GPCO Council Forum

[Ryan Jones]

Thank you so much for setting up this forum, Bill.  I think this is going to make communication a lot smoother and as a result, the party far more effective.  I have been reading about the features of Simple Machines Forums (SMF) for the past couple of days and I wanted to propose some layout suggestions for the forum.  This suggestions are just a starting point.  I would appreciate criticism, ideas, and further suggestions.  I also want to state that, while I have tried to understand the features of SMF, I may have misinterpreted them or overlooked key features.  I look forward to getting replies from folks that have more knowledge on the workings of this software.  I see that there are currently three boards: General Discussion, Restructuring the State Party, and Council Discussions.  I also see that the General Discussion board is public, while the others are available only to those logged in.  I feel that the careful use of access settings (such as that that is already being done) is the main advantage of this system.  I was intrigued to learn about the Membergroups feature.  Creating a Membergroup allows administrators to grant that member group access to a specific boards that are hidden to the public or other Membergroups.A Council Membergroup should be created to allow council access to a specific set of boards.  There should be a Category created called Council, where only council members could view and post to the boards within it.  It should be organized like this:

• Council Floor (with child boards titled "Proposal Discussion", "Proposal Voting", and "Proposal Results"
• Proposal Drafting
• Council General Discussion (with child boards titled "GPCO General Discussion", "Events of Interest", and "Sandbox".
• Documents and File Directory (with child boards for: bylaws, procedures, netiquette; logos, and guides.

The Council Floor is where proposals are discussed and voted on.  When a councilmember has a proposal drafted, they submit it to the Council Floor.  When it gets the needed amount of support (a second from another councilmember?) it is moved to Proposal Discussion by a/the Council Facilitator.  After a sufficient amount of discussion or time period, the author of the proposal may make minor changes and resubmit for discussion, or have it moved to Proposal Voting.  Councilmembers vote on the proposal during this time frame.  After the vote, the Facilitator moves it to Proposal Results.  A sticky post is added to the topic with the information of the vote (such as the number of votes, passed/failed, etc.)The Proposal Drafting board is for collaberating with others on proposals and getting feedback before the Proposal Discussion phase.  I feel that this is important to encourage input at the early stage of the proposal.  The Council General Discussion board is a place where councilmembers can talk to each other without disrupting the activity on the other boards.  This is important because if someone that doesn't understand the rules starts an  off-topic conversations on the Council Floor, a moderator could move it to this board and tell the councilmember to start future general discussions there.  The Events of Interest board would be a favorite of mine.  This is a place where people can post upcoming events that are relevent to the GPCO.  Perhaps the Boulder Green Party is hosting an event.  They could post the event to this board to let others know.  It could also be a place where councilmembers post upcoming events that are of interest to Greens, such as a protest.  It would be great if we could activate the calendar on this forum.  The calendar moderators could use the Events of Interest Board for inspiration when adding events to the  calendar.  The Sandbox isn't too import of a component, I could take it or leave it.  It is a place where people unfamiliar with the software can play around without disrupting conversation on the other boards.  Perhaps its contents could be deleted every so often.  It is just a thought.  The Documents and File Directory is a way of using a board as a file directory.  Ideally, this software would have the capability of allowing files to be uploaded to folders, were others could access those files.  Because it doesn't, I thought of using the file attachment feature (which I haven't used yet) for this purpose.  I think it would be great if the council could all have access to certain documents such as current bylaws, procedures, and nettiquitte guidelines.  I also remember someone saying at the state meeting that it was difficult to track down a high-rez GPCO logo for a newspaper article.  This could also be a repository for guides written by GPCO members such as How to run a campaign in Colorado. Finally, it could be used to disseminate GPCO tabling material.  We may want to expand the permissions to other membergroups besides just the Council for some of the child boards in this category.  Maybe we could allow others to view the guides and tabling material, but not upload.  This would keep it tidy and usable.  That is my suggestion for arranging the Council Boards.  It would be great to expand this forum beyond the Council, but it may be best to start with the fundamentals.  I can envision several membergroups: Council, Co-Chairs, any committee or task force (such as the restructuring task force),and every GPCO local could have its own boards.  While I am not opposed to the idea, I am less interested in creating public boards for anyone that wants to register.  This could be a valuable tool, but it could also open things up to flame wars and other issues.  I think it is best to prioritize the use of this forum for our internal communication.  One final thought, I really like the profiles here.  It will help put a face to the message.  I did read somewhere that there is an option for custom profile fields.  It would be great if we could add a field for roles within the GPCO so the local chapter that the councilmembers are representing and other offices that the members holds could easily be identified.    I look forward to feedbackJonesy

