I can't come up with that many nominees if it's too stringent. Consider only 30 people voted last time- likely many from our most active group I'm guessing- so thinking of active posters there is a small group of us continuously posting over the past year.

Hi Pinga,

Fair enough.  I'm partial to the way the United Church selects its moderators though I expect that it will be cumbersome online.

1)  Nominations are opened.  Any and all nominations that beat the deadline are good.

2) Ballots are cast with those failing to make a threshold of votes to be eliminated.

3) Balloting continues until we have the individuals that survive to the last round.

I appreciate this will be far more involved time wise.  The plusses to this system are, I think, fairly obvious.

A)  every nomination is considered.

B)  there is no need for discussion of suitability

C) the final slate is the slate selected by the community that actually cares to invest time into the process.

D) everything happens out in the open decreasing the opportunity for shenanigans to be called.

At this point in the history of the community it would be foolhardy to declare the admin positions vacant simply because of the work that is being done and folk hopping in green as paint will muck things up badly.

Seperate ballots for each position mean that we can be progress fairly quickly.

Grace and peace to you.

John

RevJohn, you have presented a sound and decent election process - perhaps cumbersome in virtual community, but fair.

Chansen, Pinga and Mendalla: Costs are the reason, ostensibly, that WC is shutting down.

Operating a site will have costs.

Throwing out ballpark figures does not reflect well on planning and governance.

Providing a real budget, and explaining how WC2 will continue is an integral part of WC2.

In the real world, the standard expectation of volunteer hours is three per week.

So there should be discussion, on this thread, about how operating WC2 will work.  No need for a new thread - these issues are inextricably linked.

If the volunteers launching WC2 vdo not want to dicuss finances, then everyone should consider the following:

1) transparency;

2) how the site will be managed;

3) on-going funding to keep the site operational.

Revjohn:  how do you propose that to protect against the real concern for false voters, ie those who show up at the door to vote in this or future elections.  

The moderators are required based on a diversity of time / skills / areas of community and so on.  

It isn't an individual standing alone, but, rather a diversity of moderators that is required for solid leadership.

How does the model you are proposing ensure that diversity?

What a lot of words here about the setting up of the future of WC2.  My take is that this will be achieved by faith - we have three volunteers - we have pledges of some money when needed - ongoing communication appears to indicate that it is basically impossible to set all the details in cement.  So, individually we decide to join WC2, speak to each other civilly, help, rather than hinder where we can.

I'm finding it to be an interesting process and anticipate a great forum in the future.

In general, I think the document posted is well done and thoughtful.

I appreciate all the work you three have done.
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I feel like we are looking at trees not the forest and I am not sure it is helpful to the ongoing process.
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As I understand it there has been concern expressed that we need to have a definition of "active". It was actually me that tossed out the month issue that seems to have caused so much acrimony.
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Sorry if I muddied the water
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My other read is that the concern is "what if a stranger gets here, gets nominated by other "strangers" and they as group enlist huge numbers of other "strangers" who will vote on mass and derail the process. And saddle us with lousy council members
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At least I think that is the issue.

Firstly, I have trouble imagining this site being one that those trouble makers would bother with.
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But let's assume they do. What would the actual downside be? That is an actual question as I don't personally know.
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Would they be able to remove the site? Change it in a major way? Get email addresses?

Or are we just worrying about something that is unlikely to happen and if it did, so what?
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Having read all the thread, I suspect , like any church committee or school committee, the bigger problem will be to find these nine people to be the council in the first place. I can seldom remember being on a volunteer board where we are so overrwhelmed by volunteers that we have to turn people away.

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With that in mind, though it is cumbersome, I kind of like Rev Johns compromise.

Anyone can be nominated and we vote.

Kind if like when you vote in a municiple election.

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My suggestion is that all names nominated and put in a list:

John C
Fred D
Sally K
Betty B
...... Although tit would be screen names

Then the vote is " check up to nine members you wish to vote for" or how ever many openings there are.

