My proposal for this forum
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@sass From Sara's reminder, it looks as though we four on the council did agree that there would be a tech committee. But who are its members?
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Hi everyone,
I'd like to share some information for people who might have missed previous threads or comments, and I'd like to offer a proposal.For reference:
Key Motions Passed in Council Meetings (all unanimous!):
Motion 1, v2: “To establish an independent organization with the purpose of owning and maintaining the online discussion forum.”
Motion 2 v2: “Move to establish and try to publish an online discussion forum based on the “NodeBB” forum software.”
Motion 3: “To do due diligence and apply best practices to protect and minimize the storage of PII of users, with these responsibilities explicitly delegated to specific responsible individuals trusted by the council/board.”
Motion 4: “Create a tech committee empowered to make non-controversial “technical decisions” on behalf of the group as needed, with the understanding that the council could revisit those decisions later if needed. The committee should consult the council on questions where the decision may be controversial.”
Motion 5: “Order of operations. 1. Pass bylaws. 2. Elect board. 3. Launch website.”
Motion 6: “Adopt categories list”
Motion 7: “Adopt Code of Conduct, Terms of Service, Privacy Policy.”
Motion 8: “Motion passed unanimously to coalition with Equal Vote and receive donations and pay expenses through Equal Vote account.”Resources:
Bylaws: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1obwaF82x5022V_K-gifdv7Why-O5LzqFAiB_d4EwqAw/edit?usp=sharing
Procedure Manual: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TCRbEXuBqY8N1glKf7YHNWMVIWD7blgZQhwomfteigY/edit?usp=sharing
Privacy policy. Ready for review. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QzZp2QAsP60Ti1WWPk29Q8dInGIM2l438rcJDZLd2Ug/edit?usp=sharing
Terms of Service: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AlnP1gvvc986n0iiYYkA0Tc9L33erbxDftM7sX5ypz4/edit?usp=sharing
Code of Conduct: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ExGrryHIFOjSfPiTtHYBRPw7GQY8lRsCfWiWsLEsImc/edit?usp=sharingForum Council Members:
Sara Wolk, William "Jack" Waugh, David Hinds, Connor Frankston, Micah Fitch.
Moderators:
Sara Wolk. Connor Frankston, David Hinds, Connor Frankston, Micah Fitch, Gary Litke.
Tech Committee
William Waugh, (Rob Brown was added by Jack and keys have been shared but that has not been officially authorized yet).Key points: This forum already has a Council that governs it in terms of the big picture decisions. It also has a tech team and moderation team that can work on things and address issues as needed. They are also empowered to make non-controversial decisions without needing to call a Council meeting or jump through unnecessary hoops. The Forum Council can also approve decisions between meetings, as it has done in the past. The main barrier to progress as I see it is that we could use more volunteers to help. If you'd like to volunteer, email us at forum@equal.vote.
I don't think there is any benefit to rehashing our processes or decisions that have already been made with plenty of consideration and lots of input from Council Members (past and current) and with input gathered from Forum participants at large through the forum itself. To date all our votes since the forum launched have been unanimous.
I do think it's very problematic to make consequential or controversial decisions via forum posting. That opens the door to leadership who don't have the time to read all the posts missing a huge decision. Meetings also allow us to bring in perspectives from other spaces where relevant discussion takes place. Voting via forum post would make it next to impossible to ensure that people have read the relevant discussions and have the background needed before they vote. I love the idea about getting feedback from participants and taking polls to inform council decisions, as we have always done, but for bylaw level items, an actual meeting with real face to face discussion protects the longevity and integrity of the forum much better.
For those who don't know me, I've put in a lot of time and effort over the last 2 years to help build an inclusive, robust, and stable forum that will be an asset to our community for years to come. We included everyone in that process start to finish who wanted to contribute. All the work I've put in has been done in a volunteer capacity, (not as part of my job with Equal Vote). I was really excited and proud to have finished our long list of meta level set up tasks (see resource list above) and hope to not spend too much time revisiting them. The more fun work of making the forum better and bigger and discussing voting science is still ahead.
My Proposal for Forum Next Steps:
- We recruit some new volunteers to our Forum Council, Tech Committee, and Moderation Committee. Each of these requires a different time commitment and skill set so finding the right people for each task is important. Email forum@equal.vote to volunteer.
- We don't waste time rehashing process and governance level conversations unless there is a specific need to do so.
- Jack finishes passing the keys for management and billing of the forum to Equal Vote so Equal Vote can pay for the Forum's hosting and URL with the new grant money we recently obtained for software dev. The Forum is still autonomous, this is just a coalition service that we've gotten agreement from both boards on. This ensures that our Forum assets will be protected and will be renewed and paid for and that keys can be passed easily if needed. (Right now it's under Jack's personal account, which is problematic.) This is all in accordance with what was decided already, and allows us to ensure that the council has recourse if any one person goes AWOL or if there is a problem with an individual admin. Everyone is in agreement that the Forum should be and stay autonomous to keep it welcoming for advocates of all types of reforms.
- We have our next Council Meeting soon. Everyone who would like to attend or volunteer, please put in your availability here.
