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Post by kerowo on May 17, 2019 21:31:49 GMT
There are private email conversations going on about the ownership of the site. Which is unacceptable to me. I'm not going to participate in the building of this community until the ownership question is settled and I know who I'm dealing with.
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zan nen
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Post by zan nen on May 17, 2019 21:33:26 GMT
I believe the bottom of your post got cut off, as this software is wont to do when quoting posts. Nah, that was user error. I had a stray extra "regarding" at the end... which has now been deleted. |
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Post by MrWookie on May 18, 2019 0:29:31 GMT
I doubt there is an appetite for a standing process committee. People seem to want to establish something and then have it be a solved problem, at least until we hit a snag, when we can start a new committee.
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zan nen
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Post by zan nen on May 18, 2019 1:15:34 GMT
I doubt there is an appetite for a standing process committee. People seem to want to establish something and then have it be a solved problem, at least until we hit a snag, when we can start a new committee. This is my impression too. As an aside: it's not uncommon for face-2-face groups to establish such a committee. I believe for two reasons (a) in theory, it sets up a "quality circle" type of situation to improve process, and (b) in fact, it allows the GA to pawn off the whole process discussion to the committee. I don't see either of these reasons being particularly relevant to us as a distributed/asynchronous community. Still, we had a majority in Poll Q#2 favoring that this committee does become a standing committee. I'm trying to tease out what their vision happens to be for what this standing committee would actually do. |
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Post by kre8tive on May 18, 2019 2:19:42 GMT
Poll questions #4 & #5
#4: I'm leaning towards This committee SHOULD NOT become a standing committee, because: a) this does not seem to be a very efficient process b) I can't imagine scenarios in which this committee would be any better than an ad hoc committee/caucus/affinity group to address anything that comes up that could fall under the mandate of a standing governance committee c) if it were a standing committee, I don't think anything to do with governance should have a permanent membership, especially when many members have been relative inactive from the start. By next year I can imagine this standing committee could have 4-5 active members, and that small a group should not have that great an influence over forum-wide governance . If the committee were standing but the membership wasn't, and people could join the committee as they please, then c) becomes less or not at all an issue for me
I will vote SHOULD NOT for now in the absence of a proposal for a mandate that makes sense to me, but if such a mandate were to be argued for in the thread I could switch my vote. #5: We should just go with our de facto precedent for site wide initiates I do not think site wide initiatives should be screened by any committee because: a) things happen slowly enough already that we don't need to add another layer of committee to get through
b) no committee should screen what voting members can propose* I am only hesitant to vote as bolded above because I wonder, re: "This is decided by the general voting membership using consensus process," is this consensus process laid out anywhere?
What greg said, mirrors much my same thoughts |
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Post by MrWookie on May 21, 2019 17:36:34 GMT
Did we lose the results of poll questions 1-3? I feel like we've lost sight of hashing out our scope. Would a straw poll with a list of things where people could check a box for whether such and such should be resolved by this committee or instead future committees be useful for getting us going again?
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Post by gregorio on May 21, 2019 18:07:33 GMT
Did we lose the results of poll questions 1-3? [Original OP: May 14, 2019 9:22:33 GMT -7] Fellow Gov Comm members, and Unstuckers in general, This thread is a break-out from the main Governance 1.2: Role and Structure of this Committee thread, and should be logically considered #included in it. I realize that constantly splitting off threads is distracting. However, (a) I'm not a mod, so I need to be OP to edit this OP to keep current the "what's happening now" remark above, and (b) I've volunteered to facilitate this part of the discussion, and it seems like a good idea to me to isolate that here. Since I wasn't elected as a facilitator, I'll give up the gavel on request of any committee member. Note: The three straw poll questions are combined above. It's set so that peeps can make three selections. Please make one selection each for items marked #1, #2, and #3. This is what we are discussing ITT... [Inline quote of this post] [Original Poll Questions, with vote count as of: May 16, 2019 4:35 PM PDT]Three separate Qs #1,#2,#3, see OP for details You may select up to 3 answers. #1 Comm only decides site-wide initiative process [0 votes] #1 Comm also tackles ownership/etc/etc [10 votes] #1 Bastard ~ it's complicated [2 votes] #2 Comm becomes standing [6 votes] #2 Comm disbands after done [4 votes] #2 Bastard ~ it's complicated [1 vote] #3 Comm favors a screening comm for site-wide [1 vote] #3 Comm disfavors such a screening comm [4 votes] #3 Bastard ~ it's complicated [6 votes] There have been 34 votes by 12 voters. |
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zan nen
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Post by zan nen on May 22, 2019 14:11:13 GMT
[May 16, 2019 at 6:45pm MDT] New Poll Q's #4,#5 ~ see OP for full explanation You may select up to 2 answers. #4: Standing comm w/mandate in OP [0 votes] #4: Standing comm w/mandate explained in post below [0 votes] #4: Standing comm w/secret mandate [0 votes] #4: No standing committee [4 votes] #4: Bastard ~ It's complicated [0 votes] #5: Screening comm as explained in OP [0 votes] #5: Screening comm as explained in post below [0 votes] #5: Screening comm w/secret details [0 votes] #5: Stay with our de facto precedent (no screening comm) [4 votes] #5: No screening comm, process in post below [0 votes] #5: No screening comm, with secret process [0 votes] #5: Bastard ~ It's complicated [0 votes] There have been 8 votes by 4 voters.