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I honestly can't picture a scenario whee we have tons of nominees

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That seems to eliminate the need to vague descriptions of what is active, how long can you be away.....
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I can think, as an example of SG or Mad Monk. Two interesting folks who if they popped back up, I might vote for because of their contrary styles even though they are not here much anymore

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Hi Pinga,

Voter eligibility is always a tough nut to crack.

Either the membership can be trusted or it can't.  If we cannot trust the membership then I have to ask why bother with any of this?

That said I would think that rather than giving the link to voting sites in the midst of a thread (such as this one) that Aaron could be enlisted to send a wondermail to the membership.

Maybe even a validation code of somekind could be used to ensure that each member only votes once.

To prevent a flood of new memberships to influence a vote we close the site to new members until after a vote has occured.

So . . . .When we are getting ready to hold the nominations process we generate a member list.  When we open nominations only those currently on the membership list are permitted to be nominated or offer nominations and we can limit that.

So rather than me nominating a slate of my own candidates maybe I can only nominate one person to each office.  We want three admins, I can only nominate one.  We need 5 mods I can only nominate one.  We want a treasurer I can nominate a treasurer.

And we can't be trusted to work that out?

If I know what the responsibilities are for moderator or administrator or treasurer can I not be trusted to hold that in one hand and make a nomination with the other?

We were asked to vote on the rold of Moderator and this was the job description:

If I am competent enough to vote on that much how do I suddenly become incompetent to nominate an individual to that office or cast a vote for an individual nominated to that office?

I get that.  I don't see many cookie cutter versions of individuals around here.

The membership isn't monochrome.  

If diversity is more important than personal merit then set targets that reflect that.

We need 5 moderators of which one must be X, Y, or Z and one must be A, B, or C.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Regarding the budget and the role of Treasurer

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Again, I think we are worrying about things that are small issues.

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In our church, i am on Stewards. We select a treasurer from our group who usually does the job for five ish years.
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It is up to the treasurer to present the budget to the Board after it is approved by stewards for presentation.
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It is not up to the treasurer to raise the money, just to decide how to spend the money raised.

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In our scenario as laid out by our "group of 3" I can see the council as a group acting as our "fundraising /stewardship group." Perhaps they might designate two members to the sub committee.
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Those members might devise a system of in May, putting out a call for donations from anyone interested. Then , let's say $1000 is raised and banked. The treasurer would then present a budget to the site of our budget with the money raised. A vote to approve.....
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The council would meet if there were extraordinary expenses to either use funds in the account or do a special request.

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And perhaps as a group, council might decide to undertake a fundraising campaign for a bigger purpose. Perhaps to lobby groups for funds in order to advertise......

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I understand Redheads concerns about budget costs, but in my mind, the situation we are in , is like a church that has raised the money for the year and is now spending it. Next year , more money will be raised and a budget devised.

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And, like a church, if not enough money is raised, things are cut back or we close.

The one thing that I forget if it's I the document or not is access to the funds raised. If we have a few hundred dollars, no issue, but if we try to get funding from churches, groups.....and end up with several thousand, we need to be aware of potential fraud and theft and have regulations. At a minimum two signatures. It that doesn't work if we are talking about electronic transfers.

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So I do think that our group of three should figure out how the money will be safely guarded.

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And if that is already done and I missed it, sorry.

Cheers all

Enjoy the day

And on a totally off topic note

For those on Lake Ontario.

THE TRUMPETTER SWANS ARE BACK!!!!! You can email the tag numbers you see to the society.

SO AMAZINLY COOL. so far I have seen K22, K 39, K28,K92 plus four un tagged ones

So everyone

ENJOY THE DAY

Lastpointe, in the scenario you present, you are talking about  church board.  People have to be physically present.  you hve a limited pool.  It is unlikely that you have the possibility of adherents voting, or if the neighbour church or bar walked over you weould let them vote, even if they wanted your church to shutdown.  

Webforums are different beasts.

Membership is done as simply as signing up posts.  Do you remember sockpuppets?  How about fake people?   

What the model has to support is that the underlying mission and vision of the site is held to.  Picture a group, such as the membersip of the "church of the flying spaghetti monster" saying hey, that wondercafe2 is too "blah".  Let's take it over coz they were silly enough to allow an open vote for selection of their moderators.  All we have to do is signup and be under the bar for a few months, then when the vote comes out, we just vote.  It's now the "church of the spaghetti monsters" site.