- We keep the forum constructive and drama free. We resolve any issues or disputes that might come up (such as Rob's here) by reaching out to each other more directly so we can hopefully avoid stress and hurt feelings or unnecessary escalation. I think that keeping posts like this off the forum itself unless other avenues have been tried and failed will help recruit and retain volunteers and forum participants in general. It will certainly help me be more comfortable inviting new people to join us here.
In order to improve engagement on this forum we should double down on the commitments we've already made to make this a non-toxic space for new people and to keep our current volunteers motivated to complete the action items already on the list.
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@sarawolk Generally valid and useful points and thanks for gathering the list of decisions in one place and reminding us of them. I hope that all who have an interest or an opinion on how the forum should be run, both on the social side and the technical side, can come together and see their concerns addressed and I hope we can all benefit from the ideas for improvements.
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@sass said in My proposal for this forum:
I'll note that the Equal Vote Software Development committee has been working on some of the features you've described in a modular way that should be easy to fold into the forum soon, including a tool that allows people to vote with many different voting methods. This work is already being done by a coalition of volunteers and I'm sure they would like your help. The best way to do so is to sign up to volunteer at equal.vote/join.
Hi, I'm one of the members of the equal vote software committee and I'm new to the forum. I'd be happy to start sharing regular updates here to keep people in the loop on our software projects. It could be a good way to find opportunities for collaborating and using each other's tools
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@sarawolk said in My proposal for this forum:
We recruit some new volunteers to our Forum Council, Tech Committee, and Moderation Committee.
From where? The forum has been nearly a ghost town for most of its existence. But if a team of volunteers want to step up, that sounds like a plan and it doesn't sound like you need what I've offered. I will admit it seems a bit like magical thinking to me, but maybe you know something I don't.
I suggest you assemble this team of volunteers first, let them convince you that they are actually going to stick around and do the work, then make decisions. To me, it doesn't make sense to make decisions assuming a bunch of people are going to be ready to take on responsibilities, especially if those people haven't been participating in the forum already. I just don't see it happening.
When talking to Jack, he seemed to be convinced there was tech team ready to jump in. So maybe I'm wrong. I just have seen no signs of this.
We keep the forum constructive and drama free.
Offering to step up and run this democratically, per the original vision, doesn't sound like drama, and I would consider it constructive. I'm not attacking you or anyone else. I'm just saying the forum wasn't gaining traction, for very predictable reasons. Meanwhile the only person who has taken on day-to-day responsibility for the forum, Jack, says he's not willing to do that anymore. I have offered to spend a lot of my time, time that most people on the council don't seem to have, to both fill in the role Jack had played, while otherwise making positive things happen.
Also regarding drama: I've gone out of my way to try to suppress drama on the forum, only once using my admin powers (in a case of doxxing, I edited a post and diplomatically DM'd its author [1]), but often stepping in [2], sometimes in the awkward situation of, well, our tech admin posting stuff that many found offensive, off-topic and divisive. I don't know if anyone else ever has, other than a couple people weighing in, such as @spelunker did when he first arrived and was greeted by some toxic content, or as @Andy-Dienes did in that same situation. (I believe we've lost Andy, one of our best contributors --- I don't want to speak for him but I believe the "tone" of the forum was a significant thing that drove him away, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't because of a discussion of the future of the forum, since he also wished for some significant changes [3]).
Regardless, I am not trying to rehash events of two years ago, and am not attacking anyone. I don't see how this is escalating anything. I do feel that general issues about the forum's future should be resolvable in public at the forum. I understand taking things to private discussion for very specific cases, but for discussing how decisions are made at the forum and such..... why the need for secrecy? If you are worried about someone coming to the forum and being put off by my post...well, sorry, but I don't get it. If they are going to be put off by anything, it is that there is little activity, and whatever activity there is is not easy to find without several clicks, and if they do that, sometimes it is toxic and off topic. Not that we are talking about options to make the forum better.
I am honestly confused as to Jack's ongoing role. I understood he was wanting to back away due to frustration over a non-responsive council. If this wasn't the case, I would never have offered to step up.
That said, I think we need a lot more than what Jack has been doing, as I have outlined above. Basically, someone who is likely to be here on a daily basis, managing the social side, adding features and organizing the site and content etc. I don't see why a forum would be expected to succeed in the absence of this.
In any case, my offer stands for the time being but unless I hear strongly enough that people want this, I'm mostly assuming that the few left at the forum aren't interested.
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(the doxxing has been removed but this is one conversation where moderation was otherwise needed) https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/256/new-method-i-think-hare-squared/12
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https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/301/deutschland/14
https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/303/the-metadiscussion
Note that if Jack wasn't the admin of the board, and we had anyone else who was actively moderating, a better way to handle it is for a moderator to delete the post, and DM Jack to diplomatically explain why without making a big public deal. -
Here is where Andy suggested improvements , we all agreed, and nothing happened. If I had the role I propose, I would have put it to an open vote (on the forum), notified the council, and unless there were objections within a week or two, made the changes:
https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/227/way-too-many-categories
I would have, separately, proposed and held a vote on changing the front page to be the "recent activity page", with a banner for links to other things at the site such as the CES forum archive.
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