Have we considered an actual a mechanism for making rules change proposals actually visible? Is it just entirely on the proposer to campaign to get their thread enough attention? I can’t imagine a quorum of users would regularly visit feature suggestion subforums just to see what new proposals they could vote on
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.
Would a suitable space for these sorts of proposals be the Coin Return Administration sub-forum itself (on CoRe)?
So I know there's a specific post type that Delz wants to use for Feature Suggestions specifically, but I'm not sure what else we would use an actual Admin board for if Bugs and Features are both in their own boards.
maybe the real panopticon was the friends we made along the way
0
ToxI kill threadsDilige, et quod vis facRegistered Userregular
Generally I kinda don't love that the Rules is its own subforum. Like I get that's just what we've done, and that it does help visibility to a degree, but I don't feel like I've ever seen that on other forums
maybe the real panopticon was the friends we made along the way
0
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered User, Moderatormod
an Admin section with Bugs, Feedback, and Announcements as three visible forums would make sense i think
Allegedly a voice of reason.
+4
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
Thanks for the work you all put into this, it's not an easy task and much appreciated!
Will there be a dedicated subforum for creating proposals leading to a vote? How do we give it sufficient visibility?
There would need to be a dedicated forum in some form, yes. It should be relatively painless and friction-free using the Xenforo upvote system we’re currently using in the Beta for (software) feature suggestions. We’ll have to work out placement and details, but a big part of it will simply be “retraining” folks to remember to check out the suggestions forum (or whatever it ends up being called) on a regular basis to upvote things they thing would be important improvements to the community. And of course, we’re open to other suggestions on how to ensure visibility, without everyone being inundated over it, of course
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
Thanks for the work you all put into this, it's not an easy task and much appreciated!
Will there be a dedicated subforum for creating proposals leading to a vote? How do we give it sufficient visibility?
There would need to be a dedicated forum in some form, yes. It should be relatively painless and friction-free using the Xenforo upvote system we’re currently using in the Beta for (software) feature suggestions. We’ll have to work out placement and details, but a big part of it will simply be “retraining” folks to remember to check out the suggestions forum (or whatever it ends up being called) on a regular basis to upvote things they thing would be important improvements to the community. And of course, we’re open to other suggestions on how to ensure visibility, without everyone being inundated over it, of course
I was thinking there's a pretty major difference between posting a feature suggestion for a new button or something, as opposed to proposing a mod be removed or the forums restructured - something that needs 20% quorum and will trigger a vote. So I'm wondering how these more serious proposals that need quorum will be communicated. Maybe with prefixes we can visually distinguish them, but I suspect a lot of people won't be in the habit of checking the suggestion forum(s) all the time.
0
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
edited February 21
Yeah, I’m not sure if it makes sense to just keep feature suggestions and governance related suggestions all in one place for the convenience of folks just having to check one forum once a week or so for all of that? Even though they’re very different processes, it might be the most straightforward way to do it, and just depending on prefixes to differentiate them may be good enough.
But yeah, no getting around the fact that people will just need to learn to check in on this stuff occasionally, I think. But that’s also the reason we settled on 20% for the threshold there, since that’s a number that isn’t oppressively high—especially if we keep people in the habit of being involved in the management of CoRe—but it still remains high enough bar to weed out being notified constantly of nuisance suggestions from one or two folks with axes to grind.
And as mentioned above, the 20% mark is just the point at which the board is obligated to consider the suggestion and vote on it. If members of the board see a great suggestion that has only hit 10% so far, there’s no reason a couple of board members can’t present that directly to the board for a vote if they feel it makes sense to act immediately instead of waiting for it to hit 20%.
minor incident on
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
+3
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
Would it perhaps be useful is a board member put together a community document every quarter or so with proposals?
Something akin to a newsletter?
But... I don't know how that doesn't come across as a letter of grievances?
0
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered User, Moderatormod
maybe would it be possible to highlight the forum itself when there are new suggestion/petition threads?
Allegedly a voice of reason.
0
ToxI kill threadsDilige, et quod vis facRegistered Userregular
edited February 21
This is not particularly relevant to the overall document but I'm curious - outside of the President and Executive Officers, will any other Board members be expected to be publicly identified? ie- by an actual, legal name?
