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Governance Proposal - KD01, KD04, KD06 - Open for Community Feedback until Feb 25th [POLL]
minor incident
publicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Team regular
publicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Team regular
Hello!
Many of you have been waiting a long time for this, and we want to thank you all for your patience. After the first round of public feedback on "KD01", we took your comments, concerns, criticism, and suggestions all to heart. The Governance team spent weeks going over all of your feedback, distilling it down to the most common themes, and discussing how to adjust the plan to properly apply the most viable feedback and draft a proposal to better fit the community's desires. There was a lot of feedback, so this was no simple task. That's why it took a while to get this second round ready -- We all wanted to make sure it was done right.
A few things first off:
This is another round for feedback and public opinion. The overall plan is to ratify ALL of the mission critical KDs at once into our Bylaws in a single ratification once we've gotten feedback on all of them and they're all in a place where we're confident that the community is satisfied with them. There are 7 KDs we consider MVPs.
For today, In addition to this being the second round of feedback for (a revised version of) KD01 - Decision Making Process, we are also presenting both KD04 - Process for Governance Selection and KD06 - Governance Positions and Roles for feedback as well. As many of you commented, there were certain parts of KD01 that referenced processes and decisions that would be outlined in KD04 or KD06. These three KD's are extremely intertwined as they all deal with official roles and positions for Coin Return and decision making processes those positions are involved in. By presenting all three together, we hope it gives you all a better, clearer big picture.
In the following 3 posts, you'll find the full text of each KD, preceded by a brief summary of what the KD is generally about. We are also presenting KD06 first, followed by KD01, and KD04 last, because after review of them all as whole, we've found that this order makes more logical sense for understanding each successive proposal. We will also include a link to a Google Doc version of all three KDs at the end of this OP, if you find that more convenient. Also at the end of this post, you'll find the link to the poll where you can give your overall opinion of the KDs. Due to feedback received on the last version of this poll, we are not making it mandatory to provide a reason if you object to these KDs as written, although we still strongly encourage you to do so as we have no way to make adjustments without knowing what you did or did not like. Your feedback last time was invaluable, and while we hope this time we've hit closer to the mark and there will hopefully be less major feedback, we still want to hear it if you have any concerns. We will only revisit these KDs further if we receive mostly disagreement, so please treat this as your final chance to say yes or no to these Key Decisions.
One last but important thing to note: You'll see in these KDs that the process for appointing Moderators is handled primarily by the Board of Directors (who are themselves elected by the community). As you're probably aware, the current Board of Directors is entirely self-appointed (out of necessity to get the organization founded, etc), but we will be holding a proper election to choose our first elected Board of Directors before Moderator appointments happen.
Google Docs link for all three KDs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1whFuZUvE8fO8T3Bc7AOSjj__SzHGlr1myVJeD-_H2Q0/edit?usp=sharing
Poll link (please read through all 3 KDs before voting): https://forms.gle/4trzDuGzxwHGvjSN9
This poll will be open until February 25th at 10pm (EST). Please do not feel that you need to vote early. Please, take your time to engage with the conversation and do not feel that you need to rush your vote.
PS: As always, if you have questions and ask them in the thread, the community will likely try to help answer your questions, but if there's any conflicting answers, please do not consider answers definitive unless they come from someone involved in the drafting of these proposals ( @Tef @Feral @Chanus @zerzhul @Gereg or myself)
PPS: NOTE FROM THE MOD STAFF: Just a general reminder to be kind and thoughtful in your responses here, folks. Ask for clarification before you assume intent, ignore and report rather than engage and get in a fight, and stick to the topics at hand.
Any breaches of the rules will result in temp thread kicks, with escalation if it continues after the kick expires.
Many of you have been waiting a long time for this, and we want to thank you all for your patience. After the first round of public feedback on "KD01", we took your comments, concerns, criticism, and suggestions all to heart. The Governance team spent weeks going over all of your feedback, distilling it down to the most common themes, and discussing how to adjust the plan to properly apply the most viable feedback and draft a proposal to better fit the community's desires. There was a lot of feedback, so this was no simple task. That's why it took a while to get this second round ready -- We all wanted to make sure it was done right.
A few things first off:
This is another round for feedback and public opinion. The overall plan is to ratify ALL of the mission critical KDs at once into our Bylaws in a single ratification once we've gotten feedback on all of them and they're all in a place where we're confident that the community is satisfied with them. There are 7 KDs we consider MVPs.