(revjohn, your post is way too long for me to respond to this morning, maybe chansen will have time.  I know that David & I are both off to work)

For those who do not think that scenario or true or possible, it is why most forums don't even open up moderation for nomination,e tc.  They are just done.  We are doing our best to present a democratic model in teh real world of online community.

Thanks for the input Pinga.

My question would be would it make a difference? I honestly don't know

Right now we are loosely going to be affiliated with the UCC though we have membership from a variety of spots and two moderators who are not connected.

I don't really understand what would happen if "the church of the blue spaghetti monster" also joined the moderator board.

People would still post. Threads would still start.

I guess I can see that they could shut down threads.

I guess I am naive about this

Having read Rev Johns points after I posted mine, I like his idea of closing the site to new members during an election.

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And yes, I guess I more see the issue is finding people to do the job.

But I am out of my area of expertise here. I am a total computer dummy

"For those who do not think that scenario or true or possible, it is why most forums don't even open up moderation for nomination,e tc.  They are just done.  We are doing our best to present a democratic model in teh real world of online community."

Considering all the challenges, criticisms, over-reations, etc., etc., being posted, I am wondering if it would be better for you, pinga, chansen and mendalla to present us with a list of people you would consider eligible to be moderators, and let us vote on them.

I appreciate that you are trying to be totally open and transparent and democratic in the process, but it must be frustrating and time-consuming for you, especially responding to the posts, and some of the nit-picking.  I commend you for your patience.

I have appreciated readiing all the comments, suggestions, questions, comments, concerns, and answers expressed in this thread.

I appreciate all the work chansen, Pinga, and Mendalla have done, are continuing to do, and will continue to do in the months/years ahead.

For me, it is largely a matter of trust . . . the technical side of how an on-line forum and on-line forum council works is different than what I have experienced in life, and this has been addressed by Pinga I believe in the differences between the two.  I believe I have a better understanding after having read (some I just skimmed) the posts in this particular thread.  But because it is above my expertise, I have to trust in those who are knowledgeable as such.

My experience has been though, that getting anything up and running, takes some trial and error.  And that once up and running future bugs and glitches are found and then need to be addressed.  Can the areas of concern about the council be adjusted or changed down the road if WC2 finds that things need to be fine-tuned a bit?

I thank all for the thought and discussion that has gone on into this thread.

o form Council, the community is asked for nominations.  After a suitable nomination period of not less than 5 days, the nominations are closed and Council selects new members from the nominations.

And what is defined as suitable?

Not a democratic process.  The asking is an illusion.  Selecting is not a democratic process.

Council selects.  That demonstrates control and ownership.  Also shows distrust of membership.

This must be a Presbytery meeting. It seems like a Presbytery meeting

.How has the UC endoctrinated us?

I roll my eyes. I trust the three. Do you trust them. If so ,let's move on.

My experience, is that democracy doesn't work in an online forum. It just doesn't.

My last big forum I was a part of ran on the council format. The council of about 10 simply invited members who they thought would be a good fit when they identified a need, either moderation or technical. That's how I was brought aboard. I ran the game servers and moderated the complaint forum. I had a budget of $1000 per month for game servers, paid for by $10 monthly dues paid by 120+ members.

Eventually, some members saw the council as "elitist" and so the council decided to switch the forum to a simple democratic process every 12 months. Mostly because everyone was paying, and it was a good argument to have elected representation when everyone is paying. We went from a core group of competent people who got along and ran a very successful and gaming group and forum with a waiting list dozens long to get in, to a fractious mini-forum where we couldn't agree on how to handle situations. We never recovered. People who really, really want to be admins and moderators, in general, should not be admins and moderators. They fall in love with admin and moderator powers. They get into arguments on the private admin and moderator's forum with other admins and moderators on how to deal with situations.

Think of it like voting on the officers in your local police force - voting on individuals who go out and campaign for being a cop. Many of the people who really, really want to be cops....probably shouldn't be cops.

