(*Now with 3rd Round Straw Poll Q*) Item 1.2 Straw Polls

Can the mods on 2p2 see your email address?

I guess I should have been more careful with my email addresses, but the worst that has happened is a lot of spam and gmail seems to be pretty good at sorting that out.

I know you've put more effort into Unstuck than probably anyone, and certainly more than me... so please don't take this as personal dig. We either gotta come up with our own answers ourselves in a democratic manner, or hope some (perhaps benign) dictator comes up with their answers to impose upon us.

How about you going back to my list of "very important questions" and offer your considered opinions, gained from all the work you've already put in, regarding what the practically possible and the preferred set of answers might be?

Please.

@<everyone else>: You too !!!1!

We are not bad people being lazy just because we are on the interwebs. If I stood up at a face-to-face meeting and spewed my "very important questions" there'd be some kinda response. Maybe some would be displaying body language of "that's stupid" or "brilliant" or they'd be playing with their phones and obviously not paying attention. Afterwards somebody would say something, even if it was only along the lines of "Sure crazy guy, thanks for sharing. Moving right along...". But... we're on the interwebs, where nobody has any idea if others agree, disagree, think it's all crazy talk, or just aren't reading the thread.

So... as not be bad lazy people on the interwebs, we need to make an effort to explicitly give feedback in these kind situations. It's a simple matter of... different norms for different venues.

Please.

Once again, I'm not trying to pick on you. I'm trying to further the conversation, and (a) you one of the few who are engaged, and (b) you have at least some of the particular information this committee would need to move forward. @everyone else: by "further the conversation" I mean I want you folks to jump on in and voice your opinions.

We need to discuss here what is actually meant by "ownership" in our context as Unstuckers. The problem being is that this word is incredibly overloaded in English. Not so strangely enough: disentangling this "found propagandic" overloading is actually a very important political issue, especially to us "horizontals".

1. Let's consider the situation over at 2+2. The legalistic owners of 2+2 Publishing had both root and effective control over what goes on inside those forums. It's obvious that they "own" those forums, in every relevant meaning. As we know, there's nothing us pre-Unstuckers could do about that... except move on.

2. Let's consider our status quo here in these forums, which is: cuserounder has root on these forums, but has promised to act in trust for us Unstuckers. So... who "owns" these forums?

One way to look at things is (a) us Unstuckers collectively "own" these forums, as we have effective control of what goes on inside these forums. Another way to look at things is (b) cuserounder "owns" these forums, because he has root. If he chose to renege on this promise to act in trust for us Unstuckers, I doubt there is anything us Unstuckers could do about it... besides move on again.

Here we have two quite contradictory meanings for "own". Which one, or both, of these "owns" should this committee concern themselves with?

3. Hypothetical: Us Unstuckers decide to vote to delegate a "Root Admin Officer", with the requirement that this officer posts a scan of a letter where they (a) promise to act in trust for us Unstuckers, and (b) give up their IRL name. When such is posted, cuserounder transfers the ProBoards registration to that officer. If this officer betrayed that trust, us Unstuckers could try to talk ProBoards into resetting the root password, and failing that, an Unstucker could try a legal action.

So who "owns" these boards under this hypothetical... us Unstuckers collectively -or- this officer, who would change from time to time?

---

That all said, I have a few more important Qs/Points/whatever to ask/make/babble about...

A. The way to handle severely overloaded words, like "ownership" in this context, is to just to simply stop using them. That's the reason why I've been pushing alternate terms like "key holder". To coherently address this issue, we really need to break things down into some detail, and describe what it is we want to accomplish in straight forward language -and- without using the "o" word. @zikzac: can you describe what you mean by "ownership stake", without using the "o" word? @everyone else: you too !!!1!

B. I'm very, very skeptical that any relevant jurisdiction offers a form of "legalistic personage" to groupings like us Unstuckers. We are basically in the same boat as the Occupies were back in 2011... anonymous and transient. As far as I know, with the Occupies anything of a "legalistic personage" nature needed to be handled by a third party. I'm not a lawyer, and that was eight years ago, and yada-yada-yada... but until someone either comes up with an IRL example otherwise, or an IRL lawyers opinion otherwise, I'm going to just laugh at this whole line of reasoning. BTW... this whole line of reasoning is about 98% of the exited but mindless babble regarding "ownership" expressed in these forums so far.

C. I'm going to repeat once again, that if there is a group of Unstuckers who want to do something like start a worker's coop, that the only coherent way to proceed is if that coop and us Unstuckers be two distinct (logical) organizations (with overlapping membership) that have a vender-client relationship. I'm going to repeat that we are not bad lazy people on the interwebs... but that there's no way if I can tell if peeps (a) agree, (b) disagree, (c) don't think I'm making sense, or (d) aren't paying attention or don't care. So... how about an "amen", or any other feedback, to this point I think is so important.

D. These last two points are addressed more particularly to @ziczac: My vague understanding is that maybe a half dozen peeps might be interested in doing actual work along the lines of creating original content. My feeling is that you think none of those ~6 peeps will move forward unless this whole "ownership stake" issue is settled out ahead of time.