Fellow Gov Comm members, and Unstuckers in general, Welcome to the second round of straw poll questions for Agenda Item 1.2 !!!1! All voting members may vote in this straw poll. Members of this committee are strongly encouraged to also note their votes in a post below. Here is the results of the first round of straw poll questions. To summarize... Poll Q#1 asked if this committee should restrict itself to only proposing a site-wide decision making process. There were zero votes for "yes" here... so I feel the sense of this committee is a string "no". Ten votes were made to also tackle ownership/etc. There were two "Bastard ~ it's complicated. New Poll Q#4 is a follow up to Poll Q#2. New Poll Q#5 is a follow up to Poll Q#3. Poll Q#4 options... * This committee should propose to become a standing committee, with the following kinda general mandate... The name of this committee will become the standing "Process Committee". The Process Committee will (a) evaluate the efficacy of our current processes in an ongoing manner, (b) discuss possible improvements to those processes, and (c) from time to time propose site-wide initiatives to change our processes for the better.
* This committee should propose to become standing. I promise I'll explain in general what it's mandate would be in a post below. * This committee should propose to become standing. I'm keeping my desired mandate a secret. * This committee SHOULD NOT become a standing committee. * Bastard ~ It's complicated. Discussion: Straw Poll Q#2 regarding this issue received 6 votes for becoming a standing committee, 4 votes for disbanding when finished with it's current business, and 1 vote of "bastard". Unfortunately, none of the "standing" voters explained what their vision is for this committee's mandate as a stranding committee. Hopefully we'll move this part of the discussion along further with this new poll question. Poll Q#5 options... * This committee should propose a site-wide initiative screening committee, along these lines... All site-wide initiatives must first be approved by this screening committee before, by consensus process, before being submitted to the general voting memberhip. The general voting membership ratifies by a 50%+1 vote. Any voting member can join this screening committee at any time, however they need to specifically state as such. Any member of the screening committee may quit, as long as they specifically say so. Any member of the screening committee who misses three consecutive binding votes is expelled, but may rejoin in the future.
* This committee should propose a site-wide initiative screening committee. I promise to explain my vision of what this committee does in a post below. * This committee should propose a site-wide initiative screening committee. I'm going to keep it a secret what my vision is. * We should just go with our de facto precedent for site wide initiates. Which is... Any voting member may propose a site-wide initiative by starting a thread in the "About the Forums". This is decided by the general voting membership using consensus process.* We should NOT have a screening committee, but use a different process than our current de facto precedent process. I promise to explain my vision in a post below. * We should NOT have a screening committee, but use a different process than our current de facto precedent process. I'm going to keep my vision a secret. * Bastard ~ It's complicated. Discussion: Poll Q#3 regarding this issue received a majority of 6 votes of "Bastard ~ It's complicated". So really we haven't got off square one with this part of the discussion. It also received 3 votes for "no screening committee", and 1 vote for "yes, let's have a screening committee". So I'm really just trying to drill down a little farther here, and get this part of the discussion kick-started. |
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Post by gregorio on May 22, 2019 20:27:00 GMT
Thanks to zan nen for keeping this alive.
Re: Question #6 that is now in OP and the new Poll Perhaps it would be more fruitful at this time to allow new, more focused committees to form to address these issues. In other threads some interest has been expressed about many of these topics, but that interest hasn't translated into posts over here. If those members who have a desire to resolve questions of ownership, or standards of moderation, or mission statement for example (I think each of these have already been discussed and then petered out in ATF) were to form new committees or groups or caucuses or whatever, we might be able to move things forward a bit. I don't know if we have the human resources to tackle all of the proposals identified in the new OP at once, but getting started on two or three of the key ones might be a good next step. |
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Post by Louis Cyphre on May 22, 2019 21:51:59 GMT
What's the difference between options 1 and 2?
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Post by MrWookie on May 23, 2019 1:37:26 GMT
They seem a little redundant, but I guess it's drawing a distinction between if we want all posters (who meet some baseline) to be owners of the site, or if we restrict it to people doing the work.
