Tom Coronite

You should fill the vacancies. Until you do, the quorum appears to be 5. Think about it - if the quorum remains at 6 despite however many vacancies you may have, you could not conduct business.

Is the wrath still to be feared??

will do.

And if an eager member blurts out "I move to approve the minutes!" before the chair gets a chance to say that the minutes are approved as corrected? (I took it that was the OP's question, and have seen it happen fairly often) As Mr Brown notes, such a motion would not be out of order, even though it's not needed. I believe the chair should just continue as RONR prescribes, and maybe take it as an opportunity to do some helpful instruction on the proper procedure. (briefly, of course)

First off, RONR perhaps should be more properly designated as your parliamentary authority rather than a fall back for various instances when your policy on meeting structure is lacking. As indicated above, the answer is no specific motion should have been required to start talking/discussing. But also as noted above, it appears your group should be using a standard order of business as opposed to an agenda, so you're from the start operating outside RONR, and trying to use RONR to fix issues caused by operating outside RONR might be fruitless. And that's fine, but as details later showed, apparently a majority of members wanted NOT to discuss the item. The will of the majority steers what happens. Again, even if the "forced" motion was improper or unnecessary, it doesn't appear anyone raised a point of order. And again, the majority wanted not to discuss the issue. It doesn't. But given the details you've described, it may be a moot point. Somewhere between approving the agenda and the "forced" motion, apparently the group changed its collective mind.

I took Guest Cindy's question to be not about a motion arising out of discussion nor a motion to do something, but rather is it necessary to make a motion to discuss. IOW if the agenda states there will be discussion on the clubhouse, by approving the agenda are they ensuring they'll discuss the clubhouse, or does someone have to say "I move we discuss the clubhouse!"? If that's the case, it would not appear a motion to discuss would be needed, especially if the group in question is a (sub)committee.