Tox on
maybe the real panopticon was the friends we made along the way
0
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
This is not particularly relevant to the overall document but I'm curious - outside of the President and Executive Officers, will any other Board members be expected to be publicly identified? ie- by an actual, legal name?
So, it's a little more complicated than just a yes/no answer on that.
Essentially, all members of the Board of Directors, plus at least one Executive Officer (the President, in all likelihood, although it could, technically, be any of the EOs) must have their names listed on the Delaware Annual Report for the company.
Technically the information on this document is public record, however, after talking to our registered agent in Delaware (and then also confirming myself by trying to look it up), it turns out that there are a couple of hurdles to anyone looking that information up.
First, it costs $20 to get that report digitally from the state website. But notably, the state does not provide the actual form with Director names on the digital version that anyone can request fairly easily.
In order to get a copy of the actual form that includes the Director names, a person needs to submit a lengthy request with the state which requires them to know the corporation name and our state filing number (not something that would normally be shared outside of the Directors/Officers), pay somewhere between $50 and $100 (the fee schedule is kind of unclear, tbh), and wait a couple of weeks for a hard copy to be mailed out.
Now, I'm certainly not going to tell someone who is extremely concerned for their privacy what's worth being concerned about or not, but in practical terms I think it's safe to say that your personal info will be reasonably hard to find unless someone is truly going all out to track you down -- definitely all but impossible for someone to simply stumble across.
And for one last wrinkle, Delaware does not require reporting changes to the Board of Directors. The only time the names of the Directors have to be reported is once per year when the annual tax report is filed and it just has to include the directors as of the date of the filing. And on that particular form, it does not require an SSN, photo ID, or anything of that sort.
minor incident on
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
0
ToxI kill threadsDilige, et quod vis facRegistered Userregular
So basically anyone who wants to stand for any Board position should be prepared at least to provide their government name to other Board members, is kinda the vibe?
maybe the real panopticon was the friends we made along the way
0
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
Technically only the Officer filing the report would have to see the entire thing (along with the Secretary who maintains our document library). Other board members would never have to see your name (again, unless they went through the fairly arduous document request process I mentioned above)
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
procedural nit:
by setting the quorum for all Board votes to 5, every board vote is now supermajority, at least for the "yes" or non-status-quo side of the vote
(i.e., 3 members opposed to a majority vote could instead refuse to participate, denying quorum, and defeating the 4 members in favor)
imo quorum should be defined as the number of member needed for a vote to pass, were all the members present
(this opens up another avenue of foul play, pushing though votes when you don't have a winning threshold, but it can be countered, e.g. 3 members initiate a majority vote when they know only one other member will attend, but that 4th member can refuse to vote and this time justly deny quorum)
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
otherwise, this all looks good and is nicely cleaned up from the initial round
thanks all!
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
to reduce the possibility of fuckery, I'd say new members should need 20 posts and 30 days active account to be promoted to full member. are we going to use this same system for access to the private forums?
I feel like the President should be ratified by the community? like, we're getting input on moderators, but not President? seems weird. or maybe they could be appointed from the elected board, and we could elect 6 board members instead.
I also think that sub-forum changes (rename/additions/deletions/name changes) could use a smaller voting limit of 'a Majority/Supermajority of active members who will be affected by the change.'.
I don't think I have anything valuable to add about decisions regarding Graphic Violence, for instance, as I do not visit that board, and so I do not think that I should have any say in changes to that board, unless perhaps it affects the common space of the forum index substantially.
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
edited February 21
This is more a rights and permissions issue than related to the core KD issues at hand, but might it also be beneficial to restrict New Members from the ability to DM others? I'm thinking primarily of spam and bot issues.
I also think that sub-forum changes (rename/additions/deletions/name changes) could use a smaller voting limit of 'a Majority/Supermajority of active members who will be affected by the change.'.
I don't think I have anything valuable to add about decisions regarding Graphic Violence, for instance, as I do not visit that board, and so I do not think that I should have any say in changes to that board, unless perhaps it affects the common space of the forum index substantially.