For today, In addition to this being the second round of feedback for (a revised version of) KD01 - Decision Making Process, we are also presenting both KD04 - Process for Governance Selection and KD06 - Governance Positions and Roles for feedback as well. As many of you commented, there were certain parts of KD01 that referenced processes and decisions that would be outlined in KD04 or KD06. These three KD's are extremely intertwined as they all deal with official roles and positions for Coin Return and decision making processes those positions are involved in. By presenting all three together, we hope it gives you all a better, clearer big picture.
In the following 3 posts, you'll find the full text of each KD, preceded by a brief summary of what the KD is generally about. We are also presenting KD06 first, followed by KD01, and KD04 last, because after review of them all as whole, we've found that this order makes more logical sense for understanding each successive proposal. We will also include a link to a Google Doc version of all three KDs at the end of this OP, if you find that more convenient. Also at the end of this post, you'll find the link to the poll where you can give your overall opinion of the KDs. Due to feedback received on the last version of this poll, we are not making it mandatory to provide a reason if you object to these KDs as written, although we still strongly encourage you to do so as we have no way to make adjustments without knowing what you did or did not like. Your feedback last time was invaluable, and while we hope this time we've hit closer to the mark and there will hopefully be less major feedback, we still want to hear it if you have any concerns. We will only revisit these KDs further if we receive mostly disagreement, so please treat this as your final chance to say yes or no to these Key Decisions.
One last but important thing to note: You'll see in these KDs that the process for appointing Moderators is handled primarily by the Board of Directors (who are themselves elected by the community). As you're probably aware, the current Board of Directors is entirely self-appointed (out of necessity to get the organization founded, etc), but we will be holding a proper election to choose our first elected Board of Directors before Moderator appointments happen.
Google Docs link for all three KDs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1whFuZUvE8fO8T3Bc7AOSjj__SzHGlr1myVJeD-_H2Q0/edit?usp=sharing
Poll link (please read through all 3 KDs before voting): https://forms.gle/4trzDuGzxwHGvjSN9
This poll will be open until February 25th at 10pm (EST). Please do not feel that you need to vote early. Please, take your time to engage with the conversation and do not feel that you need to rush your vote.
PS: As always, if you have questions and ask them in the thread, the community will likely try to help answer your questions, but if there's any conflicting answers, please do not consider answers definitive unless they come from someone involved in the drafting of these proposals ( @Tef @Feral @Chanus @zerzhul @Gereg or myself)
PPS: NOTE FROM THE MOD STAFF: Just a general reminder to be kind and thoughtful in your responses here, folks. Ask for clarification before you assume intent, ignore and report rather than engage and get in a fight, and stick to the topics at hand.
Any breaches of the rules will result in temp thread kicks, with escalation if it continues after the kick expires.
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
minor incident on
+11
Posts
Summary: KD06 explains the various roles and governance positions at Coin Return and the responsibilities and requirements of each. This proposal also sets the requirements for a "New Member" to graduate to full "Member" status (20 posts, or an active account for 30 days). Graduating to "Member" status conveys the ability to vote in elections, and to be appointed to other roles (Moderator, etc). This proposal also outlines the structure and responsibilities of the Coin Return Board of Directors and Executive Officers.
KD06: Governance Positions
The Coin Return Society is an organization acting on behalf of the Coin Return Forums community. The Society has the positions below related to governing both the Society and the Forums. Each member of the Board of Directors and Executive Officers must act in good faith for the stewardship of the organization, or risk being held personally liable to the organization.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
The Board of Directors is composed of:
Directors
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility Director
President
EXECUTIVE OFFICERS
Vice President
Secretary
Treasurer
Technical Administrator
FORUM USERS
Moderators
Members
New Members
Summary: KD01 defines the decision making process for various aspects of Coin Return. This covers how Moderators will be expected to make decisions when issuing corrections to Members who have broken Forum Rules, including which decisions require varying levels of consensus from other Moderators, and what the requirements are for the Moderator team to reverse a previously issued decision. Also included in this proposal are the voting requirements for governance decisions, such as making alterations to our Values, Code of Conduct, and Forum Rules, as well as for moderator appointments, board member appointments, and the removals of these appointments. The final part of this proposal covers the process by which the community can initiate a governance change (amendments to rules, recalling moderators or board members, etc).
The Coin Return Society is an organization acting on behalf of the Coin Return Forums community. The community must have a role in decision making by the organization to ensure the effective and sustainable operation of the Society and, in turn, the Forums.
KD01-A: Decision Making Limitations
Decision making for Forum Governance is limited to Members in Good Standing, Moderators, and Board Members.
