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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2019 18:18:48 GMT
We need to address how this Committee will Set Agendas and how Meetings will be Facilitated. Below is some related discussion copied from another thread. Things that are in the realm of facilitation should be the call of the facilitator(s). The perfect example is approving the agenda. IMO the facilitator could said: "Here's the tentative agenda, now is the time any peeps to propose additions -or- for any peeps to object. If there are no objections, and no additions, we are good to go after (x) hours". As far as I'm concerned, a facilitator is already empowered to make this kinda call, and we don't really need to formalize this kinda thingee. Well, given you have much more experience in these areas, some of the above may seem obvious to you, but it isn't to me. I am not especially clear on how we delineate facilitation decisions, and I'm not sure it's obvious coming out of nothing that our facilitator was empowered to set the agenda and move things along in a timely fashion without substantial committee input. That all said, the above seems like a reasonable proposal to me, but given that how we run this committee is going to function as a model for all future committees and subcommittees, I'd prefer codifying the facilitator decisions a bit more. Something like, the facilitator may propose an agenda, and after getting affirmative consent from at least 2 (?) committee members, then the committee can proceed with that agenda after a minimum of 6 (?) hours if there are no objections or additions. The facilitator may raise straw polls at any time to get a temperature check on committee decisions, and those straw polls must stay open for a minimum of 48 (?) hours unless all committee members have voted, and they must reach a quorum of at least floor(P/2) (?). Other than setting the agenda and taking polls, are there other facilitation actions that commonly need to be taken?
... Other than setting the agenda and taking polls, are there other facilitation actions that commonly need to be taken? Basically, a facilitator is presiding at a business meeting. Business meetings have an order of business. As whosnext suggested, it's like Roberts Rules of Order. Except for us here, simplified, less formal, modified for (possible) consensus process, and modified for being online. That, and we are so far proceeding in an ad-hoc manner. We are in a certain way trusting in our facilitator to establish our ad-hoc order of business... and not to stir us wrong in general. Some of these areas sure. I'd hope that several of us have some familiarity with traditional business meetings, as that would be a big help. In some areas, in particular what we need to do different because we are not face-2-face, and the "coming out of nothing" part, I don't have experience. By the term facilitation decisions, I'm imagining things in general that would be in order for the presiding officer at a business meeting. For example, let's use setting an agenda. Often some things have been added between meetings by email/etc, some might just be obvious to the officer, and there would typically be a short time for items to be added from the floor. From there, the officer could collate that list, and put it to "ayes" and "nays". No "nays" then off the meeting goes. If there are any "nays", then the officer could open the floor for discussion, and then a formal vote on approving the agenda. What I suggested above was what I'd consider an online version of this example. One quibble with your example however: Since the implied "aye"/"nay" is actually a form of voting, the hours that peeps could object should be at least as long as that allotted for votes in general. That time wouldn't be determined by the facilitator (after the ad-hoc phase has ended). There is a "re-inventing the wheel" issue here. What groups often do is adopt the meeting mechanics of some other already functioning group. For a group which is going to do traditional business meetings, that often means adopting Roberts Rules of Order (or any of the other functionally equivalent rules of order, such as Rusty's Rules of Order). For activist groups that want to do consensus process, there is no shortage of information on this topic on the interwebs, and they'll usually pick one of those to adopt. Also, often there will be a standing Process Committee, which is tasked with evaluating the efficacy of the current process, and proposing incremental improvements to the root that they feel would improve the current process. One way to deal with this issue is to have agreement that (a) we'll use ad-hoc process temporarily at first, (b) affirm that we aren't setting a binding precedent, and (c) delegate such a Process (Sub-)Committee to investigate these issues, and propose a more formal process to end the ad-hoc phase. I addition to the above, I think we need to decide what Minutes will look like for these meetings. |
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Post by kerowo on May 6, 2019 18:50:53 GMT
I propose that prior to the session a thread is open where the list of topics that weren’t brought up in the previous section are open for discussion. During this period new agenda items can be formally proposed and seconded. At the end of the comment period the facilitator will compile a tentative agenda based on previous priorities and perceived priorities of new items. That list will be voted on by the community and ratified by a plurality at the end of the voting period.