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Post by MrWookie on May 23, 2019 3:06:02 GMT
Anyway, I voted for both ownership questions, mainly because there seems to be considerable appetite for it, and while I didn't necessarily think we were tackling that question when going into this, I support the consensus. I voted for tackling voting membership and the site-wide adoption process, because I consider those the most essential functions of this committee. I'm not totally sure if we consider forming other committees to fall under the site wide adoption process, or if the site wide adoption process refers only to the voting standard by which the community adopts committee proposals, including this one, but I support setting up a committee process, ideally that doesn't require site-wide votes to authorize committees, whether that is "site wide adoption" or "other." I also voted for mission statement. I didn't think that was in our scope, but having one is not only a decent idea but it could also make items like voting membership and the site-wide adoption process more clear. I'd rather not tackle moderation at this time, just to limit the scope of this committee.
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Post by MrWookie on May 31, 2019 4:29:14 GMT
Geez. Are we dead in the water?
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Post by kerowo on May 31, 2019 17:42:22 GMT
Make a poll on it...
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Post by spidercrab on May 31, 2019 17:56:09 GMT
Geez. Are we dead in the water? It might just be my own experience, but it's possible that people have become relatively satisfied having a new place that seems to be running fairly well. I appreciate the work that the many people have done (especially on the tech side), but I think there's been a real decline in perceived urgency since we got booted from 2+2.
I'm not sure what the solution is - perhaps fake an emergency?
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Post by King of NY on May 31, 2019 18:12:25 GMT
Should the next poll be whether or not we move to the new url? Or are there more tech issues to consider first?
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Post by otatop on May 31, 2019 18:45:33 GMT
Should the next poll be whether or not we move to the new url? We can't decide that because we haven't decided who "we" are yet. |
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Post by King of NY on May 31, 2019 19:45:31 GMT
"We" could refer to the governance committee or all the members. Run one for each. Is that really a sticking point?
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Post by lapka on May 31, 2019 20:06:36 GMT
"We" could refer to the governance committee or all the members. Run one for each. Is that really a sticking point? OOOhhhhh it is! Every single one who tried seriously to approach it stepped back in despair!  |
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Post by otatop on May 31, 2019 20:53:47 GMT
"We" could refer to the governance committee or all the members. Run one for each. Is that really a sticking point? We're still stuck at determining who owns the site, see kerowo's post at the top of this page. |
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Post by nobody on May 31, 2019 21:56:12 GMT
Have the people willing to do the work own it imo.
Either way should get this place on proboards directly if we are staying though so maybe some new posters can join.
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zan nen
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Post by zan nen on Jun 3, 2019 1:23:04 GMT
Geez. Are we dead in the water? Close, but not quite perhaps. Sorry for my poor facilitation ITT lately my fellow Unstuckers. No excuse, but as explanation, we had a death in my family. I'm going to put down my facilitator gavel for the time being, so I can freely express my personal opinions. I'll still put up new straw poll questions in the OP upon request, or perhaps my whim. What's the difference between options 1 and 2? The way I see things is this: we have two distinct and different thingees to consider here: (1) our "politics debating club", and (2) there are a few peeps who wanna start something like a web services worker's coop. So far, there has been a basically incoherent conversation, ripe with folks playing lawyer on the interwebs, about how "we" should create "legalistic personage" for "all of us". I don't think this makes a lick o'sense. In my considered opinion, this whole conversation should be bifurcated. As for our politics debating club, we've articulated as a community that we want to self-govern, and self-govern in a "flat" manner. Concerns regarding self-governing are things like (a) site wide referendums regarding the "debating club", (b) what makes a "politics debating club" voting member, (c) mod policy, selection, and possibly appeal process, (d) etc/etc that pertain internally to the "debating club". The membership of this grouping would be largely anonymous. As for the few peeps who wanna start something like a web services worker's coop, IMO this should be considered a distinct organization from our politics debating club. To the extent that either of these organizations utilize "legalistic personage", there should be distinct legalistic paperwork filed. Initially, the membership in this worker's coop grouping would be a formal subset of the membership of the debating club, but there is no reason that these two groupings might not overlap in the future. Members of this worker's coop grouping would not be anonymous. The nexus between these two distinct groupings would fundamentally be a client-vendor relationship. As for what kinda "legalistic personage" would be appropriate for either of these distinct organizations... As for the politics debating club, it's not obvious to me that any relevant jurisdiction offers "legalistic personage" to anonymous groupings. Also, it's not clear to me that any "legalistic personage" is actually needed for the politics debating club. Delegating a non-anonymous club Secretary-Treasurer might do the trick. As for the few peeps who wanna start something like a web services worker's coop, that should exclusively be up to those few peeps who are actually going to be doing the actual work. They should organize however they internally feel, and it shouldn't be of any concern of the non-worker's coop members who happen to be members of the political debating club. FWIW, I'd suggest they adopt a version of these by-laws: Sample Articles of Incorporation, For a Worker Cooperative With a Collective BoardBesides actually making sense... another advantage of bifurcating this conversation would be that the "legalistic personage" issue regarding the worker's coop would no longer be of concern to this Governance Committee, and the few peeps who want to be in this worker's coop could no longer choose to feel a need to wait for this committee to finish some work all up to start to get their thingee going. That could speed things up exponentially. |
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Post by zikzak on Jun 3, 2019 13:42:34 GMT
The above sounds good to me, although it seems like you're trivializing the worker's co-op a bit. There are real world assets that need to be owned and real world money that needs to be spent in order to support the politics debate club if it wants to exist as anything stronger than a handful of peeps on a free message board.
