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Grex > Coop12 > #138: Nominations for the Board of Directors | |
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| 25 new of 176 responses total. |
mdw
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response 125 of 176:
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Nov 21 06:06 UTC 2002 |
I think votes among non-members have gone similarly because there's no
incentive for fraud. If non-member votes were applied to the total, do
you honestly believe some of the past elections wouldn't have been
stacked by people creating extra accounts just to acquire more votes?
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carson
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response 126 of 176:
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Nov 21 06:48 UTC 2002 |
(votes among non-members usually differe significantly from the member
vote. the data's there: look it up instead of taking someone else's
word for it and buying into a flawed hypothesis.)
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mdw
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response 127 of 176:
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Nov 21 07:06 UTC 2002 |
(Do you mean differ in %, or differ in terms of absolute results?
Actually, I remember some votes for board candidates that had
interesting and different results in terms of who was most liked, but I
don't have the statistics for all votes that weren't elections
memorized, so I was giving Richard the benefit of the doubt.)
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remmers
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response 128 of 176:
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Nov 21 13:05 UTC 2002 |
I've reported the results of elections and proposal votes in the
nominations and proposal items in the various editions of the
Coop conference. The member and non-member totals can be looked
up there. I'm not going to do that myself right now, but I do
recall that there have been votes in which the member and non-
member totals were almost diametrically opposite.
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jp2
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response 129 of 176:
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Nov 21 14:27 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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gull
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response 130 of 176:
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Nov 21 18:47 UTC 2002 |
And if non-member votes counted, it'd be trivial for me (or anyone else) to
spend an afternoon creating a hundred or so new userids to skew the results.
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mynxcat
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response 131 of 176:
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Nov 21 18:49 UTC 2002 |
You would imagine. But I do know a number of people who would do something
like that. And if you can automate the whole process using a script or
something similar, it becomes child's play
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richard
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response 132 of 176:
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Nov 21 19:39 UTC 2002 |
obviously I specifically said people shouldn't be made members unless they
have VALIDATED (sent the treasurer some form of ID), which eliminates the "oh
they are going to stuff the balllot box" fears. And if you eliminate ALL
votes for board members, which are beauty contests, and looked JUST at issue
votes and only issue votes, even Carson would have to admit that non-member
votes and member votes generally fall in line. And even if they didn't,
there is a difference between a validated non-paying member vote and a
non-validated non-member vote. One is susceptible to ballot stuffing a nd
creating fake logins. The other isn't. IT is the validation that protects
that from happening, not the transfer of money
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carson
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response 133 of 176:
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Nov 21 23:53 UTC 2002 |
(Richard seems to suggest that allowing a non-member vote would not
make any difference in the result of "issue votes." I say then: what's
the point of making a change?)
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mdw
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response 134 of 176:
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Nov 22 06:14 UTC 2002 |
I can't imagine what makes Richard think "validation" is free.
"Validating" ID requires a human look at "stuff", and exercise human
judgement. Curently our treasurer does this, and given that we have
less than a hundred users, this is a fairly painless process. If
Richard succeeds in his goal, our treasurer (or somebody) would instead
be doing this for at least thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of
people. Instead of spending 10 minutes every 3 days, we're now talking
about perhaps hours of work every day. Freenets had something of the
same problem, when they decided to do validation for free shell access.
Most freenets quickly got flooded with requests, and validation could
take months before it happened. What eventually happened is that
freenets either stopped offering shell access entirely, or required
payment before supplying shell access. Basically, to successfully do
what Richard wants requires we hire somebody at least half-time, perhaps
full-time. That means we need to be something like at least 4x the
paying membership we currently have, or find some other means of
dramatically increasing our income. Alternatively, we could reduce our
validation criteria, but that opens up the fraud problem.
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aruba
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response 135 of 176:
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Nov 22 14:35 UTC 2002 |
Well, I think that's a little hyperbolic, Marcus. I don't imagine there are
*that* many people who'd want to send ID just so they could vote. But I
guess we won't know unless we try it. I do think I'd get mail from people
I never heard of, asking to be validated. I don't care for the idea of
having to then decide who is allowed to validate (because they
participated in the conferences or in party in some meaningful way).
Richard, what procedure would I have to go through in order to decide who
can be validated to vote?
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mdw
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response 136 of 176:
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Nov 22 17:22 UTC 2002 |
I think Mark is right in the sense that shell access is considerably
more attractive than voting.
