This seems to be the overriding rift within the forest that in order to exude control on quality (or rather - maintain a unified theme or style) we seem to believe this negatively affects "openness". Does it?
Not necessarily, I think a balance can be struck. For example, if we saw the benefit of having one person be in charge of the aesthetics of the cafe, or a particular room, and that person having total decision-making power over that domain, I would not have a problem with it as long as the post is only given for a set number of months at a time and there is a merit-based (not clique) way of deciding who gets the post next so that everyone has a fair shot. And also obviously if someone is doing a bad job we can all agree to sack them and give someone else a chance. I don't think that compromises openness at all.
Single person versus committee, if it's a single person and they are contactable that might go smoother and seem less bureacratic than for example requiring aesthetic decisions to go through the visual arts working group and be done by consensus. There is also something to be said, I think, about avoiding making design decisions by committee. They are the sort of decision where a compromise is likely to lead to something no one is particularly happy about, a lowest common denominator, whereas a non-compromise would really excite some people and not others and that's probably better.
Decisions can be made well by consensus when there is likely to be some compromise between the different points of view that will keep everyone happy and be the best of both worlds. But the sort of atomic decisions where no such useful compromise exists should not be made by a committee.
To maintain openness though, the decision of who gets to make the decisions for the next x months should be up to a working group of some sort.
For example, in the Debian linux project, any decision about who to elect as the next project leader or about a change to the Debian social contract or something like that would have to go through one of the project's democratic decision making processes whether it be voting or consensus. But a technical decision about how some feature should be implemented in some program is singularly decided by the maintainer of that program. They have discovered that making technical decisions democratically just leads to bad decisions, and this is because of the type of choice you are faced with, there will be good options that will make some people happy and piss others off, and the only options that don't piss anyone off are the mediocre ones. Ofcourse, you don't get to be a package maintainer except by merit.
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!