Definition: Good Standing is defined as not banned from the Forum.
Definition: A Member is someone who has made 20 posts or had an active account for 30 days.
Decision making for Moderator decisions is limited to Moderators.
KD01-B: Forum Governance Thresholds
The thresholds for voting include:
The timeline for voting will be 7 days unless otherwise extended by the Board of Directors.
Quorum for both thresholds is twenty percent (20%) of the average daily active Members over the past 30 days.
Quorum for both thresholds in a Board of Directors poll is five (5) Directors.
KD01-C: Forum Governance Decisions
Certain actions affecting the Coin Return Society (the legal entity) or the Coin Return Forums requires community discussion and agreement. The actions requiring community input include:
KD01-D: Moderator Decision Thresholds
Moderator decisions must meet the following thresholds:
KD01-E: Moderator Decisions
Certain actions by Moderators have the power to affect community membership status. Moderators will always be welcome to seek the input and agreement of additional moderators, even for actions that they can take unilaterally. The actions requiring Moderator input include:
Moderator action on the following situations will not be bound by the requirements of the moderator actions table:
KD01-F: Community Led Governance Changes
Community members must have the ability to propose changes to existing rules and bylaws. The following process must be followed to submit a change to the existing rules or bylaws:
Summary: KD04 covers, in depth, the process for both appointing/electing as well as removing Moderators and Board members.
In brief, the Board of Directors are elected by the community for 3 year terms, without term limits. The methodology for voting in Board elections is the Single Transferrable Vote system (STV -- a type of ranked choice voting well suited to elections that may have more than one opening to fill). All Community Members in good standing (not currently banned) are allowed to participate in Board of Directors elections.
Conversely, Moderators are chosen and appointed by the Board of Directors from a pool of candidates who have expressed interest or been nominated by others. Moderators appointed by the Board of Directors undergo a simple community majority ratification to be confirmed. This process prevents Moderator candidates from having to "campaign" against each other and endure an open election "popularity contest" process in order to be selected, but still gives the community a final chance to veto an appointment during ratification if the Community feels that the Board has made a mistake.
The below thresholds for voting are found in KD01 and are provided here as reference:
Quorum for both thresholds in a community-wide poll is twenty percent (20%) of the average daily active Members over the past 30 days.
Quorum for both thresholds in a Board of Directors poll is five (5) Directors.
KD04-A: Process for Board of Directors Selection
When a Director position on the Board of Directors is vacant, the existing Board of Directors will follow the below process for filling the position:
Submit a call for nominations to the Forum one month prior to an election.
Members of the forums can nominate themselves for open positions on the Board of Directors. If a Member is nominated by another member, but has not nominated themselves, the Board of Directors will communicate with the Member prior to voting.
A Single Transferable Vote (STV) system will be used for the Board of Directors elections.
Information on the process and intent behind the STV model can be found here:
When a DEIA Director or President position on the Board of Directors is vacant, the existing Board of Directors will follow the below process for filling the position:
KD04-B: Process for Moderator Selection
The Coin Return Forums will have at least 9 Moderators, and as many as 11 Moderators. When a position of Moderator is vacant, the Board of Directors will follow the below process for filling the position:
- Submit a call for Expressions of Interest (“EOI”) to the forum one month prior to an election.
- Provide a private poll to receive EOIs two weeks prior to the election.
- Remove all EOIs for candidates who are not currently in Good Standing.
- Review the list of potential candidates for the Moderator position in discussion with the existing Moderator team using the following criteria:
- Prior experience as a moderator.
- Moderation history as a Member of Coin Return.
- General capability for moderation duties.
- Trustworthiness with personally identifying information and issues of a private and sensitive nature.
- Spread of time coverage, ideally with two moderators each from UTC-8, UTC-0, and UTC+8 time zones or close to those time periods.
- Ensuring a total of at least three Moderators identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or a Person of Color (BIPOC), or as part of the Queer, Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender, Bisexual, Asexual/Allied, and Gay/Genderqueer (QUILTBAG) community.
- Candidates will be informed privately if their EOIs are declined by the Board of Directors, with an explanation as to why. Candidates are not required to keep this information confidential.
- Select one (1) candidate from the list of potential candidates to present to the community for ratification via Up or Down vote.
- If after seven (7) days of voting the candidate passes with a Voting Majority, the candidate will be appointed to the position of Moderator.
- On an unsuccessful vote, the Board of Directors will review the EOIs to determine a secondary candidate for the community to ratify. The ratification process starts again for this new candidate. This process will repeat on further unsuccessful ratifications until either a candidate is ratified, or there are no more candidates to ratify..