Of course, to the extent that's true, making voting "free" won't get
that many more people involved, and perhaps we ought to instead think of
"sending money in" as the perk, and voting as the onerous duty we impose
on those generous souls - we've certainly encountered donors who didn't
want the onerous duty, and I suppose an argument might be made that we
might get more donations if we got rid of the voting "perk".
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other
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response 137 of 176:
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Nov 22 18:59 UTC 2002 |
That's a bit nonsensical, since members are not required to vote.
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mynxcat
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response 138 of 176:
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Nov 22 19:05 UTC 2002 |
I think that was the point he was making
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other
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response 139 of 176:
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Nov 22 19:32 UTC 2002 |
Oh. Me so slow today. 6am call and only 3.7 hours sleep.
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richard
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response 140 of 176:
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Nov 22 20:04 UTC 2002 |
I don't think validation of non-paying members need be so onerous. If
certain restrictions are put in:
1. User's login ID must have been active for at least ninety days
2. User provides copy of government photo ID
3. User can validate and be member after ninety days but cannot get
shell access unless he pays dues OR is login ID has been active for one year
IMO the only people interested in validating under those rules would be those
who are truly interested in grex and its community. Which wouldn't be tensof
thousands of users as mdw suggests.
I think the real issue mdw has with validation of non-paying members is
bringing too many people into the decision making process. It is natural that
those who helped organize something are going to want to not see themselves
having a smaller and smaller voice in that organization's affairs. Things
like limiting membership, and who can vote and who can't, are ways that one
fights dilution of influence. It is whether you think you can trust larger
groups of people to do the right thing. I think Grex is stagnating, its
membership is not growing. And its original members are getting older and less
involved out of necessity. Grex can benefit from being more inclusive and
ought to seek out ways to make people feel more welcome to get involved.
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aruba
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response 141 of 176:
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Nov 22 20:13 UTC 2002 |
Whoa, now you're talking about charging for shell access? What has that got
to do with voting?
I agree with your last sentence.
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richard
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response 142 of 176:
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Nov 23 02:57 UTC 2002 |
I only said that because the fear seems to be too many people having shell
access,more so than too many people being able to vote. So I suggested
removing shell access as an issue, keep that as a perk for paying dues, as
it is now, and then maybe there would be less objection to the idea of
membership being offered that doesn't have dues paying being an outright
requirement
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aruba
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response 143 of 176:
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Nov 23 04:53 UTC 2002 |
Everyone has shell access now - you don't have to pay for it. The only perk
for being a member is a small amount of extra internet access (ftp, irc,
telnet). Is that what you mean?
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russ
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response 144 of 176:
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Nov 23 17:11 UTC 2002 |
If shell access is a paid perk and voting is free, Grex's finances
could be expected to go down the toilet. That, and the now-voting
freeloaders could be expected to vote themselves shell access for
as long as Grex remained operational (which would not be long).
Seriously, Richard. Do you ever think things through?
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richard
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response 145 of 176:
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Nov 23 19:52 UTC 2002 |
the board would vote on those kind of issues, and the board would only
consist of paid members. And as grex was created to be open access and
available to everyone, it is illogical to term any user of grex a\
"freeloader" russ acts as if grex is a private country club!
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carson
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response 146 of 176:
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Nov 24 00:56 UTC 2002 |
(I want to make sure that I understand this argument [which has zero to
do with nominations, but, in the interest of being "user-friendly"
{cough}, I'll simply point out the obvious and move on] and suggestion
for expanding the vote to non-dues-paying users. Here's my summary):
1) Allowing non-dues-paying users to vote would not change the result
of any vote taken, because they vote the same way that dues-paying
users vote [even though they don't].
2) Allowing non-dues-paying users to vote on board elections ["beauty
contests"] would not change the result of any vote taken [even though
it sometimes would], so Grex will let them vote on those, and deny them
the vote on substantiative issues.
3) Grex would have the board vote on "those kind of issues," thereby
disenfranchising non-dues-paying-users and dues-paying-users [except
the ones who are on the board] equally under the guise of giving non-
dues-paying-users the vote.
(on the "plus" side, someone apparently wants a paved road to one of
the afterlifes.)
