Possible State Meeting Solutions
Brandon Tomlinson
thebwt at gmail.com
Fri Dec 18 01:41:09 GMT 2009
It is possible to make a system of voting, controlled discussion, and
whatever else we need in any medium we decide to undertake. To reiterate, we
can do all these things via any medium, the catch is that some mediums are
better for certain types of communication.
I will agree that Google's WAVE framework can handle them all beautifully.
However, I think there are other factors to be considered.
- Email is the de facto standard for netizen ('Web'ulary educated
peoples) communication.
- Any sort of important democratic functions (Debate and votes), needs
to be closely tied to Email because of their importance.
- Forums do this via subscriptions
- Mailing lists do this inherently
- IRC doesn't do this.
- Wave doesn't do this (yet, this would be a great bot idea, but if
we're talking bots, then an IRC bot could do it just as well)
- Wave is still very young, Google's hosted wave service is via
invitation only at the moment (yes invites are easier to find that hookers
in Las Vegas, but still, it is a barrier to entry).
- Waves interface is still being hammered out and isn't the most simple
medium.
Wave may be a great venue later on, but I'm of the opinion that it just
isn't ready yet.
Here is how we can cope:
- We need to understand the purpose of "IRC meetings".
- Really needs to be for clarification of ideas, quick Q&A's.
- We need to do a better structure for irc discussions. I mesed up in
the last meeting by using +m so late in the game. I Should have cycled +v
around and given people the floor so that they could present the
discussion
topic, then open the floor ( -m) to discussion, allowing for 5 minutes of
discussion on each topic. At the topic owner's request, closing
the floor so
he or she could make a more concise point about his discussion.
- IRC shouldn't be for voting because not everyone can make it there
on time. Votes should be held over a period.
- IRC should be used for rapid communication and discussion of a
larger topic.
- We need to keep Important discussion strictly on the mailing list.
- Keep updates from any irc meetings posted to the list so that the
discussion stays coherent.
- Keep discussion in coherent threads! Be very careful about this, it
is irritating, but at the same time, mistakes happen.
- We need to decide a method of web based democracy (Forum polls, email
talies, IRC voting, etc, etc)
- Forum polls are nice because we can all vote and it keeps track of
everything. It is very transparent.
- Certain votes shouldn't be open to everyone.
- Example: Austin Citizens shouldn't be voting on Killeen issues,
unless allowed to do so by the consensus of Killeen.
- We can do this over mailing lists easily as well, just have to count
things up by hand.
- If we felt like getting really fancy, we could design a 'bot' system
that managed web democracy. The system would be in IRC and on the mailing
list (and perhaps on google wave). The bot would keep track of
running votes
and manage voting groups. The bot could also keep track of all
discussion.... this is more a draft of an idea and if we want to do
something liek this we can start a new topic.
So organize our debates, keep them coherent, keep them accessible.
On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 5:47 PM, matthew byers <faintstlsaint at gmail.com>wrote:
> I agree that a new avenue has a chance to be useful but the arguments being
> used are not that solid. Moderation is not abused as its bein suggested in
> these emails. Moderation has only been used once and it was used to get the
> room under control. Without moderation a meeting can go extremely
> unorganized with un-needed chatter and then opinions will really go
> unnoticed as Everyone will be talking at once. Votes are simple as well. If
> you are for the subject use +1 or -1 for against it or 0 for netural.
> Again i have nothing against trying other options but lets not completely
> rule out IRC. It has been around way longer than any group or team meetings
> and is the suggested venue of communications.
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 7:36 AM, Daniel Stone <webmaster at catcodesigns.net>wrote:
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> Dear Texas Team,
>>
>> I see several issues with just status quo. It fails because chatter
>> on an IRC channel makes it hard to follow and does not give an
>> adequate time to address and vote on topics.
>>
>> As I have stated before the channel can and has been used but I
>> believe that moderation (since it can only happen from select
>> individuals) can steer the conversations and discussions.
>>
>> When an item needs to be voted on it should be addressed prior to any
>> meeting. Also with the announcement of voting item could be a way to
>> simply vote on it and a place to enter personal thoughts on that topic
>> beforehand.