- If a position remains unfilled after the candidate pool is exhausted, a new call for EOIs will commence within 4 months, and the ratification process will begin again.
Candidates who were not selected but meet the requirements for candidacy may still be put forward at a future date as needed.KD04-C: Process for Community Removal of Governance Position Member
The removal of a member from the Board of Directors can be completed via the following two methods:
The removal of an Executive Officer from their position can only be completed by the Board of Directors in process (1) above.
If a member of the Board of Directors has committed misconduct pursuant to KD09, the voting threshold for removal is lowered to a Voting Majority.
KD04-D: Process for Removal of Moderator
The removal of a Moderator from their position can be completed via the following two methods:
KD04-E: Board Member Term Limits
Board Member terms are every three years. Existing Board Members are entitled to stand for re-election.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
Correct, we'll be going through all of the documents on a final pass through before placing them up for community ratification to make sure all the language lines up perfectly.
Yes. Consider these our way of presenting the important details of each KD as cleanly and digestibly as possible, and any slight inconsistencies in wording is mostly just down to each being written up individually (and at slightly different times) for easiest presentation.
Gotta go fast
I think you convinced me this makes sense last go around - slow mode could just lead to a person getting dogpiled with no ability to respond.
My thoughts reading through and again these are minor questions or quibbles:
KD01-A - Should the Member definition include a call-out similar to KD04-A.3.a for people who are members of Penny Arcade Forums prior to CoRe? I could see a weird edge case where someone comes to CoRe from here having been a member of the community for decades, but hasn't hit the 20 post / 30 day threshold over in CoRe.
KD01-E - We had some discussion here and in the various Discords about an immediate flag 'This Post Is Under Moderator Review' so the community gets feedback while moderators decide on additional action. Should this be an item in the Decision table (probably Unilateral?).
KD04-B.4.b - I assume refers to the potential moderator's history of infractions or other moderator actions, correct? Should that explicitly state moderation history on Penny Arcade Forums should be permitted consideration as well, or would that just be covered in the catch-all item c) General capability for moderation duties?
KD04-D - Is there a confidentiality expectation for either the Board or Moderators? For example, if in KD04-D.1.f, the moderators were in agreement but then the board chose a different course of action, would the moderators be free to discuss this (similar to how in KD04-B.5 rejected candidates aren't required to keep information confidential).
KD04-D.1.g - Is there a definition of what 'must consider' entails and how that consideration must be weighted or is that up to the board?
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
KD01-A - Yes, there was some discussion about this. Of course the entire initial class of users coming over from PA to Core are automatically inducted as "Members" straight away, and the same would apply for anyone who does so a bit later, before PA finally shuts the forums down. The issue is that it becomes tricky or impossible to verify them as a former PA person after there's no PA forum anymore. It's a bit of a TBD area, I think -- some people we can probably handle with vouches from members in good standing who know them, but it might have to be a case-by-case thing.
KD01-E - I believe what we basically came down with was that in situations like that, a "Warning" could be issues, and the post could be noted as under further review, while the Mod staff seeks consensus to "upgrade" to a more serious action. I'd say it's more of an SOP issue for the mods, rather than something that should be specifically codified here, but generally yes, I think it was something that everyone basically agreed with. Make things like this more transparent to the users so there are fewer nasty surprises.
KD04-B.4.b - I believe that is specifically referencing the member's history of received warnings/infractions/etc as a member. No specific cut off detailed (like, No more than X number of warnings in the last Y months), but just to note that their behavior and ability to follow our rules and CoC would be factored into the decision. And then yes, "General Capability for moderation duties" is sort of the catch-all for anything not explicitly called out.
KD04-D - I would say that there'd be no prohibition on the moderation team discussing this internally in the event that they dissent from the Board decision, although like all behind-the-scenes Moderation discussion, it would generally be considered bad form to "air dirty laundry" to the forum publicly.
KD04-D.1.g - It basically means that the Board must look at how the Moderation staff voted on the issue. They are expected to consider this (along with all other factors) in their decision making process, although they are of course under no obligation to abide by it, or even give it special weight, if they disagree. In these situations the Board is the final decision on matters like this, but a smart Board will always at least consider the voice of the Moderation staff due to their unique insight on many issues. We simply have to trust our elected board to come to correct, or at least reasonably agreeable decisions.
Whew, hope that helps, but let me know if there's anything else I can expand on, or if any of that isn't clear. Appreciate you taking the time to weigh in this, and to point out those concerns.