I think I agree in principal. If the people who most commonly post in the crafting forum really want a particular change that has no impact on any other subforum, then the opinions of a bunch of people who only post in politics seems less relevant. I like to think that people in other forums wouldn't be jagweeds about something that doesn't affect them, but you never know.
That said, I don't know how you really define "is a member of a subforum impacted by a change" in a good, common sense manner that isn't either too limiting or so broad as to include everyone.
More generally, I think that the super majority requirement for any kind of structure change of any type is a de facto bar to the structure ever changing in any substantive way. I don't care too much, because I pretty much accepted at the time of the structure vote that this was just the structure CoRe would have forever. I just think that inertia combined with change aversion means that what we start with is what we get.
Would you say I had a plethora of pinatas?
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
to reduce the possibility of fuckery, I'd say new members should need 20 posts and 30 days active account to be promoted to full member.
In prior voting sessions, the TT found that we have a significant population of lurkers engaged with the forums. In the GC, we're taking a general stance that lurkers are members of our community who enjoy the forums in a manner that feels right for them, and we want to be inclusive of that.
Personally, I (and other members of the GC) recognize that this does carry some additional risk of fuckery. We also expect that this risk can be partially mitigated by some of our other controls against bot and alt accounts. Meanwhile, requiring posts for membership can also be gamed by an adversary.
Overall, we're leaning towards the risk being manageable, and not being worth alienating non-hostile lurkers. But of course we're open to feedback.
This is more a rights and permissions issue than related to the core KD issues at hand, but might it also be beneficial to restrict New Members from the ability to DM others? I'm thinking primarily of spam and bot issues.
Speaking for myself, that's not a bad idea and I suspect we'll probably revisit it in the future. I'd amend it a little bit - there are valid use cases for a new account to be able to DM people, at least DM mods. There are a lot of similar soft restrictions on new accounts I could see being useful.
From a governance committee perspective, we're not trying to capture all of the (potential) restrictions on new accounts in this phase of decision making. We're looking at the privileges related to governance - which for members primarily means voting (and expressing interest in moderatorship).
Edit: clarified some verbiage.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I think the currently written 20 posts OR 30 days is sufficient.
Lurkers are part of the community even if they only post once a year in the lurker thread (or not at all). Some of them may choose to start posting, some may not for various reasons.
If someone spams 20 posts to hit that threshold, or create accounts and let them mature for a month before harassing / spamming the forums those parameters for membership can be adjusted.
I'd prefer a longer time period. I understand we have lurkers who might not have accounts and want to vote or participate in their community but I don't think it's onerous to ask them to register an account long before they get a vote or be able to send messages to others.
20ish posts+30 days to move from new to full membership or 3 (maybe 6?) months isn't really that long of a wait. It stops a lot of the dumb shit we've been putting up with for a few years too, but if someone's that devoted to talking about the papacy they might just make a bunch of accounts on 6ish month rotations to harass users.
I wouldn't object to a longer period, but I do agree that lurkers should get to enjoy the forums their own way. Putting a required post limit on it feels bad to me. I don't want people posting just so they can be considered full members.
I wouldn't object to a longer period, but I do agree that lurkers should get to enjoy the forums their own way. Putting a required post limit on it feels bad to me. I don't want people posting just so they can be considered full members.
lurker should just have a longer wait, no reason to force them to post
I do agree with Douglas that we should limit the new members from DMs and such (I don't recall if that was in the documents or not). Members can initiate and new members can respond, but new members should be limited in some regard from just spamming/harassing folks. Maybe rate limit them like jailing does to users on PA. I don't know.
I wouldn't object to a longer period, but I do agree that lurkers should get to enjoy the forums their own way. Putting a required post limit on it feels bad to me. I don't want people posting just so they can be considered full members.
I dont know why you feel bad about it. They dont post, they dont shape the conversation. Why should they shape the forum'
I wouldn't object to a longer period, but I do agree that lurkers should get to enjoy the forums their own way. Putting a required post limit on it feels bad to me. I don't want people posting just so they can be considered full members.