>>
>> This was not the case on the last IRC meeting.
>>
>> This way an item to vote on could have a week or so to vote on prior
>> to discussion to get a true consensus.
>>
>> Take this for instance
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-us-tx/2009-December/000077.html
>> one reading this thread would think that the discussions had come to a
>> close on a Centex group while in fact
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-us-tx/2009-December/000072.html
>> addresses this just days after the meeting and the forum post
>> discussion some basic questions regarding the meeting place were never
>> addressed and some of the other basic questions went unanswered.
>>
>> This may be the de-facto discussion place but to hold a vote or a poll
>> does not say that this service works best. IRC is good for general
>> chatter but the facts are already it place. I does not work to address
>> and respond to large opposing opinions.
>>
>> I see nothing wrong with using google or other other services to take
>> up the slack. And I do not see google fading away soon. In fact the
>> reason this is still in beta is google has redundancy layers to
>> approve new services just as gmail went through.
>>
>> I we remain stagnant then the team will remain the same. We need to
>> look at the future and adapt to improvements.
>>
>> Cordially,
>>
>>
>> Daniel Sone
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> matthew byers wrote:
>> > I think we need to consider that too many aspects of meeting options
>> > can become an issue...why not irc, then why not wave, then why not
>> > dimdim, then why not email meetings...see where im heading with
>> > this! If its not broken why mess with it??
>> >
>> > On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Marc Randolph <mrand at pobox.com
>> > <mailto:mrand at pobox.com>> wrote:
>> >
>> > On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 8:00 AM, Daniel Stone
>> > <webmaster at catcodesigns.net <mailto:webmaster at catcodesigns.net>>
>> > wrote:
>> > >
>> > > I was referring to how we conduct meetings.
>> > > What does a mailing list not have in relation to wave(google
>> > wave)?
>> > >
>> > > one
>> > > : a real time effect like chat.
>> > >
>> > > two
>> > > : it offers a place that discussion can happen over the course
>> > of a
>> > > few days this would be great on voting
>> > >
>> > > three
>> > > : discussions and supporting documents can be in on place
>> > making it
>> > > much easier to read and follow the discussion.
>> > >
>> > > Whilst google wave is beta -- dimdim already does this.
>> > > [...]
>> >
>> > If one of the main reasons to switch is so that conversations,
>> > votes,
>> > and other things can occur over days, I don't place much weight
>> > on the
>> > real-time aspect. But let's say some people do want
>> > near-realtime...
>> > all that needs to change is those few people can sign up for
>> > gmail or
>> > some other email service that doesn't have much polling in the
>> > way of
>> > a polling delay. Messages are typically delivered in about the same
>> > amount of time it takes to type them. Use a subject line, and they
>> > are threaded into conversations / topics. Great for organizing.
>> >
>> > Items two and three are ideally solved by the existing email
>> > list, IMHO.
>> >
>> > I'm truly not trying to be difficult, but I truly don't see why we
>> > can't continue to use this mailing list that rather than making
>> > _everyone_ that wanted to participate sign up for some random
>> > non-official service that might die someday, and take our archived
>> > discussions with it.
>> >
>> > > This message was attempted the way you instructedand I had to
>> > add the
>> > > mailing list to the to recipients.
>> >
>> > Worked great. Thanks!
>> >
>> > Marc
>> >
>> > --
>> > Ubuntu-us-tx mailing list
>> > Ubuntu-us-tx at lists.ubuntu.com <mailto:Ubuntu-us-tx at lists.ubuntu.com
>> >
>> > Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
>> > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-us-tx
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > God Bless
>>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
>> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>>
>> iEYEARECAAYFAkso4noACgkQlaq+thmGnKwxVACZAbDao7HIOFpi+5n+DN/xPSn+
>> wgUAn0fExsRVRlaZwRtKvE76XMzi9ZX8
>> =ycNC
>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> God Bless
>
> --
> Ubuntu-us-tx mailing list
> Ubuntu-us-tx at lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-us-tx
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-us-tx/attachments/20091217/f4f9de2b/attachment-0001.htm
More information about the Ubuntu-us-tx
mailing list