1) Yes, we aim to have those definitions align in both places.
2) Not opposed to including that in the Decision table, but it should certainly be unilateral.
3) Reasonably part a captures that in terms of their past moderation experience.
4) We explicitly discussed this (I at least believe we did but a lot of things are running together now) and are of the opinion that moderators can freely discuss these issues and not be infracted for it.
5) Nope! In my head I envision this similar to "public hearing" requirements where the Board will be required to have a moment to discuss publicly, but they aren't required to speak and can go to a vote. Essentially a "do we agree or disagree".
Not based on current data, as the percentage will change based on the number of users. Active daily user is going to be people who logged in over the prior month or so. The idea here is that if a vote can't get even 20% of users involved then the Board/petitioner needs to reconsider their proposal.
Average Daily Active Users are determined by the Technical Admin running a report which can give us that data. It basically amounts to an average of all Members (not counting "New Members") who logged in at least once during the prior 30 days. This seemed to be the simplest, most effective way to obtain an approximation of what we could assume our "Current Registered Voter" pool would be, since it would not be bogged down by users who had not visited the site in months.
By this metric, every one of the major votes we've run to date (forum structure, forum name, values/coc ratification, etc) should have easily met that quorum even based on our PA numbers.
It's basically just there to head off the possibility of a fluke where a vote only gets 20 people turning out to it for some reason so that we aren't basing major decisions on extraordinarily small pools of users.
not every report requires action, so setting up an expectation that action will always be considered and taken is just an undue burden
oh, to be clear, this was only referring to posts that were reported and the mods decided that it likely warranted one of the more severe mod actions (temp ban, perma ban) that require a vote of the full mod staff -- basically being able to hang a "This post is being reviewed" on those for the 24-48 that the mod staff may take to vote on it before acting.
Everyone would do well to remember that fact (as well as all the "suck it up you lost" gloating) when voting for anything related to Coin Return in the future.
edit: As written, you only need a majority to add the forum rule "anyone who votes against the next forum structure poll will be banned" but you need a supermajority to actually change the structure.
If 2/3 of the community agree to change something, then it will change. Supermajority is a very standard requirement for changing governance rules in most organizations
Edit: KD01-F lays out how rules can be changed. If at least 20% of the community agrees to a rule change, and the Board of Directors agree to the rule change, then it can be voted on and passed.
1) The "winner" of the forum structure vote couldn't even scrape together a clear majority but now it takes a supermajority to change?
2) Why is forum structure held to a higher standard than adding or removing rules or appointment to moderators?
Cool, I assumed, but I have learned much in my life about what happens when you assume.
I need to digest the docs a bit more, but on first read I think they sound very reasonable, and I appreciate all the work that went into them. And especially the care that went into getting feedback from the community in their construction.
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
I can't really speak to your second question. That was what was proposed last time, and the group didn't feel that there was significant pushback against it, so it stayed as-is. Your disagreement with it has been noted, however, and I do intend to discuss it with the working group.
1) is not true. The winner definitely pulled together a clear majority in every way you could interpret this.
So mods can unilaterally decide to forbid discussion of things included in the KD01 doc? That's convenient.
you can discuss whether the voting thresholds proposed make sense
we are not debating the results or validity of the previous forum structure poll here
We discussed this, but more feedback would be helpful. One solution would be to create a banner/announcement, but we don't necessarily want those to get flooded with myriad proposals. End of the day, my thought is that it really is on the proposer to get a quorum through, but maybe after a certain point (say 10% instead of 20%) it gets put in an announcement banner.
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
if there's no time limit on a suggestion gaining enough support to go to the Board, there's no real need for urgency
if there's an urgent need that should reflect in the support it receives
that's more an automatic trigger than a requirement for consideration
Well we do have new options...
phorums.blackjack-and-hookers.org
I kind of like the idea of maybe a regular (maybe monthly or biweekly?) post from the secretary or vice president summarizing any currently active proposals that people can check in on.
That said, I don’t hate the idea of an announcement when a suggestion starts getting close to the 20% threshold so people remember to go check it out regularly.
Also, folks can always throw links in their signatures/etc.
Definitely open to more thoughts on that, though!
It is, apparently, your prerogative as a mod and co-author of this document to decide what people are allowed to discuss before voting on said document.
Just another reminder for everyone that any suggestion that a given vote is "advisory" or "just a poll" or "temporary" or "can be changed later" is completely untrue.
Would a suitable space for these sorts of proposals be the Coin Return Administration sub-forum itself (on CoRe)?