Cooling-off period
A fixed delay between a decision passing and it taking effect, requiring no one's approval to expire.
Ask to read the last proposal a community decided, not a summary of it. A real one says what changes, who may decide it, and by when. Then ask what happened between voting closing and the decision taking effect. If the answer is "nothing", that can be exactly right — but it should be a choice the group made on purpose rather than one it arrived at by never asking.
A cooling-off period is the simplest form of ratification : the decision has passed, and it takes effect in a week rather than tonight. Nobody has to sign anything. Nothing needs approving. The delay expires on its own.
That is what makes it unusual among safeguards — it costs no authority. A facilitator sign-off hands someone a judgement to make, and a veto window hands everyone a late objection. A cooling-off period hands out nothing at all. It only buys time.
What time is for
Three things, in rough order of how often they matter.
Noticing. Members who were away, ill, or simply not paying attention find out that something passed while there is still room to say so. Not to stop it — to ask a question, to check they understood it, to point out that it conflicts with something agreed in March that everyone had forgotten.
Preparing. A decision with consequences — a rota change, a new charge, a rule about visitors — lands better when the people affected have a few days before it applies. Several communities describe adopting a delay for exactly this reason and only later noticing it was also catching mistakes.
Cooling. The original sense. A group that has just spent three hours on something contentious is not always the best judge of what it decided. Sleeping on it does not change the result, and occasionally changes whether anyone wants to reopen it.
How long, and for what
Length should follow stakes. A day or two is plenty for something operational and reversible; a week or more suits anything that commits money or changes an agreement. The pattern maps onto decision tiers — the more the decision costs to undo, the more the delay is worth.
The failure mode is quiet: the delay becomes the default on everything, including the compost rota, and a group that used to decide things in an evening now waits a week for permission from nobody. Applied to a class of decisions rather than to all of them, it is one of the cheapest safeguards available.
Related terms
A hold between a proposal passing and it taking effect, during which the result is confirmed before it becomes real.
A period after voting closes in which a member may still object, stopping the decision from taking effect.
A window after a proposal is published and before voting opens, during which nothing is counted yet.