[Art Goodtimes]

jonesylots of good suggestions. but there's so many things in one post, it's almost impossible to respond. can you break your suggestions down into discrete parts with different headings. that way we can discuss each one separately, rather than try to reply to such a long post with many different parts...artg

[Ryan Jones]

Hey Art, Here is the most important part of the system I am Proposing: A Council Membergroup should be created to allow council access to a specific set of boards.  There should be a Category created called Council, where only council members could view and post to the boards within it.  It should be organized like this:

• Council Floor (with child boards titled "Proposal Discussion", "Proposal Voting", and "Proposal Results"
• Proposal Drafting

A/the council facilitator monitors proposals while they are on the Council Floor, submits proposals to Proposal Voting, and tallies votes and moves proposals that have been voted on to Proposal Results.  The rest of this post describes the possible procedures and advantages of the system.  ___________________________________The Council Floor is where proposals are discussed and voted on.  When a councilmember has a proposal drafted, they submit it to the Council Floor.  There could be a set amount of time that a proposal can be discussed on the floor, perhaps with an option for an short extension if modifications are being worked out.  When it gets the needed amount of support to progress to the voting phase, the final text of the proposal is moved to the "Proposal Voting" board.  Another option is the author may decide to withdrawal the proposal and resubmit a different version if there are significant modifications to be made.  Councilmembers vote on the proposal after it has been submitted to "Proposal Voting".  This vote would resemble the method of voting that the council previously did over email.  We could experiment with the poll function, or just have members post their votes as they did before.  After the vote, the Facilitator moves the topic to the board labeled "Proposal Results".  A sticky post is added to the topic with the information of the vote (such as the number of votes, passed/failed, etc.)This system separates the drafting process, discussion process, voting process, and the results of the vote.  This allows the boards to be kept neat and usable.  An obvious advantage of a forum over an email listserv is that each proposal is a separate message board topic with its own thread of discussion.  This allows a smoother discussion process without the information overload of the old system.  This will allow a lot more quality discussion to take place.  The structure that I am recommending is designed to keep the forum organized and usable.  It allows proposals to get feedback before they are voted on so that they can be improved.  It allows those that just want to participate in the voting process to easily do that.  It allows councilmembers to easily view the results of past votes.

[Bill Bartlett]

Jonesy,  Thank you for this precise structure to start utilizing this new forum!  Michael stated in another thread that he feels most councilmembers will be familiar enough with this that we could start using it sooner rather than later.  I hope these structural enhancements will lend some familiarity to the forum so we can see how it will benefit inter-party communications. I like the idea of allowing locals a space at the forum; this could make it easier for locals to work together and for the state to become more involved where it can without getting in the way. Most of your ideas I think benefit most from being implemented and discussed to sharpen them over time.  Maybe we should also begin a Board specifically for forum structure discussion, outside of the RTF forum. Bill B.

[Ryan Jones]

Bill, I just saw the new layout of the Council Boards and I am very impressed.  You did a great job setting all this up.  Now the question is: when do we start using the forum for Council business?  I am in favor of moving to the forum as soon as possible.  I realize that council may need to modify the bylaws before we start conducting official votes on the forum.  The bylaws regarding how the council meets are vague.  4.2.2. The Council will meet at its discretion between state meetings andimmediately after each state meeting and may take votes through email.It could be interpreted as: council may meet between state meetings in any location or in any manner it decides to, including but not limited to taking votes through email.  This interpretation has its basis in the bylaws not mentioning any requirements for conducting council business.  Just that it may meet at its discretion and this meeting may be conducted by methods including but not limited to email voting.  If Council members are uncomfortable with this interpretation, we could amend the bylaws to say "The Council will meet at its discretion between state meetings andimmediately after each state meeting and may take votes through email or other internet-based methods.I am really excited for the forum to start getting used.  I hope that we are able to make modifications to it as we become more familiar with how it is being used.  It is difficult to imagine how best to configure the forum before we actually use it.  That is why I think your idea of a board for forum suggestions is a good one.  I could see such a board going under Council General Discussion, or anywhere else it would make sense to put it.  Thanks for all your hard work in getting this forum going, Bill.  I believe it will greatly increase what the GPCO can accomplish.    Jonesy

[Bill Bartlett]

Hi Jonesy! Thanks again for the feedback.  I'm going to be doing some work on the forum over this next week to make it a little more hospitable for council members.  It would be nice to get a facilitator and do some test runs to see how the process will work in reality. I agree with your interpretation of 4.2.2.  It might be something we want to touch upon in the restructuring to make it officially say something closer to your statement.