Other forum admins, from many other forums, will agree with me:

And then, when the next election arrives, I have to run against a Christian or two, on a predominantly Christian forum? Wonderful.

And say I'm "grandfathered" for a year in recognition for starting it up, and only moderators are voted on. Now I'm on a council that is fractured and has one or two relatively popular people who are also malcontents and want things run differently and moderate with a heavy hand? That'll suck worse. Now I'm stuck in a soap opera.

Democracy doesn't work for online forums. That's my experience, and the experience of lots of people who run online forums. Go look for more admin forums if you want. Find me forum admins who have successfully had elected moderators.

A forum isn't a government. We don't tax you. We don't provide necessary services like sewers or road maintenance. If we suck and we run a bad forum, and everybody leaves, we lose. We are left holding the keys to an empty forum that no one else will support, so it would cost us money to keep it open as well.

I think there are some good ideas in this thread. I'm coming around on the activity restrictions. I think Kimmio is right there, and I'd support easing them, or getting rid of them altogether. Especially if the council is choosing from a list of nominees, it's really not required, and restricts council's ability to choose people who are going to work well together.

But back to moderators for a bit, people who actively want to be moderators, probably shouldn't be. They should dislike taking action, not gleefully use that menu of editing and deleting options. Their internal voice should be saying, "Dammit, I guess I have to do this..."

We will have a discussion on finance at some point after this discussion closes and before we nominate a treasurer (so candidates know where things are at), redhead. As part of that, there will be a budget and financial statement based on the current state of things. The cost issues taht caused WC to be closed are irrelevant to us because we are using a completely different technological approach that is very cost efficient. End of discussion. If you want a discussion on finance, start another thread per my earlier request.

Mendalla

What do folks think of this:

"Candidates should have an active, continuous history of posting of the forums or have contributed materially to the operation of the site through financial or other contributions during the 12 months preceding nomination. Active is defined as having posted on the forums at least once a month during the 12 months preceding nomination. Continuous is defined as being active for at least twelve months without no voluntary leaves of over a month or suspensions. These criteria are guidelines and Council may, at its discretion, nominate anyone that Council feels meet the necessary requirements of commitment to Wondercafe2 and skills required for the position."

Basically, replace "Must" with "Should", make the definitions guidelines, and give Council discretion in the matter. Suspensions or bans should remain as a hard block on nomination, though. We don't want admins or mods who can't follow the rules themselves.

Mendalla

Mendalla, I think that's a great solution.  I was already wishy-washy on whether or not the original was a good idea or not though :)

Honestly, there are people here I don't trust. For example, I don't trust you. I think you've been wrong about everything you've ever written about this effort. You wanted us to write grants applications for WC2. In the back of my mind, I was imagining how embarrassing it would be to ask the UCCan, or the Government of Canada, for thousands of dollars so that a few dozen people have their own place to argue about religion online.

You keep on insisting that managing this place will be a serious job among 9 people, when Aaron manages it himself with an hour or two invested per week.

You're worried about money and that we don't have a fixed budget to show you, but we don't have final numbers for logo and style, and none of the numbers are unmanageable. Together with the initial doners, we'll have it covered. We're not worried. We have people giving us $200 who are saying, "We trust you." I'm not handling the money, so I only have rough numbers in my head. I've tried to answer your questions, just to have you say my numbers are changing. If you must know, I've put about $130 into this, but I could be off by $10 or so. I just don't care to go look at my credit card statement. Not to appease you.

You have been biblically misguided with all your concerns, and a ball of negative energy that just keeps orbiting us. Would you prefer I stop addressing your bogus concerns, or would you prefer sarcastic responses from here on out?

You, I trust.  After the threads regarding WC2 I don't know how much I trust the entire 'we' for seeing the large picture of what's needed.  6 months ago I would wonder why we couldn't just have a typical vote to select the mods after they had been nominated.  These threads have shown me why.

It's good.

To comment further on chansen's post:

I have never been on a democratically run web board and I am on two very old, very active boards. Both are privately owned with the owners as the admins. Mods are chosen by the admin and existing mods based on watching who is posting frequently, following the rules, and gets on well with others.