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richard
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response 147 of 176:
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Nov 24 05:09 UTC 2002 |
Carson you misunderstand what I'm saying. What issues go to member wide
votes? those having to do with amending bylaws. For most other issues, the
board decides. And if those who run for the board are limited to those who
have paid dues, what difference does it make if non-dues paying voting
members voted for them?>
And Carson, UNLIKE YOU, I happen to think that the users who use grex are
responsible and that those who choose to be involved will be responsible
in what they do. You are an aristocrat. You believe in class divisions
and you believe that those with the most money at stake SHOULD rule. I
don't. Simple as that. You either trust human beings to make the right
decisions or you don't. Period. And Carson, you don't
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richard
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response 148 of 176:
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Nov 24 05:14 UTC 2002 |
And Carson, proof of what I claim about your aristrocratic views is that you
clearly imply if not state outright that if non-dues paying members
increased the membership, and DID happen to change the outcome of votes,that
those outcomes would be worse than if the voting was limited. WHY do you
think that? Why? I want to hear one logical reason, and ballot stuffingis
not a reason since responsible validation would eliminate that, why
allowingmore human beings who like grex to vote in its elections cause worse
results. why carson?
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mdw
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response 149 of 176:
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Nov 24 09:15 UTC 2002 |
Richard's validation policy is almost exactly what we use today,
excepting for adding some time delays. If I understand this part right,
he hopes to trade the "exclusion" of making a financial donation for the
"exclusion" of having to be around for at least 3 months. I'm not clear
on how how many more members Richard hopes to gain this way, vs.
valdation load on our treasure. I'll address shell access next, but
without that, I estimate if successful, we *might* see our membership
grow to about 200-400 people and our treasurer might spend 10
minutes/day doing validation. I also estimate that our *paying*
membership would drop to about 20, because I expect many people would
rationalize that their online participation is all they should owe to
grex, and that somebody else can worry about paying bills. I assume
Richard has a similar fear, since he added the "shell access" feature to
his proposal.
Ok, about that shell access thing. This requires we modify all of our
software to support a "no shell account" feature. This includes
PicoSpan, mail, vi, mail, etc. Lynx/pine probably already have support
for disabling shell access. We'd have to review that to be sure it
works. Mail forwarding would be a problem - that currently can take an
arbitrary command and run it. We might also want to think about
incoming ftp access -- we currently allow that but it might not make
sense with this new "restricted" thing. Web pages is another similar
unknown. All this is certainly doable, but would require significant
work to make it all work right. The result will certainly have
long-term impact on the sorts of people we get on grex. We'd obviously
lose the techie "I want to learn unix" crowd. We might want to revise
some of our other entry level stuff accordingly, which might attract a
different crowd of other people currently turned off by our "it's unix"
face. All in all, this is a pretty major change, with a *lot* of
interesting implications that go *way* beyond members & voting.
Probably this deserves its own item, if people want to discuss it
further.
As I said before, I assume Richard added this in the hopes of attracting
funding lost from people who no longer think their membership dues are
important, but I'm certain how realistic that is. On the one hand, we
*might* realize faster hardware through discouraging vandals. On the
other hand, for-pay shell access already has a well-developed commercial
market; even without vandals it's not clear to me we can equal the cost
and services commercial customers would expect. We would be burdened by
our "free-loading" web/non-shell users, while many commercial shell
provider systems are probably subsidized at least in part by other ISP
activities.
So much for shell access. We've been talking some about "grex changes"
and "200-400" people. There is an obvious implication that grex is
somehow becoming too in-grown. I'm not sure that's really justified;
we've always been pretty "in-grown", and yet in many senses of the word
we've been quite successful. The two most interesting changes I can
think of late that have happened to grex are completely unrelated to
this. The first isn't "our fault" at all -- the web is now a much
larger presence, and we've clearly had mixed loyalties to it. Perhaps
we ought to face up to those directly, rather than attempt to
re-engineer the social system to do so, if that is our concern. The 2nd
is a much smaller and more local: we've had a recent influx of users who
(how can I say this kindly?) feel less nurturing towards grex in
particular, and/or are more confrontational in general. Even this is
somewhat of an oversimplification; I think these people are themselves
changing a lot more rapidly on grex than grex as a whole is changing -
there is a process of cultural assimilation that is working despite our
worst fears. But there is an affect on grex all the same, and I don't
think it helps our membership picture any to have people going around
saying quite publically that "grex doesn't deserve money". We need only
look at m-net to see an example of where that kind of talk leads.
Ironically, m-net seems to be on the verge of returning to its original
funding model: a rich man's hobby. Unfortunately, Richard's proposal
works directly into this process; it splits the board from the
membership at large, and separates funding from participation.
Having said all those mean things about Richard's proposal, allow me to
make one kind observation: as matters stand, it is very difficult for
users in poor countries, such as India, to become members or otherwise
help grex. Very few of them have US funds, Indian rupees aren't worth
much, and there are other obstacles to individuals exporting cash from
India. Richard's proposal would make it a lot easier for our
established Indian users to become voting members, which they would very
likely appreciate.
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