Absolutely and great point.

Part of the driver to get the agreement on who we are and the mission statement hammered out was to use it in our  formal request to  the United Church of Canada.  This request includes such items as   a formal connection via a liaison, continuation including  redirects and inclusion of links on united church of canada pages, as well as a request to use some of the material, such as the logo.  

A number of folks have offered financial assistance.  At this time, there has been little spend and it is easily carried by the admins.  Spend so far has been a few sites being registered and survey monkey.  

All analysis to-date by your techs indicates the spend will be significantly less than available by the community.  There are a few things to be thrashed out first and that is your admins focus so that we have a better handle on cost prior to coming to the community.  

It is also important to me , and i know to others, that we have transparency in the finances for the site. I would not want to accept $$ directly.

Do you have to register as a company, a non-profit, for donations?

No, we do not.  You can give money or assets to anyone you wish.

If people are looking for charitable receipts, then we would have to register not only as a non-profit but also prove we fit the requirements for a charity, including meeting all the overhead of oversight of such.  

We can also use indiegogo for soliciting donations to cover costs of the program if we so desired.  

Another avenue to reach the wondercafe2 admins is at the email: wondercafe2adm@gmail.com

.Site registration and the surveymonkey have been registered to the name to ensure that admins will be appropriately notified of any updates

I'm a bit out of it today and realize now I probably should have checked in with someone first, I don't want to create confusion because of too many threads.

Do you think the thread will be useful?

lol If what would help the most is staying out of the way until something comes up feel free to post that on my thread too.

Some of these questions may have been answered in one of the many other topic starters but there are so many of them and I'm starting to lose track of what was said and where it was said .

So, I will just post the questions here:

1.  What exactly is the involvement, commitment, and ownership of The United Church of Canada on the new wondercafe2 as known at this time?

2.  Who will "own" the site?

3.  Will there be a cost to participate or join?

Thank you,

Hope, Peace, Joy, Love . . .

Awesome.  That is why I started this thread after consultation with the other admins.

The United Church of Canada has no entitlement, ownership or direct involvement if you are referring to the General Council staff that currently run the www.wondercafe.com site.

There is a desire to have the United Church of Canada have an official liaison to the new site, providing wisdom, experience and opportunity.  This is being discussed with Aaron and your current Admins.  He is acting in that liason role now, albeit informally.

There is a desire to use much of the material of the current site, such as logos, and to have redirects from the united church of canada site.  The united church of canada will need some form of assurance that these materials will be used with the intent they are loaned and that there is no embarassment generated by the site...ie worst case we spin it into a gambling or porn site...that would be pretty ugly.

Of course, indirectly if you look at participation, and leadership there are many engaged who have past experience and ties to the church. Mendalla for example, though not a current member has close ties.   as the council or leadership team evolves, it is probable that it will be a mirror of the presence on the site.

Appended:  There is also a thought to have a specific forum section for United Church of Canada threads due to the size of the population and a recognition of the challenge of having denominational conversations.  It will be a test for the same usage by other groups.  The concept is that it will ahve specific united church of canada moderators in addition to the overall moderators.  It may have a higherl level of say, code of conduct than say the general forums.  This is in direct response to feedback from participants who have left the site due to the inability to carry on a conversation on polity.
 

The site is owned by wondercafe2adm. It was registered to the email and will belong to the wondercafe2 leadership team.

It is not anticipated that there will be any cost to join. It is anticipated that the cost of running the site will be very low and offerings to offset the cost weill be welcomed.  Other items are also noted as potential revenue streams if required.  

Thank-you beloved.  great questions.

How can we help?  

or...as chemgal said.

Absolutely the thread will be useful. 

Here it is for folks who wonder how can I help? 

http://www.wondercafe.ca/discussion/church-life/wc2-what-can-we-do#comment-753215

I have suggested a few areas that definitley will require assistance, and look forward to hearing of the gifts and talents that others have to offer.

I have a question and you know I don't know much about the computer.I see the word bitcoin being bandied about. Would it be any use to WC2?  iF IT IS A NON-QUESTION- IGNORE IT.

No questions are foolish questions, CrazyHeart.

Bitcon is a new type of currency which is being tested for online puchases. At this time, it is highly fluctating and questionable in terms of control.

I would say 'no"

Thanks Pinga, for your response - very helpful.

No problem, so far all your answers come from things that we have been discussing and so the answers are quick to give. 

Online purchases of mostly illegal things, it seems.

