Aaron (asj) 16:22, 25 November 2025 (UTC)