The number of items will be limited to what the facilitator thinks can be accomplished during a normal session.
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zan nen
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Post by zan nen on May 6, 2019 20:58:34 GMT
I'd like to point out the gist of what we are chatting about is adapting face-2-face meetings to our distributed and asynchronous forums, and mostly isn't directly related to consensus process y/o how business meetings work. That, and we are pretty much engaged in "rolling our own" without any experience. To be honest, my simple google searches for topics like "online business meetings" and "online consensus process" haven't found much of relevance. However, I'm sure that other groups have tried this before, and I'd like not to completely reinvent this wheel. Maybe others will have better luck searching.
So, this is all just throwing some ideas out off the top of my head...
1. Under our current forum software, consider reserving the OP as a "white board" for the facilitator's use.
2. On this "white board" of the root thread for the meeting, the facilitator would (a) identify what's currently going on (open discussion, a motion on the floor, etc)
3. If there are breakout threads for different agenda items, the facilitator would announce them, give a linkee, and give a status (active, closed, etc). Likewise, any breakout threads would state what root thread they have been broken out of, with a linkee back to the root.
4. At the end of the meeting, all the threads would be closed. At that time, the OP of the root thread would serve as a table of contents to any breakout threads. The root thread, and any breakout threads, would serve as the notes for the meeting.
5. At the start of the meeting, a "convener" would act as the temporary facilitator. Perhaps the facilitator of the last meeting would be the default convener of the next meeting. The convener would (a) copy/paste or a linkee to any boilerplate rules/guidelines/explanations, (b) present a tentative list of who has "vote", (c) calculate the quorum based on that tentative list, if we decide to use a formula, (d) open the floor for agenda items, (e) open the floor for nominations for facilitator, (f) give notice that if there are no objections to (a-c,e) after (V) hours, we'll move on to the next step.
6. The convener would post a simple vote of those nominated for facilitator. The floor remains open for agenda items. After another (V) hours...
7. Whoever received a simple plurality of votes for facilitator would (g) collate a list of proposed agenda items, and (h) give notice that if there are no objections to the proposed agenda, and there are no objections to them serving as facilitator, that after still another (V) hours... off we go.
ETA: Or alternately, the facilitator for the next meeting could be elected at the end of the last meeting. This would reduce the meeting startup time from 3*V to 2*V, assuming no objections. I don't see how we can ever get below 2*V however, as there has to be time to both accept new agenda items -and- time to approve that agenda.
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Post by clovis8 on May 6, 2019 23:30:44 GMT
Can I suggest we deal with one topic at a time from start to end. It is difficult to follow all the moving parts.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2019 0:13:15 GMT
I respectfully disagree--I think there's so much overlap that we will naturally end up discussing multiple things at once, and it will be too difficult to force an order of operations.
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Post by clovis8 on May 7, 2019 0:32:50 GMT
I agree discussing multiple things at once makes sense as they often overlap. Why not deal with one motion at a time to resolution?
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Post by whosnext on May 7, 2019 0:42:20 GMT
Making it easier for members, especially those who are not closely perusing each thread, to follow committee activities is probably of some value.
But it is also important to make progress with some time urgency since we have a great deal to undertake and speed is not our forte (to put it mildly).
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Post by whosnext on May 7, 2019 0:43:36 GMT
I agree discussing multiple things at once makes sense as they often overlap. Why not deal with one motion at a time to resolution? Um ... cause each one takes 4 fricking days! |
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Post by clovis8 on May 7, 2019 0:59:45 GMT
Part of the delay is caused by confusion. If we had one issue it would be quicker not slower imo.
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Post by whosnext on May 7, 2019 1:32:45 GMT
There are 23 members of this committee. Due to a wide variety of factors the members seem to vary in the ability/willingness to devote a great deal of time/effort to committee activities. This is simply a fact of life. I think in the last three days there have been around 100 posts total in this forum.
The result is that threads have been fractured and difficult to follow/contribute to. Threads thus far have not really been discussions but more of random hit-and-run posts. Again, as I have posted elsewhere, this is not meant to be a criticism of anyone or anything.
We just don't have the critical mass to make threads anything like real-time discussions. This has been frustrating for some of us (raises hand).
