Community representatives (CR) and council meeting

[Joshy 4,368 / 44,996]

Hi!

 

## Disclosure: I didn't run this dangerous thread through reviews first, and so there maybe some inaccuracies or errors in it.  I'm sorry.  This is a best effort meant with good intentions.  Below is not a legal document so please don't clamp onto a phrase or two and use it later like Section II Part 7 in article 304.1d I'm just trying to open some dialogue and talk to you like a person ##

 

TL;DR version we're intending to make changes to CR, which will most likely convert all representatives to the staff version SCM; however: we will broaden who can become an SCM from Server Manager+ to Teams and Server Admin+.  This is still under discussion and we will take our time to try to do whichever update will work best.

 

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There's a Council meeting tomorrow.  One topic we plan to talk about is some changes to community representatives (CR).  We would like to post this ahead of time for improved transparency; it would also give attendees a chance to think of ideas or questions ahead of time to maybe navigate this topic a little bit better during the meeting.

 

Not to be vague: The preferred idea during discussions has been to change all Community Representative (CR) into the Staff version (SCM).  Previously: Only Server Manager+ could become a SCM, and then CR was the version that could (almost) be anyone even if they were just a (good standing) member of the community.  Dwindling interest in the role has been noticed, and past CR campaigns seem a little bit toxic and spammy by asking people to vote.  Example toxicity is dividing staff versus non-staff, and saying not nice things about each other in effort to hurt the other person campaign or reputation.  It looks like we can afford a few more rounds of this despite dwindling interest, but it does look like the system will have to change soon with only 2-3 people campaigning for the role.  The other issues we've ran into were related to Code of Conduct, which wasn't always wasn't clear to typical members.  Although the Code of Conduct is now visible to everyone and the most important parts of it can be fulfilled by very standard commonly accepted practices, common sense (don't break the rules, don't do "bad" things, etc. I know I'm being vague here but I hope you can understand what I mean) it was still very possible and even likely that most people can participate in GFL without having ever looked at it, and this could cause confusion for people campaigning for the role (should they follow code of conduct even though they aren't staff [yet]?)

 

A further reason we like this SCM is because there is no campaign, and staff members are (generally speaking) more invested into the community.  Again: I say this generally speaking.  There is no doubt a few outstanding members who are not a part of staff and are very invested into the community.  For this: I'm very thankful for these people. They are very valuable and critical for the continued success of the community- thanks!  It still does not invalidate that the typical member is not as invested, and that's okay, but we don't need to make a complicated system so broad to accommodate outliers.  The minor tweak that has been thought of for SCM is to broaden who can fulfill this role, and this will still make this system broad enough to make an easy way in should someone want to do more.  Formerly:  It was Server Manager+, and now it will be likely extended to Teams and Server Admin+ should this idea be approved.  This should make it "like-CR", but the person would at least have some staff related role within the community and guarantee they should have seen the Code of Conduct or be accountable for their actions related to it.

 

## Extra disclosures and disclaimers ##

 

I also wanted to add, that the role itself... I do genuinely want people to be interested in it, but it can also be kind of vanilla depending on how it is approached.  Most of the council related items have been approving or denying financial requests such as the cost for a plugin, events, or which type of expense to prioritize.  Council is also responsible for community bans.  I want to be careful to calibrate the expectations of this role.  It can be used to do a lot of good things and it is possible to "make" the role interesting (come up and drive your ideas), but it's also not as (intrinsically) glamorous as it may appear from the outside.

 

The additional disclaimer is that all of this is still in discussion.  Just because we have a council meeting or have discussed a few ideas between council members, or even after tomorrow's meeting... we don't have a hard schedule on this.  We don't have to say "Okay, well since it was in the meeting or posted here, what we said now goes without question"  We can take our time and do this right.  We don't want to rush.  We want to get it right, or at least have high confidence that we did the best we can given the circumstances.

 

We also have to remember that almost every decision has some type of trade-off or flaw.  Acknowledged!  We know some of the ideas might have a price to pay that some people wont like.  We're going to try to optimize what we can and we'll do our best to make everyone happy, and even if we were to move forward with something (or even doing nothing about it now) and it doesn't mean we cannot fine tune and adjust later.

 

Anyhoo... I wanted to post this.  Face palm to whatever I got wrong or shouldn't have said 😞 feel free to share your thoughts.  Please use good judgement and behave.  You don't have to be robotic or say things I agree with, but it's not necessary to be rude.  Earn a free post count here, or speak up during the council meeting.  Remember: We don't have to rush, and so tomorrow doesn't have to be the super gold standard perfect answers the on the spot if it doesn't seem like we have good alignment.

Edited February 11, 2023 by Joshy
Tried to clear up typos and rephrase a few things a little bit better

[Nick 1,249 / 17,857]

Very happy to see it brought up before the meeting! I also want to make a quick disclaimer that I am talking purely on my own behalf. (EDIT: I just realized it seemingly has not been publicly communicated anywhere that I entered Council back in late October, so I suppose this is that first acknowledgement, haha; at least in text!)

 

While I don't personally agree with everything you brought up, I do agree with the core idea of turning CR into something else, or removing the seats, at least temporarily. Take my opinion with a grain of salt since I was part of establishing CR thus I might be a bit biased, haha. I do think the concept has its place, but it also has to be acknowledged that at the moment it is not worth the hassle. The community's engagement and wanted engagement in Council shenanigans is simply not high enough to justify the work required to keep the concept going.

 

I do see some positives in this since this might be a side effect of a lot more stable management than we've had in the past where Council doesn't need to deal with controverisal issues every other month and thus people lose interest since it is not "exciting" enough, haha. Hopefully, we can give people (drama-free!) reasons to want to get engaged as we dive into new adventures in GFL.

 

Once that time comes, I think the reintroduction of something like CR will make sense to consider and might even come very naturally if we stick to the public meeting setup.

[Joshy 4,368 / 44,996]

We just had the meeting tonight.  It was pretty brief, and it seemed like none of the audience members at the time of the meeting had (open) opinions on this.  We plan to official vote on the topic at the end of the week likely in favour of what was described above.

 

Infra brought up a comment of limiting the number of consecutive terms so that it's not always the same old.  Most likely it will be 2 consecutive terms similar to what will be formerly CR.