I am in a moderation capacity on one of them. How did I get there? Logged in one day to find a private message from a senior mod telling me they were offering me the role. No voting, no campaigning, no nomination process. Just, hey we like your posting style and think you'd do good. And I took almost three days to accept and I'm still not sure I belong there.

A few weeks ago, the admin decided to make a change to the rules. Came to us and said "here's what I am doing, figure out how to enforce it." We didn't have a say, the community didn't have a say (and some of them screamed bloody murder while others went "Hooray!"). Just handed us the decision, announced it to the masses, and off we went to start enforcing the new rule.

So, having a constitutional system, even if it is a vote on a slate nominated by the council, is a new thing for me on the web. And knowing what things are like on many of these boards, I support the system we are proposing. 1 person, 1 vote tends to break down when 1 person can have multiple socks out there supporting them. Or, one person posts under multiple socks and gets more than one of their socks nominated (which is why nomination is done by Council). I could easily engineer a takeover by myself, let alone by a group of my friends.

We need a balance that allows the community a say in how it is governed, which is definitely lacking on the other boards I talk about above, and making sure that it remains in the hands of the community that created it, not another community or individual that wants control of it. A nomination process managed by the Council with the community having final say through a vote on the nominated slate strikes me as hitting that balance.

Mendalla

I like Geckos idea of having the council choose a bunch of eligible moderators/ council members and we vote. Then, ask those selected to accept or reject- and if the offer is rejected- propose we move to the next choice. It's not democratic, and maybe can't be online, as chansen says, but they will have to whittle down the choices anyway based on skills for the job- if we put forward people not knowing if they can do the job. And lastepointe makes a good point that if the process isn't airtight- will it matter that much. Probably not but at least we'll have still have some input. We're a little forum, not as important as we think we are in the big picture. I don't think we need to Fort Knox the nominating process. If there are decent candidates for the job nominated, people who can do there best and are willing will be elected.

First, who would be affected by the ban rule right now? I'm only aware of two, and neither would be seriously considered by council or by the membership in an open election.

And up until 3 years ago, that rule would prevent me from being an admin, because of a decision made by Aaron and unsupported by the UCCan ministers.

The activity guideline, as well, might push us away from good people who were not available for a while, but now are.

Yes, the inclusion of "must" gives council leeway, but for anyone passed over, it gives them fodder to complain if someone chosen over them has been absent or has a ban in their history.

I'm not up in arms over this, but if council is making the choices, I don't see the need, as the membership is trusting council to make the best decisions. If we go democratic elections, which I'm against, then maybe some hard criteria are in order.

The conspiracy theorist in me can see people arguing for bans against people they don't want to see in council. That could be fun to deal with.

That might not be a bad idea. I'd have to think about it some more.

I'm not used to agreeing with you this often, Kimmio. It's a little unsettling, to be honest.

Asking about operational, day to day functions that include costs, and volunteer management is not unreasonable. 

And it is attached to governance.

Abusive ad hominems are not going to support an argument - only demonstrates poor form, frustration and, ultimately, that simple, important questions are not being answered because there is no plan in place.

Is it good enough to just pick a couple of groups of people who want to do the jobs and have the ability and want to volunteer- so there is some choice but we don't turn it into a stiff competition with stringent screening- and then we say yey or ney? My only preference are fair minded, somewhat flexible, personable moderators who enjoy being here and want to volunteer and who do their best with support from the team. As long as those criteria are trying to be met by whoever volunteers it doesn't matter to me who does it.

You're right, there is no plan at all, except this one: Pinga, Mendalla and I have pissed away all the money in online casinos. There is no WC2 domain, software, or anything. We're woefully overbudget, have accomplished nothing, plan to overwork our moderators by giving them each a quota of 100 deleted spam posts per day, and we are going to make sure the forum, once it is up, infects your computer with viruses.

Ok, catching up over lunch.

The issue that I have with sending them to a vote is the same as asking for a vote / election.  You could end up in a situation where nothing is approved. 

I think that is the third or fourth time that has been recommended.

At this point, I wish that I had an "ignore" feature.

WC2 will have one. If we want to enable it.

