The recent discussion elsewhere in Coop concerning Grex membership
and what it should entail has gotten me to thinking about the
internet-based services that I pay for. Here are a few of them:

    o Instapaper - a "read it later" service
    o Pinboard - a bookmarking service
    o Ars Technica - news, reviews, and other articles
    o New York Times web edition

With each of these I asked myself two questions: (1) Do they
provide services that are of value to me? (2) Do I expect to
play a part in the governance of the organization that
provides the service?

In every case, the answer to (1) was "yes" (else why would
I pay?) and to (2) was "mostly no" - I'm interested in the
service provided and have at best a marginal interest in
running the show, as long as the service is satisfactory.
If I have a problem or get an idea about how the service
could be improved, most of them provide forums or mailing
lists for input.

That's a pretty common business model for internet services,
and I think it makes sense for Grex to consider a similar
one. Perhaps two tiers of membership: First tier gives full
access to the services provided (bbs, unix stuff, and
whatever else there is), second tier confers participation
in the governance process: voting in elections, running for
the board.

Provided the services are sufficient for enough folks to
sign on to tier #1, this could provide Grex with a steady
revenue stream. It would also tend to insure that the
people with voting privileges are really the ones who
want to be involved in governance.

I think that providing channels for communication with and
by tier 1 members is important to do, and I also think it's
not hard to solve. We would require that they provide a
working email address. Periodically, we send out an email
describing updates to the service and brief instructions
on how to access stuff (e.g. bbs) and how to upgrade to
tier 2.

Lots of internet services do business via a tier 1 model.
By having two tiers, we can also preserve the concept of
member governance. Should we consider doing this?

16 responses total.

I tend to think that it's not worth it.  There's a tiny number of people who
care about governance now; what will splitting into two tiers of membership
do that's different?

In a sense, we kind of already do this: the easiest way to get *verified* is
to donate via PayPal.  Those folks may or may not be members (we say that,
if they dontate the minimum, they get membership status for a month.  Since
no one is recording that on an ongoing basis, it's kind of an adacemic
distinction).  I'd be opposed to asking people to pay on an ongoing basis for
what they can presently get for a one-time payment (or sending a letter, or
whatever).  Besides, we're not hurting for money....

We already require that new users give us a valid, working email address: they
can create an account with a fake address, of course, but then they won't get
their password when pnewuser emails it to them.

I think that we need to step back for a moment and ask: exactly what problem
are we trying to solve?  That's not at all clear to me in this proposal.

Years ago, M-Net had two tiers, "member" for voting rights, and "patron"
for that plus perks.  They ended it about 4 or 5 years ago because M-Net
doesn't offer any services worth paying to get, didn't need income, and
didn't have people using both levels of membership.  Now, if you want to
be a member, you become a patron.  Everything offered is offered for
free to everyone.  That's what Grex has always offered, right?

I don't see a need to have two membership tiers.  I didn't get the point
of doing this.  Am I just missing something that you said?

This response has been erased.

This response has been erased.

resp:3 To what end, though?  I think that it is very unlikely that Grex
will ever go back to a mode where there are significant ongoing expenses.

To step back a moment myself, my proposal to stop expiring members is purely
to avoid the administrative overhead of keeping track of things, which isn't
happening and, let's be honest, isn't going to happen.

I'll be frank: I still don't understand this proposal, as I think it's
intended to solve a problem that Grex doesn't have at the moment, and it
already largely mirrors something that we already do.

Sorry Dan - I scribbled the response that you're responding to since I
didn't particularly care for it myself.  :-)

Anyway - problem I was trying to address was that of
distinguishing between "customers" and "members" (in the
governance-participating sense). Dan's right that we sort of do that
already with the Paypal thing. But I was wondering if it would be
possible to turn the customer base (I probably shouldn't refer to them
as "members") into some sort of significant income stream. (We have
money now, but not necessarily forever.) Obviously these
ideas aren't fully baked, and there's the issue of reconciling that with
Grex's charitable mission.