For now, I think, we stay with the Canadian Dollar. It's falling like Blackberry stock, but it's still the common currency where we live.

And it's not a bad question. Bitcoin confuses people. It's one of those things that made mainstream news, but no one you know has used it.

To confuse things more, people with powerful computers can also produce bitcoins.  They were designed so that each new one is more difficult to produce than the last.  I think there is also a limited quantity that can ultimately be produced.

Maybe this is a bit early, but do you guys have a date in mind to go live?

What kind of financial accountability are you going to set up for any monies that are donated? Will you be issuing financial statements?

What kind of criteria have to be met for another denomination or faith group or non-faith group to have its own specific section?

We have discussed having two people with signing authority who are not admins. It is a similair focus to a club. We are not talking mega dollars here. Think of a small club or group with a bank account.

The first part is for us to see if it works. The admins anticipate a formal liaison to the ucc as well as  a large contingent of the denomination, and so it is logical. The other is clear consensus with the guiding principles. It was an easy test forum decision.

edittd to add original question:

We are using what would be called in my circles an agile development method. There is a desire to have it up and fully functional at least a month before shutdown.

I have also seen shutdown dates be negotiated by a month or two. Hopefully we won't have to ask for that

ps. folks, in a call, i cold normally ask "does that make sense", "what questions does that cause for you" is there anything else that I can clarify".  Please consider that implied in these questions...

Alex pondered this item in another thread:

The Admin team have discussed a council approach to leadership.  That is still being discussed with others and researched and at some time will come to the community for input and dialogue as have the other items.  It is the admins desire for shared leadership.

What is ots/ot's in the post above?

original something?

Regardless of the way it functions, shared leadership reflects shared ownership. think YMCA or wikipedia, or coop. What is important is that some have authority when it is needed, (ie to cut off trolls, pay bills, etc) but that leadership has a way of listening, so as to discover what is needed or not. control is not an issue, because it is in the interests of evryone that WC2 works for all users of good intentions (as oppose to those who just destroy, like trolls)

Most forums have a sub-forum for administrative matters (something that is lacking here). Basically, a designated forum where all threads dealing with the administration and governance of the board are supposed to go so the admins or owners or managers or whoever is responsible for running the place can see and respond to them. That will be one way for the leadership to listen.

There will also likely be contact us and reporting options. Contact us will let you send a private message (PM) directly to the admin team. Report allows you flag a post or user that you feel needs moderator attention and generally puts the message or user in a queue that mods and admins monitor.

Mendalla

Personally I'm getting confused about the difference between moderators and administrators. Can you please clarify for me. Will you, Pinga, and chansen be moderators, administrators, or both?

Will whoever the PMs and flags go to do a fair, reasonable, and equal job of responding to such requests. My perception is that was not the case here at Wondercafe. Some posters seemed to me to always and swiftly have their comments and complaints dealt with by the admins. On the other hand, I know that I, and I believe also some others, only very rarely had things we marked as "offensive" answered by the admins. My perception is that a double-standard was well in effect at Wondercafe. Will such also be the case at WC2?

We will be posting definitions later when we get to actually selecting the mods. The nutshell version is that admins do the techie stuff like updating the software, creating new forums, managing user accounts and permissions. Mods are the ones who ensure rules are followed (including handing out warnings, bans, etc.), delete spam, respond to reports about problems, move threads that are in the wrong forum, etc. If they find that an issue requires admin assistance, they can escalate.

Both will eventually have procedures/policies in place governing their work which will be published for all to see. We will develop these as we develop the site, likely during testing. Part of that policy will be that any report or message should get a response and we may even put a time on it (within 24 hours or something like that). If you find that admins/mods do not respond according to what we say, you can go to the admins (if it is a mod) or the council (or whatever body we end up with).

That said, if a user is found to be abusing the report function or otherwise wasting admin/mod time (similar to sending false alarms to 911), that will likely be an offence under the board rules.

Mendalla

Apart from accidental flags (tapping the flag button by accident) I only ever flagged somebody once, and even though I found them offensive, I kind of regretted doing it.

In light of that- wondering what is justly flag worthy (or ban worthy for that matter) and what is abuse of the flag function in the admin teams minds. This being my only forum I may take the way this place operates for granted.

Abuse of the flag function would, in my mind, be someone hitting on every post by someone whose view they dislike or that they object to even though it does not  in any way violate the board rules. Or someone just randomly hitting it just to get a rise out of the mods. In short, using the flag function as either a toy or a weapon, rather than tool for a specified function. For instance (and a very unlikely, hypothetical instance), if chansen started flagging every single post containing Bible verses, that would likely be ruled abusive.