I dont know why you feel bad about it. They dont post, they dont shape the conversation. Why should they shape the forum'
Because they are members here. Maybe they will post eventually. Maybe not. Why gatekeep? If someone is enjoying the place and has good ideas on how to make it better I could not possibly care less how much they post. It is not a road I want to start going down as I don't see any value in it.
+12
ToxI kill threadsDilige, et quod vis facRegistered Userregular
Lurkers were allowed to donate so it seems they're able to be part of the community when it matters. They should be considered part of the community all the time.
maybe the real panopticon was the friends we made along the way
Posts
Was thinking fiscal fiduciary, not general fiduciary. All EOs will be fiduciaries in the broader term.
Can you like
Ever write a post in here without taking this kind of tone
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I believe that is actually a simple oversight in the wording and should read “fiscal fiduciary.” All of the EOs would technically be fiduciaries.
Edit: beat by gereg, again.
Will there be a dedicated subforum for creating proposals leading to a vote? How do we give it sufficient visibility?
So I know there's a specific post type that Delz wants to use for Feature Suggestions specifically, but I'm not sure what else we would use an actual Admin board for if Bugs and Features are both in their own boards.
There would need to be a dedicated forum in some form, yes. It should be relatively painless and friction-free using the Xenforo upvote system we’re currently using in the Beta for (software) feature suggestions. We’ll have to work out placement and details, but a big part of it will simply be “retraining” folks to remember to check out the suggestions forum (or whatever it ends up being called) on a regular basis to upvote things they thing would be important improvements to the community. And of course, we’re open to other suggestions on how to ensure visibility, without everyone being inundated over it, of course
I was thinking there's a pretty major difference between posting a feature suggestion for a new button or something, as opposed to proposing a mod be removed or the forums restructured - something that needs 20% quorum and will trigger a vote. So I'm wondering how these more serious proposals that need quorum will be communicated. Maybe with prefixes we can visually distinguish them, but I suspect a lot of people won't be in the habit of checking the suggestion forum(s) all the time.
But yeah, no getting around the fact that people will just need to learn to check in on this stuff occasionally, I think. But that’s also the reason we settled on 20% for the threshold there, since that’s a number that isn’t oppressively high—especially if we keep people in the habit of being involved in the management of CoRe—but it still remains high enough bar to weed out being notified constantly of nuisance suggestions from one or two folks with axes to grind.
And as mentioned above, the 20% mark is just the point at which the board is obligated to consider the suggestion and vote on it. If members of the board see a great suggestion that has only hit 10% so far, there’s no reason a couple of board members can’t present that directly to the board for a vote if they feel it makes sense to act immediately instead of waiting for it to hit 20%.
Something akin to a newsletter?
But... I don't know how that doesn't come across as a letter of grievances?
So, it's a little more complicated than just a yes/no answer on that.
Essentially, all members of the Board of Directors, plus at least one Executive Officer (the President, in all likelihood, although it could, technically, be any of the EOs) must have their names listed on the Delaware Annual Report for the company.
Technically the information on this document is public record, however, after talking to our registered agent in Delaware (and then also confirming myself by trying to look it up), it turns out that there are a couple of hurdles to anyone looking that information up.
First, it costs $20 to get that report digitally from the state website. But notably, the state does not provide the actual form with Director names on the digital version that anyone can request fairly easily.
In order to get a copy of the actual form that includes the Director names, a person needs to submit a lengthy request with the state which requires them to know the corporation name and our state filing number (not something that would normally be shared outside of the Directors/Officers), pay somewhere between $50 and $100 (the fee schedule is kind of unclear, tbh), and wait a couple of weeks for a hard copy to be mailed out.
Now, I'm certainly not going to tell someone who is extremely concerned for their privacy what's worth being concerned about or not, but in practical terms I think it's safe to say that your personal info will be reasonably hard to find unless someone is truly going all out to track you down -- definitely all but impossible for someone to simply stumble across.