I am trying to give some guidance while keeping as Council's discretion but if there is general agreement that Council can be free to choose any registered member then we delete that whole section and just say in the previous section that nominees are chosen from the registered members of WC and leave it at that.

Mendalla

Just so you know. I do not want to hold a position. I just want to discuss on the new WC2 before the end of June.

I understand. I'm not as strong on the need for that language, but as long as it's not a hard "must", I'm okay with it.

Might it be a good start to simply ask the question - who wants the positions. After that's been answered, the admins can just make up a slate of who they want to work with, and then the community can vote yay or nay. If the slate gets passed - the Council is formed. If not, the admins make up a new slate, etc.

Maybe some might need gentle persuasion that their presence on the team would be valued? Or not. ;)

Yes, I suppose that's true, Cousin. Hm, maybe that's why it's a good idea if people are actually able to nominate others as well. Hm.

I think there will need to be a mix of approaches to finding nominees, really. People coming forward to offer to be nominated, people being offered up as sacrific...er...nominees by members of the community, and people that the Council feels are a good fit with a particular role and that they approach to see if they are interested in accepting a nomination.

Mendalla

Again, my thanks to Pinga, Mendalla, and chansen -- good work!  I realize I do not post regularly enough to be on council, which is probably a good thing.

We're changing it, though, Jim to give Council discretion over that. Just you wait. We're coming for you ....

After reading this thread and the various comments about how other communities run I vote yes to this idea.

We currently have three volunteers who are thing things up.

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Once things are up and running , I am go do with them choosing the next five or six people that are required based on skill sets they identify.

Ii don't need to vote.

I never voted for Aaron,.

I think, with their efforts to be as open with all of us as possible, things have gotten complicated.

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In all honesty, if I thought things went weird on the site or I didn't like the we I was treated I would just leave. It's not like it s a big deal really.

Perhaps all this discussion and voting is really unnecessary.

Why don't you guys just set it up and tell us the new address and away we go

crazyheart

You have posted that you do not want a position on WC2.  I also don't want  a position. If the forum is open to the public I will read on it for awhile  before joining.

I'll be waiting in line to post new topics and discuss old ones

Maybe we should allow vouching in addition to the 39 types of valid ID? Oh. That's another issue, isn't it.

You know, I saw crazyheart's comment above about this seeming like a Presbytery meeting. I had the same thought. WC2 is going to be a United Church site, apparently. Or at least resemble the United Church in governance style.

On a more serious note, I have no real problem with thr proposed Council model. I see merit to revjohn's suggested election process, but I also understand the potential problems with trying to run an online democracy. I'm content with the leadership given so far by Pinga, Mendalla and chansen. To me, it seems as though WC2 is in good hands. I'm not especially concerned with the financial issues that continue to be brought up. I'm willing to accept the word of the three that finances aren't really an issue and that costs will be relatively low anyway. The document referred to in the opening post looks fine to me. I'm not entirely certain from it what the actual purpose and responsibilities of the council will be, but I'm sure that will work itself out over time.

I'm still on the fence about migrating to WC2. I'll likely check it out because I actually like a lot of you - but I've been backing off from WC recently anyway. We'll see. 

The best reason to have 5 mods, to me, is that when something does come up, it's dealt with immediately. Aaron can't be here all the time, and neither can anyone else. With 5 mods and 3 admins, chances are someone with moderation rights is on (or will be soon) when a problem individual comes back, or spam gets posted, or any other little annoyance. No one has to say to themselves, "I better check the forum today." So even if you're a mod or an admin, you come here when you want to, not because you feel you have to.

Initially I wondered about the need for 5 moderators, considering there are about 25 members actively posting now, but after reading posts and thinking about it, understand the logic.

-  It allows for growth - if the site works well, and membership grows and postings increase, then good to have more.

-  Allows for people to have some flexibility in terms of checking the site.

-  Allows for different approaches to problem-solving, but expect there would be some consultation before someone is banned or reprimanded.

Having written that, I am in agreement with the present 3 Admins, 5 Moderators and 1 Treasurer.

I agree. Rev Steven

I see merit in a democratic model for forum administration as well. I've just never experienced that merit first hand, and I don't know anyone who has.

ditto

Me too.