As for what will or won't be flag-worthy on Wondercafe2, I do not know. Those rules still have to be written and will not be until we have a mod team together to write them. We have someone (not one of the three) already looking at some examples from other sites and comparing them to the existing WC rules as a start. Likely, a draft will be posted for discussion at some point so you will have input into them, as you have to other aspects of the site. Not sure if we will put them to a vote (since we don't have any, yet) but that is a distinct possibility.

Mendalla

Mendalla

I don't really have a question, just some comments. We've only had one Admin. on the WC (Aaron)  or as pinga said we most often  policed ourselves by flagging posts. Now I'm hearing about what sounds like an invasion....an army coming to keep us in line,(sort of kidding). If so, some of us might go AWOL after a short time.

I'm trying to think of a place that's  between good and evil re flagging posts. I have flagged very few in my years here.  I've never stayed around very long on any tightly controlled religious forum. They are quite often extremely boring .

In our self righteousness we pretend to be so goody goody while being horrified at the evil we see or hear. IMHO I believe we like evil to some extent although its not kosher to admit it. Witness the movies with their evil plots, books, music,plays  etc. If they were all good there would be no audience for them. Shakespeare didn't write about apple pie, you get my drift.

I remember when we could see the number of lurkers on the forums they were always highest when the flame wars were escalating. Goodness carried to the extreme is boring. Evil can be quite entertaining and I believe its often been the drawing card here, the arguments, the  flame wars etc. I feel ambivilent  about it. Perhaps it depends in part on one's  mood of the day?  The WC has been so free, so wide open re discussions and unique that I feel there will never be another like it.

NB-  St. Paul says something about I don't like to do evil but I do it anyway!

Stardust, there is no army swooping in to control WC2. It will, in fact, be a small mod team (maybe 3-5) and that size is mainly just to make sure we have breadth of coverage (i.e. when I go to bed, folks on the West Coast are still around). And there is no good vs. evil conflict involved, just a set of rules on how we feel discussion should take place. Flame wars, for instance, have destroyed boards (don't laugh, I've seen it) so there needs to be limits on flaming.

Ideally, moderators do not punish. They moderate. They remind people of the rules and warn people/threads when the line is being reached/breached. Banning, suspensions, etc. are to be used sparingly for the most egregious cases and repeat offenders.  The main role of mods, though, will likely be removing spam and trolls which, I am reasonably sure, even you don't want more of. I honestly don't think we will need much moderation beyond that based on how things have gone on WC over the years. Aside from he who shall not be named, we haven't had a lot of trouble.

In the end, we will be consulting the community on what the rules are. The mods will operate within those rules, not go around banning and suspending willy-nilly. If they go outside the rules, the admins can remove their mod privileges and the community can choose new mods. And that is really the key here. No one is coming in and inflicting mods on you. They will be chosen from the community and, once we have the governance mechanisms in place, by the community.

Mendalla

Just putting this out there-the church I went to in Edmonton -took under its' wing a school project in Africa. That way the church issued recepits-att cheques were made to St. anything Church and on the memo line   African School. Now the school project is well run-with a local borad of directors and yearly reports. It also receives money from donors in Britian.

St. Anything passed money on to project quaterly. One member of the congregation was/is very involved in the overseeing of the african school.

So would a congregation be willing to run the $ for WC2 throughit's books?

WC did have 2 admins that I knew of, one rarely posted and I don't know if it's just Aaron now.  They were also paid, and not just volunteering in their spare time.

Personally, I think there are times when it's important to have someone around to take down posts.  Generally, I find a few spammy posts lead to more, like vandalism.  There have been times I've flagged posts like that at 2 am and someone was there to take them down quickly.

More importantly, when someone like somegirl's ex comes around and posts information that can lead to harm, I think it's worthwhile to have someone around to deal with it quickly, even if it means they aren't really moderating anything most of the time.  I've had a stalker in the past, and would feel much more comfortable knowing info about me could be taken down quickly.  Heck, one time I inadvertently did it to myself in an OP which Aaron thankfully editted for me.

That is why we need a team right there. I, for one, am rarely up at 2am and certainly am not on WC if I am. Having a night hawk or two on the team and trying to spread our mods across time zones will be a necessity.