Something to keep in mind in any discussion of the membership model is
that Cyberspace Inc. is a Michigan corporation and as such has
record-keeping and reportage obligations regarding members, such that we
probably don't want to incur those obligations for everybody anywhere in
the world who sends in a few bucks via Paypal, even temporarily, much
less in perpetuity. (Rane can probably clarify whether what I'm saying
here makes any sense.)

In any case, the issue I'm trying to address here is minor compared to
the truly difficult ones.

A couple things: 1. paying dues is a condition of membership in the
current by-laws and Article 6 outlines what those dues are in terms
of money.  So if we were to do anything about removing a dues
requirement, the by-laws would need yet another change (one wonders
how long we can continue to gut the by-laws before the need for
new by-laws presents itself, but anyway...).  2. The justification
for collecting identification information from members is in our
membership FAQ and gives two reasons (the main one being that the
State of Michigan requires us to keep an up to date list of members
and we do it to keep people from voting more than once.  There is
also the need to know who we are giving outgoing access in case they
cause issues for other sites).  So no matter how we define
membership, it sounds like we'll need to identify those members.

I like the idea of sending out a newsletter to users.  But then, the mice
thought it a good idea to put a bell on the cat, too. ;/

resp:6 I don't see how it's any harder to simply append to a list than to
keep revising that list over and over again, except that no one is doing the
latter and doing the former would be simpler.  *shrug*

A steady income stream is only relevant if we have expnses, which we basically
don't.  The 2003-ish computer had hardware problems that have been largely
addressed, thankfully; but that computer's configuration was a huge mistake.
We should have gotten a box that had ECC RAM and it should have run FreeBSD
from the start; our odessy through OpenBSD was a misguided misadventure.

CC is currently a member-based 501(c)3. But it isn't necessry to have members
as part of the corporation. It could be a board-based 501(C)3.

"No owners are in a 501(c)(3) organization. The founders of the 501(c)(3) may
serve on the company's board of directors or act as officers of the
organization. A 501(c)(3) may or may not have members that are actively
involved in the organization's affairs. The structure of a 501(c)(3) exists
to ensure that the organization is operating in a way that best meets the
needs of the clients and customers that use the organization's services"

In a board-based 501(c)3 governance is provided just by the board, which
chooses its own members, forms committees of at least one director, elects
its own officers, etc.

All users then are just users (or clients or customers). 

Funds could still be raised by asking for donations from the users (instead
of "dues)). 

How are board members elected or appointed in the instance of no members?

resp:11 Presumably, an initial board is named and that board grants power
to the board to appoint board members and officers as appropriate.

I guess we better hope the bus doesn't crash with all board members on it
in that instance :)

re #7 The problem is the bylaws make it too difficult to do anything.  
The bylaws have outlived the original vision of the founders.  Therefore 
I think the easiest thing to do, before considering new membership 
setups, is to dissolve the corporation.  Get rid of the bylaws entirely 
and start over.

Could just form a new 501(c)(3) and cyberspace communications sells it 
the assets/property, and the people who use Grex now finally have a 
chance for a fresh start, to write a new simpler bylaws.  A bylaws that 
would provide a future and give people a *reason* to want to invest in 
that future.

I think any new membership structure won't work unless the corporate 
structure that would govern it is dealt with.

Enough, Richard.  We don't need to discuss dissolving the corporation in
every item in this conference.  There are other things to talk about as
well.  Discuss it in the item you started for that purpose.  No one used
'forget'.  Quit muddling every item with this garbage, or face being
excluded as people add your name to the 'ignore' list.

"How are board members elected or appointed in the instance of no members?"

Non-profit corporations are created by a meeting of "founders", who can be
stated to be the first board and officers. This has already happened with CC
so converting it to a board-based corportion would be a litle different. I
do not presently know the procedure for this, but it probably involves the
way the current board sets up the restructuring. 

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