Committee Meeting: October 23

There will be a meeting of the Committee in the #committee Slack channel on Wednesday, October 23 at 4pm GMT/UTC. (That is, for example, noon EST, 5pm BST, and 6pm in western continental Europe.) Anyone interested is welcome to join us.

This is the agenda:

  1. Agree formal name of “the Committee” be changed to Management Committee
  2. Confirm date of transition from Founding Committee to Management Committee as January 1, 2020
  3. Identify Founding Committee members who wish to transition to Management Committee members
  4. Agree mechanism for the transition in (3)
  5. Agree length of tenure of membership of Management Committee
  6. Agree number of slots to be made available on Management Committee in addition to those transitioning from the Founding Committee
  7. Agree mechanism for electing or appointing additional members referred to in (6)
  8. Agree on what to do about membership of the Management Committee in 2021

Here is a discussion document that addresses these issues. It is not that long, and it would be helpful if you read it in advance so that we can make the meeting as efficient as possible:
October 2019 meeting: discussion document.pdf (35.2 KB)

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Join the ClassicPress Slack to take part in the meeting happening 2019-10-23T16:00:00Z2019-10-23T17:00:00Z

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It seems that you didn’t consider that the people reading the forums (active users) don’t know each other, so voting for people seems quite nebulous.
How would we know who would be good at being on a committee?
It would be better to have self-nominations and the existing committee would interview and choose, since they know what is needed and can fill the existing gaps.

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But on the other hand, not saying this will happen, but it leaves the door open for the committee only picking candidates that agree with them. So I still think the people should have some vote. Even if it is just a yay or nay to a proposed candidate selected by the committee.

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I think that’s endemic to almost any kind of election.

I am going to write up a summary of what was agreed at the meeting and then post it here. I think that should make things clearer and will help to ensure that the decisions get acted upon.

I will also be calling another committee meeting soon to discuss and clarify all the decision-making processes we have.

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Summary of Committee Decisions: October 23, 2019

  1. The Committee responsible for running the ClassicPress project will
    now be formally known as the Management Committee.

    a. Current references to “the Committee” on the Democracy page of
    the ClassicPress website should now be amended to read “the
    Management Committee”.

    b. References in other documents to either “the Committee” or “the
    Steering Committee” should now also be amended to read “the
    Management Committee”.

  2. On January 1, 2020, the membership of the Management Committee will
    become open to individuals who are not Founding Members, as well as
    to Founding Members who wish to continue to serve on the
    Management Committee.

  3. The Founding Committee members who wish to continue to serve are (in
    alphabetical order by last name):

    • Michelle Coe (design team lead and marketing co-lead)

    • Tim Kaye (legal)

    • Charles Lecklider (security team lead)

    • James Nylen (development team lead)

    • Wade Striebel (community team lead)

    • Fabian Wolf

  4. The Management Committee constituted on January 1, 2020 is expected
    to have 9 members, and the process of identifying who will serve on
    the committee will operate on that basis.

  5. The membership of the Management Committee from January 1, 2020 will
    be determined by an election in which:

    a. Founding Members wishing to continue on the committee will be
    treated in the same way as other candidates;

    b. The electorate will comprise those who have reached Trust Level
    2 on the ClassicPress Forum by the end of the election period;

    c. The current committee will oversee the process and ensure that
    there is no improper manipulation of the vote; and

    d. Those elected will be expected to play a meaningful role in the
    ClassicPress project, including regular virtual attendance at
    Management Committee meetings.

  6. All those elected to serve on the Management Committee from January
    1, 2020 will do so for one year. They will also be eligible for
    membership of the Committee in 2021.

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What should also be considered, no matter where you vote, is if voting will be first past the post or Single Transferable Vote

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That is precisely one of the things I think we need to consider at the next committee meeting. Another option would be to give everyone 9 votes, though they couldn’t vote more than once for the same candidate.

This would actually be my preference, and it’s easy to handle in an in-person setting. But I have my doubts that we could manage it properly in a virtual environment.

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There is also the yay/nay system. You can vote yay or nay for each of the candidates and the nine with the most yays at the end win.

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@wadestriebel has looked at this and the forums support this voting method. We also considered giving people up to 9 votes or something like “between 5 and 9 votes”.

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This is how I would plan to handle it. We can use something similar to the poll below (used a random word generator):

  • unrumored
  • zervanite
  • outlipped
  • bratwurst
  • preresolve
  • cheerfully
  • peddlingly
  • proctologic
  • godavari
  • autochthonously

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Everyone should get a max of 5 votes, and results aren’t displayed until the poll is closed (which can be automated but for the sake of this test it is manually closed).

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I like this method of having up to 9 votes to “spend” because by withholding a vote is essentially the same as a no. Then the same “top nine win” concept applies.

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Would there be any way of indicating your order of preference?

I like this method, except that I think that, as there will be 9 spots, there should be up to nine chances to vote. This is the method I use in other non-profits, and it works well.

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Yes, in our vote there would be, but in this test I only set it to 5 :slight_smile:

I hope not. The whole idea of this method is that we avoid pitting people against those with whom they expect to work closely. It’s not the same as a political election.

If there are 9 spots and 9 votes per person, what happens if everyone votes for everyone?

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Oh OK! :slight_smile: