ok, I'm going to be frank. I hate this way of making decisions. Doing it on IRC or the email list might be quick and dirty but it means that the decisions are not easy to understand, record or justify. I've asked half a dozen questions and none of them have been readily answered. Saying "that's what we decided" frankly isn't good enough. It's no way to learn from past mistakes, and easily descends into bickering - like we've seen just recently.
I suggest all decision making is done on the wiki. All past decisions need to be put up there - with explanations and justifications so they are open to challenge. All decisions should be affirmatively made and agreed.
As I have said, the only real decision that has been made is to hold an election, and for an interim board to be formed from this to create the company and that has been made clear on meta and so we can go with this "lazy consensus". The organisation of this election is still being discussed. Other than that no other decisions have been made regarding the organisation of WMUK. Mainly because at this moment in time, there are no other issues. I would say that discussion should not be limited to simply one forum. It should be done in as many arena's as possible to ensure everyone has the opportunity. There are no problems using IRC or e-mail so long as it does not alienate those which don't use it. At this moment in time I do not believe that has occurred. I believe Tom Dalton was mistaken in stating most decision have been made irc. Smaller issues that required immediate attention have been dealt with either on IRC or on this mailing list, the latter more so than the former. But they have mostly occurred in a publicly accessible forum. It is likely that this mailing list and, once set up is complete, the meta page will be the main areas for the discussion of ideas with regards to WMUK. _________________________________________________________________ Make a mini you and download it into Windows Live Messenger http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/111354029/direct/01/
2008/9/8 Andrew Turvey raturvey@yahoo.co.uk:
ok, I'm going to be frank. I hate this way of making decisions. Doing it on IRC or the email list might be quick and dirty but it means that the decisions are not easy to understand, record or justify. I've asked half a dozen questions and none of them have been readily answered. Saying "that's what we decided" frankly isn't good enough. It's no way to learn from past mistakes, and easily descends into bickering - like we've seen just recently.
I suggest all decision making is done on the wiki. All past decisions need to be put up there - with explanations and justifications so they are open to challenge. All decisions should be affirmatively made and agreed.
Demanding any one of a set of arbitrary choices really isn't helpful. You may think that the wiki makes the most sense while other users are going to think the mailing list or IRC are better choices. I personally prefer lists, because most wiki sites are blocked for me at work. I would be surprised to learn that other people don't have the same problem.
One thing that maybe needs to be worked out is the idea of a "quorum" or the minimum number of volunteer participants that are required to make a binding decision. This is definitely going to be required once you hold an AGM, but it makes sense that you get used to the idea now. If a quorum is present at a time and place that's accessible to most people (and well advertised) people shouldn't complain about "I wasn't there, so this isn't valid". If any business is expected to get done, and any progress expected to be made, you're going to have to accept that some decisions will have to be made with less then 100% of all possible participants in ways that aren't convenient to everybody. Those are the breaks of the real world.
--Andrew Whitworth
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Andrew Turvey:
I suggest all decision making is done on the wiki.
i don't think this is feasible. any time you have several interested people in the same place (such as IRC, or a real-life meeting), they're going to start talking about things, and perhaps even reach a decision among themselves. you can't stop that unless you ban people talking on IRC ;-)
of course, since not even can or wants to be on IRC, it's important that anything notable that happens there goes on the wiki, along with an explanation of the reasons for it. this means everyone else can see what's happening, and participate, and if necessary, object to things they don't like. i think this is something we've not been doing enough of so far (judging by the recent mails on this list, anyway).
(i'm not saying we should do everything on IRC then report it on the wiki; rather that we should be flexible in where things are done, as long as people who aren't there still have just as much input.)
this will be especially important once we have selected a board and starting moving towards creating the organisation; the ability to communicate in real-time is invaluable.
All past decisions need to be put up there - with explanations and justifications so they are open to challenge. All decisions should be affirmatively made and agreed.
i think it's reasonable to assume that if someone disagrees with what's on the wiki now, they would have said so. rehashing past discussions with a poll/vote/whatever will just waste time and reduce momentum.
but yes, there could be more explanation there of why things were done a certain way.
- river.
2008/9/9 River Tarnell river@wikimedia.org:
i don't think this is feasible. any time you have several interested people in the same place (such as IRC, or a real-life meeting), they're going to start talking about things, and perhaps even reach a decision among themselves. you can't stop that unless you ban people talking on IRC ;-) (i'm not saying we should do everything on IRC then report it on the wiki; rather that we should be flexible in where things are done, as long as people who aren't there still have just as much input.)
Yep. IRC is a place to talk about things and clarify thinking, sort out ideas, etc. Solid decisions should be on the wiki. The mailing list is somewhat between the two and IMO is often good enough for rough consensus on noncontroversial stuff.
- d.
2008/9/9 Andrew Turvey raturvey@yahoo.co.uk:
ok, I'm going to be frank. I hate this way of making decisions. Doing it on IRC or the email list might be quick and dirty but it means that the decisions are not easy to understand, record or justify. I've asked half a dozen questions and none of them have been readily answered. Saying "that's what we decided" frankly isn't good enough. It's no way to learn from past mistakes, and easily descends into bickering - like we've seen just recently.
I've been trying to answer everyone's questions, which ones did I miss? I thought I'd answered them all.
I suggest all decision making is done on the wiki. All past decisions need to be put up there - with explanations and justifications so they are open to challenge. All decisions should be affirmatively made and agreed.
All decisions have been put on the wiki and all are up for further discussion. We haven't been putting all the reasons up there because that's a lot of work, but if you're not sure about a particular decision, I'm sure whoever made it (check the page history) would be happy to explain the reasons and if you disagree we can discuss it. It's impossible to "affirmatively make and agree" decisions when there isn't a set group of people with the right of consultation. Once we're up and running and have a clear membership base, things will be done much more formally, at the moment that just isn't possible.
In short: If you have a problem with anything in particular, speak up, otherwise please stop complaining about procedure, it's unproductive.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Is there a log of IRC discussion? That can help with the effort of answering questions over and over again.
As far as I know, there isn't. It would be a challenge to find the information you wanted anyway, the discussion changes topic frequently and chaotically!
Yes, I agree IRC logs have problems, in fact this is another reason why I, personally, don't like them. Nevertheless, transparency is everything and in my experience having logs available minimises conspiracy theories (which are inevitable in any succeful community).
Would it be possible for someone to set up a log bot (or whatever) on the IRC channel.
Ross
Yes, I agree IRC logs have problems, in fact this is another reason why I, personally, don't like them. Nevertheless, transparency is everything and in my experience having logs available minimises conspiracy theories (which are inevitable in any succeful community).
The channel is open to anyone and the final decisions are published on meta, I think that's reasonably transparent.
Would it be possible for someone to set up a log bot (or whatever) on the IRC channel.
It's certainly technically possible. I don't know how to do it myself, however. There are some cons to public logs (it's nice to be able to talk freely without fear that your words will be used against you in the court of public opinion), but I think all in all it would be worth logging the conversations.
2008/9/9 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
It's certainly technically possible. I don't know how to do it myself, however. There are some cons to public logs (it's nice to be able to talk freely without fear that your words will be used against you in the court of public opinion), but I think all in all it would be worth logging the conversations.
If we're talking about #wikimediauk, I see no problem with regarding it as a public channel with officially logged discussion (and this prominently noted). Mind you, people would be bored senseless with most of it. Sean, how would we make Freenode OK with this, do they have rules about logged channels?
- d.
2008/9/9 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2008/9/9 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
It's certainly technically possible. I don't know how to do it myself, however. There are some cons to public logs (it's nice to be able to talk freely without fear that your words will be used against you in the court of public opinion), but I think all in all it would be worth logging the conversations.
If we're talking about #wikimediauk, I see no problem with regarding it as a public channel with officially logged discussion (and this prominently noted). Mind you, people would be bored senseless with most of it. Sean, how would we make Freenode OK with this, do they have rules about logged channels?
Actually, most of the discussion has been in #wikimania-oxford out of habit (that's where people were when the plans started to form, and that's where they've stayed), but we can certainly make an effort to keep talk in the right channel if it's being logged.
On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 2:26 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
If we're talking about #wikimediauk, I see no problem with regarding it as a public channel with officially logged discussion (and this prominently noted). Mind you, people would be bored senseless with most of it. Sean, how would we make Freenode OK with this, do they have rules about logged channels?
If the topic states the channel is logged, we are allowed to log it. We just have to make people aware.
Let me suggest the most viable solution. It may be advisable to allow public logging, but I highly doubt that people are going to read pages and pages of text and look through logs that could be hours of conversation, depending on the activity in the channels. The suggestion i would like to make is to have continuous logging of the channel. Then as and when discussion occurs, a note can be left on the meta page stating briefly what was discussed and if anything come from that discussion. Logs can then be requested on that discussion as and when it is needed. We could get a bot to do the logging and then simply have someone call up the logs as and when is needed. _________________________________________________________________ Make a mini you and download it into Windows Live Messenger http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/111354029/direct/01/
I do appreciate this desire to have things logged and have everybody knowing exactly what everybody else is doing. Unfortunately, I don't think it's tenable in the long term.
Once the chapter is officially created and incorporated, there are two types of decisions that will typically be made:
1) Decisions concerning everbody which will be made at the AGM, typically by a vote (and a person's reasons for voting one way or another may very well be kept private). AGMs are going to have minutes which are typically made available to members, and don't need IRC logfiles 2) Decisions concerning the day-to-day business of the chapter, which are typically made by the board (or an executive subset of the board) without requiring input from the members of the chapter. Logs aren't helpful here, because decisions may be made internally by the board members (although an explanation might be requested by the community).
The only time IRC logs are going to be useful as a tool for tracking and understanding decisions is in this time right now before the initial board is elected, because they will be making most decisions (with possible input from the community) until the first AGM. Trying to mandate all sorts of solutions involving bots and wikis and IRC logs is just not worthwhile because they're usefulness is going to be very short lived.
--Andrew Whitworth
- Decisions concerning the day-to-day business of the chapter, which
are typically made by the board (or an executive subset of the board) without requiring input from the members of the chapter. Logs aren't helpful here, because decisions may be made internally by the board members (although an explanation might be requested by the community).
It may be useful to publish logs of board meetings, at the very least detailed minutes should be published (redacted if necessary). It's essential that minutes are taken (that may even be a legal requirement, I'm not sure), so publishing them isn't a great deal of work.
Please read what i wrote about 10 minutes ago.
Let me suggest the most viable solution. It may be advisable to allow public logging, but I highly doubt that people are going to read pages and pages of text and look through logs that could be hours of conversation, depending on the activity in the channels. The suggestion i would like to make is to have continuous logging of the channel. Then as and when discussion occurs, a note can be left on the meta page stating briefly what was discussed and if anything come from that discussion. Logs can then be requested on that discussion as and when it is needed. We could get a bot to do the logging and then simply have someone call up the logs as and when is needed.
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2008 15:50:31 +0100> From: thomas.dalton@gmail.com> To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Decision making> > > 2) Decisions concerning the day-to-day business of the chapter, which> > are typically made by the board (or an executive subset of the board)> > without requiring input from the members of the chapter. Logs aren't> > helpful here, because decisions may be made internally by the board> > members (although an explanation might be requested by the community).> > It may be useful to publish logs of board meetings, at the very least> detailed minutes should be published (redacted if necessary). It's> essential that minutes are taken (that may even be a legal> requirement, I'm not sure), so publishing them isn't a great deal of> work.> > _______________________________________________> Wikimedia UK mailing list> wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK%3E http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
_________________________________________________________________ Discover Bird's Eye View now with Multimap from Live Search http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/111354026/direct/01/
2008/9/9 joseph seddon life_is_bitter_sweet@hotmail.co.uk:
Please read what i wrote about 10 minutes ago.
Wrote where? I don't see anything from you in this thread about board meetings.
Please read what i wrote about 10 minutes ago.> > Wrote where? I don't see anything from you in this thread about board meetings.
This discussion isnt just about board meetings. This is also decisions made as a community. I shall repost here again what i said:
Let me suggest the most viable solution. It may be advisable to allow public logging, but I highly doubt that people are going to read pages and pages of text and look through logs that could be hours of conversation, depending on the activity in the channels. The suggestion i would like to make is to have continuous logging of the channel. Then as and when discussion occurs, a note can be left on the meta page stating briefly what was discussed and if anything come from that discussion. Logs can then be requested on that discussion as and when it is needed. We could get a bot to do the logging and then simply have someone call up the logs as and when is needed. _________________________________________________________________ Discover Bird's Eye View now with Multimap from Live Search http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/111354026/direct/01/
2008/9/9 joseph seddon life_is_bitter_sweet@hotmail.co.uk:
Please read what i wrote about 10 minutes ago.
Wrote where? I don't see anything from you in this thread about board meetings.
This discussion isnt just about board meetings. This is also decisions made as a community.
But you said that in reply to my comment about board meetings... What does what you said have to do with the email you were replying to?
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Yes, I agree IRC logs have problems, in fact this is another reason why I, personally, don't like them. Nevertheless, transparency is everything and in my experience having logs available minimises conspiracy theories (which are inevitable in any succeful community).
The channel is open to anyone and the final decisions are published on meta, I think that's reasonably transparent.
It is *not* open to everyone. That would assume everyone is able to be there 100% of the time.
A log solves the problem quickly, simply and easily. It's not changing any of your processes, but makes the community more inclusive.
Ross
It is *not* open to everyone. That would assume everyone is able to be there 100% of the time.
"Open to" means they can access it if they want. Sure, not everyone is going to be there all the time, but they can be there at any time they choose.
A log solves the problem quickly, simply and easily. It's not changing any of your processes, but makes the community more inclusive.
It goes some way towards solving the problem, it's very difficult to follow conversations in logs though, so it hardly solves it completely. I don't think it's a significant problem, though - the discussions aren't important, it's the conclusions that matter and those are all made public anyway. I've chatted to plenty of people about the plans in private as well and I certainly don't intend to make logs of those public, but it doesn't matter because nothing actually gets done in private, it's all just talk.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
It is *not* open to everyone. That would assume everyone is able to be there 100% of the time.
"Open to" means they can access it if they want. Sure, not everyone is going to be there all the time, but they can be there at any time they choose.
[I recognise you are looking at the logic of creating logs, my response is therefore to share some personal experiences about why "open" is not necessarily open. Thanks for moving the suggestion forward.]
Sorry to labour the point but for a community to be successful it needs to be as inclusive as possible.
To be inclusive one needs to be as "open" as possible. Having an open door policy but only ever being in the office when others have left the building is not useful.
Furthremore some people cannot access it from behind their firewalls. It's not open in any sense in that situation.
In my case I *choose* not to join the IRC sessions so I agree it's open to *me*. I'm more concerned about those who are excluded from this young community.
A log solves the problem quickly, simply and easily. It's not changing any of your processes, but makes the community more inclusive.
It goes some way towards solving the problem, it's very difficult to follow conversations in logs though, so it hardly solves it completely.
I agree logs are far from perfect (as I said, I much prefer email as a medium for discussion). Nevertheless, it sure helps to be able to point to the logs 5 years later and say - that was why we thought it was a good idea. In this respect it is the conversation that is important not the decision.
An even more extreme case is:
Only recently I have been made aare of a major software foundation that is using IRC logs as evidence in a legal dispute. Admittedly this evidence would not be of use in a court of law (at least not in the UK, as I understand it), but it sure helps the lawyers decide to reach an out of court settlement. In this case there is a reasonably large amount of money involved. I bet they never thought their logs would be used for that purpose.
Personally, I would prefer it if all IRC sessions were documented (in the sense of meeting minutes) and reported to the mail list for archiving. However, that is a labour intensive process and therefore unlikely to actually happen. I'm suggesting logs as a nice middle ground that requires minimal effort (and again, I acknowledge the community is now looking at this option - thank you)
Ross
I agree logs are far from perfect (as I said, I much prefer email as a medium for discussion). Nevertheless, it sure helps to be able to point to the logs 5 years later and say - that was why we thought it was a good idea. In this respect it is the conversation that is important not the decision.
Why would you want to know the reasons for a decision 5 years from now? In 5 years time we should be concerned about the present and the future, not the past. When we make decisions in 5 years time we should do so based on reasons that are relevant then, not on what took place in an IRC discussion now. It's important to keep track of decisions that are made because they could have lasting effects, but the reasons for them are far less important.
Personally, I would prefer it if all IRC sessions were documented (in the sense of meeting minutes) and reported to the mail list for archiving. However, that is a labour intensive process and therefore unlikely to actually happen. I'm suggesting logs as a nice middle ground that requires minimal effort (and again, I acknowledge the community is now looking at this option - thank you)
Once we have a board, formal meetings will be minuted. Minuting free form discussion isn't just labour intensive, it's impossible. You could possibly put together some kind of summary, but it wouldn't be like the minutes of an actual meeting.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I agree logs are far from perfect (as I said, I much prefer email as a medium for discussion). Nevertheless, it sure helps to be able to point to the logs 5 years later and say - that was why we thought it was a good idea. In this respect it is the conversation that is important not the decision.
Why would you want to know the reasons for a decision 5 years from now?
Because the future should be informed by the past and in the future the community will not be made up of the same people it is today.
Ross
I don't think this thread is productive. If you want to organise logging of the IRC channels, go ahead, I won't oppose it, but if you want it, you sort it out. This chapter is being organised by whoever wants to get on and do it, that's how it works. You have no right to demand anything of the volunteers doing the hard graft in getting this set up. We accept and welcome the involvement of anyone that is interested, but it is your responsibility to get involved. Everyone does what they choose to do, that's how the Wikimedia projects have always worked and it's how this planning works, nobody has an obligation to do anything so if you want something specific done you have to do it yourself.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
You have no right to demand anything of the volunteers doing the hard graft in getting this set up.
Nobody is *demanding* anything. We are expressing an *opinion*, and in some cases making requests or proposals.
Some of us have a great deal of experience in building truly sustainable charities around open source projects, we are trying to share that experience.
Contributing experience *is* a valuable contribution and takes time out of our day to provide it. I'm sorry that such a contibution is not fully appreciated.
Ross
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org