Is there any reason we can't move to the new website before dealing with this issue of creating original content? Maybe I'm not fully understanding what's going on, but it seems to me that we could already be on the new website by now otherwise.

E. Since, AFAIK, those ~6 peeps aren't on this committee, but it seems their concerns are our stumbling block here... don't we really need to be hearing from them and pro-actively gathering their input? Otherwise I seems this committee has been tasked with making "ownership" recommendations by pure guess work and voodoo mind reading. How are we (the members of this committee) supposed to make recommendations for what they (those ~6 peeps) should be doing, that they'll be happy with, otherwise... not to mention technical stuff like picking out a jurisdiction and a flavor of "legalistic personage" for them to use?

I did read that one. It was good. I don't know what to say about it though. Maybe we're on a path to C. Maybe not.

The ownership question that needs to be answered for a move is who is putting their name on a hosting agreement and accepting legal liability for the site. This is the real world legal concept of ownership that needs to be dealt with, and there have only been 2 people who said they were willing to do this (actually cuserounder said he would too, but that was a month ago and he's stepped back from everything since then).

I will try to translate zan's wall of text:

He has doubts that there is appropriate way to find a legal form (legal incorporation) for such group like this forum is. He has his issues with what exactly being an "owner" here means. (my POV goes along with Zak's: ownership = full legal liability for this stuff). One of possibilities zan sees is to have two separate overlapping entities: owners (may be coop) and community of posters. (Rare case, but I think that is not a bad thought.) He also wonders what exactly is stopping people from being already on the new site. His suggestion is to vote for "treasurer", "new webmaster", collect pledges and Bahm! We are on the new site! (Last one clearly overestimates the willingness of people to take on responsibility in such ill defined situation).

zan nen

We already have a full list of unstuckers who have said they are willing to put their name on a hosting agreement. It is:

microbet
zikzak

idk what microbet's requirements would be. Mine are roughly (and still very open to further discussion) that I be allowed to raise funds as I saw fit and return a significant chunk of any net revenue to myself. In return, I would operate under community guidance, allow the community to organize internally however it saw fit, I would return some percentage of net revenue to moderators, co-admins and anybody else doing real work, and it would only be for a set term to be renewed or canceled per community wishes.

I wouldn't need any up-front funds or legal advice to do this, just community approval.

And to be clear, I am not currently proposing this. It is a rough draft of my hypothetical future proposal should everything else truly and completely fail. Maybe it would be good if microbet and anybody else who would also be willing to take on this responsibility were to step forward and state what their requirements would be.

The only problem I would have with "returning significant chunk of net revenue to myself" is where donations come into the picture. I don't mind donations covering a salary, but just being funneled directly into your pockets makes this seem like buying gold or selling MAGA hats...

Duuuude... If I by accident read something of your posting again (my default is to ignore you) and you are posting something that is plain false I will call it what it is.

You could (a) see if you can find some websites that appear to give credible legalistic advice regarding a social club setting up a simple website, then report back with links to those sites (b) take it on your own to go see a IRL lawyer, get a IRL legal opinion regarding the above, and post a copy of that opinion, or (c) keep on incoherently fear mongering, trying to stir up drama, and clogging up our forums.

I'm just asking you nicely to stop doing (c). Please. How about considering acting in a positive and productive manner and giving (a) or (b) a try instead?

I've already volunteered to take on 100% of this alleged legalistic liability, for free and with no proprietary interest, so I'm at a loss what your malfunction is to begin with.

Cliffs: you don't have to be part of the solution if you don't want... but how about not continuing to be part of the problem, like you have been so far. 

OK fair enough.

How about you take on the workload, while I take on the liability... could that work for you?

In theory, absolutely. But again, devil's in the details. How are you going to do that?

And I'd still expect some sort of financial stake. Not any promised return, just a clear stake that exists under real world law.

Where do you think, I have this idea that the legal liability in a social club setting, is joint and several? Do you really believe that that is somehow my idea? I wouldn't know such words before I googled the stuff.

I have done an extensive google on what social club is at all in USA, who is liable for what, how to set-up this and basically all what google delivers when this idea first came-up. It is absolutely consistent advice over pages and pages, that in case someone has any claims against social club, he can (doesn't have to!) go for every single member, for all officers and for anyone where he believes he can get his money. 


www.nonprofitissues.com/article/members-unincorporated-association-may-be-liable-association%E2%80%99s-debt

"On the issue of personal liability, the Court cited a state statute that provides that when execution on a judgment against an unincorporated association is not satisfied, a claim for the unpaid amount may be brought against “any or all” of the members. This liability “is not individual liability for those acts that were the basis for the initial judgment but rather a secondary contractual liability for the voluntary association’s debt arising of the judgment,” the Court said. “The theory of the statute is that by becoming members of an unincorporated association, individuals agree to be liable in a collection action on a judgment if that judgment cannot be fully met by the association’s assets.”

personal-debt.solutions/advice/social-club-member-debt-liability/

But I mean.... I think micro kinda agreed that he is OK with liability.