And for one last wrinkle, Delaware does not require reporting changes to the Board of Directors. The only time the names of the Directors have to be reported is once per year when the annual tax report is filed and it just has to include the directors as of the date of the filing. And on that particular form, it does not require an SSN, photo ID, or anything of that sort.
by setting the quorum for all Board votes to 5, every board vote is now supermajority, at least for the "yes" or non-status-quo side of the vote
(i.e., 3 members opposed to a majority vote could instead refuse to participate, denying quorum, and defeating the 4 members in favor)
imo quorum should be defined as the number of member needed for a vote to pass, were all the members present
(this opens up another avenue of foul play, pushing though votes when you don't have a winning threshold, but it can be countered, e.g. 3 members initiate a majority vote when they know only one other member will attend, but that 4th member can refuse to vote and this time justly deny quorum)
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
thanks all!
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I feel like the President should be ratified by the community? like, we're getting input on moderators, but not President? seems weird. or maybe they could be appointed from the elected board, and we could elect 6 board members instead.
I don't think I have anything valuable to add about decisions regarding Graphic Violence, for instance, as I do not visit that board, and so I do not think that I should have any say in changes to that board, unless perhaps it affects the common space of the forum index substantially.
I think I agree in principal. If the people who most commonly post in the crafting forum really want a particular change that has no impact on any other subforum, then the opinions of a bunch of people who only post in politics seems less relevant. I like to think that people in other forums wouldn't be jagweeds about something that doesn't affect them, but you never know.
That said, I don't know how you really define "is a member of a subforum impacted by a change" in a good, common sense manner that isn't either too limiting or so broad as to include everyone.
More generally, I think that the super majority requirement for any kind of structure change of any type is a de facto bar to the structure ever changing in any substantive way. I don't care too much, because I pretty much accepted at the time of the structure vote that this was just the structure CoRe would have forever. I just think that inertia combined with change aversion means that what we start with is what we get.
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
In prior voting sessions, the TT found that we have a significant population of lurkers engaged with the forums. In the GC, we're taking a general stance that lurkers are members of our community who enjoy the forums in a manner that feels right for them, and we want to be inclusive of that.
Personally, I (and other members of the GC) recognize that this does carry some additional risk of fuckery. We also expect that this risk can be partially mitigated by some of our other controls against bot and alt accounts. Meanwhile, requiring posts for membership can also be gamed by an adversary.
Overall, we're leaning towards the risk being manageable, and not being worth alienating non-hostile lurkers. But of course we're open to feedback.
Yes.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Speaking for myself, that's not a bad idea and I suspect we'll probably revisit it in the future. I'd amend it a little bit - there are valid use cases for a new account to be able to DM people, at least DM mods. There are a lot of similar soft restrictions on new accounts I could see being useful.
From a governance committee perspective, we're not trying to capture all of the (potential) restrictions on new accounts in this phase of decision making. We're looking at the privileges related to governance - which for members primarily means voting (and expressing interest in moderatorship).
Edit: clarified some verbiage.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
20 times is not "a bunch"
Lurking is not adequate participation in the community to be automatically part of it as an organization
I dont know about the new threads thing but the 30 day / 20 post bar for voting is absurdly low
Lurkers are part of the community even if they only post once a year in the lurker thread (or not at all). Some of them may choose to start posting, some may not for various reasons.
If someone spams 20 posts to hit that threshold, or create accounts and let them mature for a month before harassing / spamming the forums those parameters for membership can be adjusted.
20ish posts+30 days to move from new to full membership or 3 (maybe 6?) months isn't really that long of a wait. It stops a lot of the dumb shit we've been putting up with for a few years too, but if someone's that devoted to talking about the papacy they might just make a bunch of accounts on 6ish month rotations to harass users.
lurker should just have a longer wait, no reason to force them to post
I do agree with Douglas that we should limit the new members from DMs and such (I don't recall if that was in the documents or not). Members can initiate and new members can respond, but new members should be limited in some regard from just spamming/harassing folks. Maybe rate limit them like jailing does to users on PA. I don't know.
I dont know why you feel bad about it. They dont post, they dont shape the conversation. Why should they shape the forum'
Because they are members here. Maybe they will post eventually. Maybe not. Why gatekeep? If someone is enjoying the place and has good ideas on how to make it better I could not possibly care less how much they post. It is not a road I want to start going down as I don't see any value in it.