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zan nen
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Post by zan nen on Jun 3, 2019 14:59:51 GMT
... There are real world assets that need to be owned and real world money that needs to be spent in order to support the politics debate club if it wants to exist as anything stronger than a handful of peeps on a free message board. It would really help if we could get some Qs answered here... 1. Does the worker's coop plan to (a) only work on projects supporting the debating club, (b) take on outside work, above and beyond support for the debating club? 2. Besides the direct costs of hosting, are there any other expenses under considered to support the debating club? Such as... (a) advertising the existence of the debating club, (b) SEO/etc, (c) unique media content creation, or (d) anything else? 3. What, if any, are the unique kinds of user side features that are under consideration for implementation by custom coding the forum software... over and above what this, or equivalent, free message boards offer? 4. Would the members of the worker's coop expect to be paid for the actual work involved in actually doing the stuff for the debating club above outlined in Qs#2&3? If so, are they looking for (a) a token stipend, (b) min wage, (c) a living wage, (d) industry standard fees, or (e) what else? 5. Has anyone penciled out a monthly guess-estimate of hours worked by the worker's coop to support the debating club, and monthly expenses incurred by the debating club? 6. Is it expected that, if the debating club decides to subject itself to advertising, that fees from such advertising would (a) more than pay for the expenses outlined in Q#5, with an excess to be distributed by the debating club, (b) more or less break even, or (c) there would need to be other revenue streams available for the debating club to pay its way. 7. If the answer to Q#6 is (c), what are the other revenue streams under consideration to support the debating club? Examples would be (a) begging for the debating club (Patreon, etc), (b) dues payments by the debating club rank & file, (c) as a pro-bono kinda subsidy from the worker's coop (that is also be taking on outside work to ultimately pay for this), or (d) anything else? |
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Post by zikzak on Jun 3, 2019 21:43:54 GMT
Yes, those are all very important questions that need answering, but we won't get answers because it's always just the same half dozen people trying to get the ball rolling and then watching as the other 300 registered users in this community absolutely refuse to gaf.
Now if, say, you want to discuss whether or not some annoying random troll should have their completely meaningless account blocked, forcing them to register another completely meaningless account if they want to continue trolling, then holy shit will people care! Pages and pages and pages of vigorous debate!
But this stuff, the actual foundations of the online community that allows them that opportunity? No, they can't be bothered at all. Surely somebody else will take care of those things. Surely it will all work out, somehow. It's not a problem at all that the only person who holds the keys to any of this has been almost completely absent in all of these discussions. This community will surely thrive in perpetuity even though there is currently no way at all to ever bring in new people, or any way to recover if that one person who holds the keys gets hit by a bus tomorrow. Or just decides, "fuck it" and never logs in again. What could ever go wrong?
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Post by microbet on Jun 3, 2019 22:44:47 GMT
Really all cuse would have to do to fix those last problems is share a password with a few people on an account that didn't require any real world info (including cc) to set up.
And I suspect you've also seen the "New" posts in the ATF forum a million times only to be disappointed that it's almost always the relationship to 2p2 thread.
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Post by zikzak on Jun 3, 2019 23:23:46 GMT
The thing I think 1 or 2 other people should have is a list of everybody's email addresses so they can all be notified in the event of whatever, but I don't even know if that's something cuse has. Can you see users' email addresses on your free forum?
If that info isn't available it would be good to start collecting it from people willing to volunteer it. People who are well liked and trusted like you and gregorio would be good candidates to hold that info. It could even be anonymous. Just a simple web form.
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Post by microbet on Jun 3, 2019 23:36:49 GMT
Yeah, I can see email addresses on the ProBoards site I started.
I have a small collection of contact info already. If people want me to keep a repository they can PM me their email address.
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Post by gregorio on Jun 4, 2019 0:54:57 GMT
All the mods here can see every user's email address. You can make it private to other users, but for mods it is displayed on your profile page.
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Post by zikzak on Jun 4, 2019 0:58:49 GMT
Glad I signed up with one of my more anonymous ones.
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