I don't recall that incident with somegirl but you've hit it on the nose. Mods are necessary for things like that even when day-to-day discussion is quite civil. As I said responding to stardust, I do not think our mods will spend much time policing discussions so much as dealing with peripheral crap like spam, trolls, and, yes, stalkers (though I pray the last are rare).

Mendalla

Yeah, I'm guilty of using those terms interchangably. Sorry.

Moderators are the police of the forums, so to speak, but it's not all slapping wrists. Yes, they have the ability to modify, hide and delete the posts of others. Note that they can not hide their tracks, as any moderator action is logged. Mostly, though, it's not that glamorous. It's mostly deleting spam and banning the users (bots) who post it, moving threads to the proper sub forum where applicable, and, done properly, steering conversation away from flame wars by being really good at communication and arbitration. To me, mods shouldn't really be swooping in to delete posts and then taking off into the night, as this forum was moderated. Come in, be the voice of reason, modify a post or two if necessary to keep things relatively clean, and steer the ship right again. Deleting thoughful posts because of a bad word generates contempt, and and I don't think we want to do that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum#Moderators

Admins are more on the technical end of things, updating the forum software, making changes to the functionality of the site, fixing it when it's broken, and quite possibly breaking it when it is not. They can turn the whole site off, for example, or change how the site looks. Because they have the "keys", admins often have the same rights as moderators, plus extra rights to the back end of the site. It depends on the site rules, some admins also do moderation, some do not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum#Administrator

We will be admins. Mendalla will be the liaison to the moderation team. As I understand it. My mind isn't 100% into that conversation, as I'm going through technical stuff about installing and hosting the forum software right now.

No.

My take on it is the people who flag the most get the least amount of attention. Kind of like people in a meeting, those who talk all the time often get tuned out, and those who are thoughtful, pick their spots and make good points when they do speak are listened to intently. Basically, if you're going to go running to the mods for help, have a good reason and don't develop a history of flagging. From my experience, I'd say the most common correct moderator response is no response at all. People get offended all the time, and some fall in love with that little button.

Hi folks, although I appreciate the dialogue, the moderator/admin detail conversation is more appropriate with the moderator/admin proposal thread. 

Can we live this one to simple "request/answer". Just asking.

Basically, I am doing the equivalent of saying:  this is a great topic.  Let's put it on the parking lot for later.

Sorry!  I gotta start remembering what thread I'm in better!

.

Stardust, I am not saying "get lost". I am saying....great topic, can it please wait?  The team really needs to be focussed on starting up the site, building it, getting the descriptions out.  This is a big topic and it needs to have proper attention paid to it.

Chemgal, no need to be sorry, just aware of the priorities for getting the site up and the amount of attention this topic deserves.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with the answers given to my questions on this thread. Thank you to the future leaders. Things are clearer for me now, and I feel more confident that things are in good hands. At the same time, if I am to be completely honest, I must say that financial matters still have me a tad concerned. I guess, bottom line, my questions are...

Will there be a profit from WC2?

And, if so, to whom/where will that profit go?

Tabitha, this is a great question.  There was a thread earlier about wc being a mission of a congregation.  It would require oversight by them and a lot of diligence to ensure it meets charitable classification.

From the folks on the United Church of Canada page, they thought the oversight and presbytery/conference/GC overhead would kill the project.  In other words, might be a great idea, but, time was not right.

If you (or anyone) has a sense on how that might be done and has the energy, would be a good thing to volunteer to investigate in the thread on "what can be done"

O.K. Pinga but I don't agree that its necessary to interrupt us like this at the present moment. Mendalla is left thinking I'm kind of an  ogre because I don't have a chance to further explain more about my topic re the  flame wars. Its cold in the parking lot....:)

The group is designed as a not-for-profit.

If at such a time as a profit would be generated, say by ads, then it likely would be required to buy more bandwidth or advertising, etc.  

In other words, it would turn back into the org.

Editted:  Please note, the probability of profit on this item is next to nil.  We can always dream though, and if such a dream were to occur, well, i think we should all celebrate!

Pinga

My 2nd.  reply comment to you  on Ask Admins. got sent to WC 2...saying on the old WC that "comment field is required". I did comment and click save on WC.  I don't know if it gets posted?

Stardust, per our wondermail exchange, there is no wc2 up and running yet, so I am unsure what was going on.

Please post away any questions...sorry that your last one got lost.

.

Stardust, it may be cold; however, if we explore every question in full detail that comes to this thread, you will never get a site.

In addition, this thread will be too long for anyone to come up to speed. 

.