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Post by commonWealth (admin) on May 7, 2019 2:16:27 GMT
I, too, am frustrated with the lack of progress we've made and the confusing nature of what's going on. I feel like we need to get moving on voting on some stuff and making progress, and trying to deal with the important stuff first - but it seems like we're in the weeds on complicated discussions that aren't really moving the ball forward.
It seems to me that the most important things this committee needs to decide are what to recommend to the community on:
1) Site ownership
2) Forum moderation rules and mod selection
Otherwise, the tech committee is hamstrung on 1, and what's likely to happen is either that we get stuck on this site for the long-term or one person owns the site and we have to hope they do the right thing when the time comes. (And it probably won't be me, FWIW.)
I get that we have to make decisions on the decision-making process in order to tackle the important stuff, but we have been empowered for a full week and we haven't even had a binding vote yet on our decision making process which is frustrating to me as a committee member. I'm not blaming anyone for this, I just think we all got into the weeds on the discussions on this stuff and it's the type of thing where everyone's opinion is a little different.
Thus, I move that gregorio does his best to put up proposals for binding votes that fall somewhere in the middle of all of the suggested ideas (using his best judgment) as soon as he has the time, with the hopes that by Thurs/Fri we can have a process approved and start having binding votes on the issues we're tasked with addressing.
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Post by whosnext on May 7, 2019 2:31:33 GMT
I second cuse's motion (in the event that a "second" has some value in this thread at this juncture in the committee's lifespan).
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2019 5:07:18 GMT
I get that we have to make decisions on the decision-making process in order to tackle the important stuff, but we have been empowered for a full week and we haven't even had a binding vote yet on our decision making process which is frustrating to me as a committee member. I'm not blaming anyone for this, I just think we all got into the weeds on the discussions on this stuff and it's the type of thing where everyone's opinion is a little different. Thus, I move that gregorio does his best to put up proposals for binding votes that fall somewhere in the middle of all of the suggested ideas (using his best judgment) as soon as he has the time, with the hopes that by Thurs/Fri we can have a process approved and start having binding votes on the issues we're tasked with addressing. I second cuse's motion (in the event that a "second" has some value in this thread at this juncture in the committee's lifespan). While I don't think it's the facilitator's job to create proposals and move motions, and I don't have the time to formalize every proposal we need to consider in this meeting, I've done it for the decision making process in order to help move things forward after 11 hours of silence since asking for proposals or discussion. |
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Post by MrWookie on May 7, 2019 5:28:37 GMT
I, too, am frustrated with the lack of progress we've made and the confusing nature of what's going on. I feel like we need to get moving on voting on some stuff and making progress, and trying to deal with the important stuff first - but it seems like we're in the weeds on complicated discussions that aren't really moving the ball forward. It seems to me that the most important things this committee needs to decide are what to recommend to the community on: 1) Site ownership 2) Forum moderation rules and mod selection Otherwise, the tech committee is hamstrung on 1, and what's likely to happen is either that we get stuck on this site for the long-term or one person owns the site and we have to hope they do the right thing when the time comes. (And it probably won't be me, FWIW.) I get that we have to make decisions on the decision-making process in order to tackle the important stuff, but we have been empowered for a full week and we haven't even had a binding vote yet on our decision making process which is frustrating to me as a committee member. I'm not blaming anyone for this, I just think we all got into the weeds on the discussions on this stuff and it's the type of thing where everyone's opinion is a little different. Thus, I move that gregorio does his best to put up proposals for binding votes that fall somewhere in the middle of all of the suggested ideas (using his best judgment) as soon as he has the time, with the hopes that by Thurs/Fri we can have a process approved and start having binding votes on the issues we're tasked with addressing. I am not a tech committee member, but it would seem to me that they are empowered to put forth a proposal with line items like "so and so or such and such is designated as owner until a better solution is adopted according to the processes laid out by the governance committee, because having this temporary designation is essential to moving this proposal forward now because of xyz" and "Right now, we need to raise $X from donors, but future decisions on financing will change this in the future." |
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Post by kerowo on May 7, 2019 14:34:10 GMT
Who empowered them?
Who from this site is going to be agreeing to EULAs and monthly services contracts?
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Post by MrWookie on May 7, 2019 14:45:25 GMT
They were empowered to make a proposal, and that can be whatever they want and whatever they think is necessary. The community does or does not adopt it.
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Post by kre8tive on May 9, 2019 0:03:28 GMT
I'm not being derelict, I'm keeping abreast with these threads. Just haven't felt the need to interject any additional noise.
My stance is to expedite what we can and vote on the bare bones issues as quickly as possible.
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Post by lapka on May 9, 2019 9:54:00 GMT
I'm not being derelict, I'm keeping abreast with these threads. Just haven't felt the need to interject any additional noise. My stance is to expedite what we can and vote on the bare bones issues as quickly as possible. Yes yes yes. And you are doing a lot more than many with keeping abreast with these threads.
Please have a look at what kerowo said in "GCM 1.1: Voting and Participating in GCM Proceedings" and with what I completely agree:
" We can’t get 15 votes on the first issue of governance of this site. We’ve lost our first facilitator and I don’t see a slew of volunteers in line behind him. Our patron saint of consensus based rule has posted only a handful of times, few of which have moved things forward.
I think we are setting ourselves up to fail.
I want to hear from the community and build a place where we all want to hang out, but I think we need to re-examine how we get there.
I think we need a leader to move things forward with assistance from a group of people who are aware of the time commitment involved. I would suggest that Cuse is that leader.
I think the first step is to figure out ownership of the site and the creation of the appropriate legal entity to be able to accept donations from users and spend money getting the site running. Once we have a site running we can revisit the rules. Until then we continue as we are; doing the least amount of rule enforcing as possible based on what posts are being reported and a plurality vote among the mods. "
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Post by lapka on May 9, 2019 9:59:04 GMT
They were empowered to make a proposal, and that can be whatever they want and whatever they think is necessary. The community does or does not adopt it. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
*I am not gonna react emotionally I am not gonna react emotionally I am not gonna troll and kick his butt*
GRRRRRRRRRRRR. DUUUDE Are you yourself not frustrated by what is going on here?
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Post by Louis Cyphre on May 12, 2019 13:47:46 GMT
The day will come when the tech committee will have finalized a proposal (software, hosting etc.) and will ask the gov committee where to put it. Right now our answer would be a big shrug.
One of the pertinent questions has already been put on agenda by cuserounder. Is there anything else we need to have in place on day 1?
Moderation and moderators isn't one of them imo. We can still figure that out when the site is running.
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Post by MrWookie on May 12, 2019 14:55:48 GMT
The day will come when the tech committee will have finalized a proposal (software, hosting etc.) and will ask the gov committee where to put it. Right now our answer would be a big shrug. One of the pertinent questions has already been put on agenda by cuserounder. Is there anything else we need to have in place on day 1? Moderation and moderators isn't one of them imo. We can still figure that out when the site is running. We are onto settling on our scope and essential functions: exiledpolitics.freeforums.net/thread/160/governance-1-role-structure-committee |
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Post by Louis Cyphre on May 12, 2019 21:31:49 GMT
This just looks like more meta discussion to me. It's been over a week for this committee and I think we have very little to show for it.
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Post by MrWookie on May 12, 2019 21:36:01 GMT
It is meta, but I would appreciate your input so we can get through it rather than standing around in silence.
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Well, given you have much more experience in these areas, some of the above may seem obvious to you, but it isn't to me. I am not especially clear on how we delineate facilitation decisions, and I'm not sure it's obvious coming out of nothing that our facilitator was empowered to set the agenda and move things along in a timely fashion without substantial committee input. That all said, the above seems like a reasonable proposal to me, but given that how we run this committee is going to function as a model for all future committees and subcommittees, I'd prefer codifying the facilitator decisions a bit more. Something like, the facilitator may propose an agenda, and after getting affirmative consent from at least 2 (?) committee members, then the committee can proceed with that agenda after a minimum of 6 (?) hours if there are no objections or additions. The facilitator may raise straw polls at any time to get a temperature check on committee decisions, and those straw polls must stay open for a minimum of 48 (?) hours unless all committee members have voted, and they must reach a quorum of at least floor(P/2) (?). 