[Art Goodtimes]

bill & jonesythank you both for your work on this forum. i thought we had a large group volunteer to work on restructuring, so it's disappointing that so few are participating. but perhaps they are not aware, or not savvy enough to get involved.just a couple clarifications -- when you say boards in this SMF format, i presume you mean "threads" which is the term for one subject discussions on most blogs or community discussion boards, like the one i used to run in the '80s.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threaded_discussionfor those of us used to threaded discussions, calling it "boards" or "child boards" here, is confusing ... if we have to do that here, can we put a note defining this new term on the front page of our forum?i think jonesy has a lot of good and interesting ideas. but i don't think we can leap ahead to employing this forum for council deliberations before we hammer out a restructuring. i feel strongly that we need to devolve from a strong statewide organization with a handful of active participants and reps from chapters to a weak statewide org that maintains basic functions only (like maintaining party status, websites, etc.) and strong individual chapters, quasi-independent. i think bill feels slightly different. and i'd love to work through those differences before we go to actually setting up mechanisms by stretching our bylaws (one of the issues with "detailed" bylaws is that they are too inflexible. our bylaws specify emails not forums as how council works. i think we need to agree on a restructure and change our bylaws to fit our new structure, before we start operating "outside" our bylaws.

[Art Goodtimes]

a note — i couldn't figure out how to make a reply to the “child boards” on bylaws or policies and guidelines. the postings by bill lead us to the bylaws and P&G, but don't seem to allow replies?????

[Bill Bartlett]

Thank you for your inquiry Art!  We can use these Q&A's as part of a general FAQ for the forum.  🙂  I understand you are inquiring about the lack of a reply link on the initial posts to the P&G Discussion board and Bylaws Discussion board.  Those topics are "locked" -- so they don't allow replies.. and "stickied" so they will always remain at the top of the page. I have edited those posts to reflect their intent.  When I posted them, I should have been more communicative about their purpose and why they were locked in that fashion.  They are there so that they can be referred to during discussion, and updated with new links when changes are made, without losing the thread in a list of topics and replies. 🙂  Feel free to create a new "Topic" using the "New Topic" button to create a new discussion thread on the board.  Users creating topics of discussion is the key to how the board works.  If a topics gets too big we can break it down into several smaller topics that can be talked about in tandem.  We've had a few signups to the forum, so I am looking forward to seeing how this process begins to unfold. Blessings, Bill B.

[Art Goodtimes]

Hey Art, Here is the most important part of the system I am Proposing: A Council Membergroup should be created to allow council access to a specific set of boards.  There should be a Category created called Council, where only council members could view and post to the boards within it.  i agree It should be organized like this:

• Council Floor (with child boards titled "Proposal Discussion", "Proposal Voting", and "Proposal Results"
• Proposal Drafting

A/the council facilitator monitors proposals while they are on the Council Floor, submits proposals to Proposal Voting, and tallies votes and moves proposals that have been voted on to Proposal Results.  i'm fine with beta-testing this idea, jonesy. but i was hoping we'd consider a different system of organizing council deliberations and voting. you know, most of our civil institutions in this country work on a modified roberts rule system, and i wonderf if using this system, which so many folks are familiar with, might not be a better way to make our actions as a third party transparent to members and the public.The rest of this post describes the possible procedures and advantages of the system.  ___________________________________The Council Floor is where proposals are discussed and voted on.  When a councilmember has a proposal drafted, they submit it to the Council Floor.  There could be a set amount of time that a proposal can be discussed on the floor, perhaps with an option for an short extension if modifications are being worked out.  When it gets the needed amount of support to progress to the voting phase, the final text of the proposal is moved to the "Proposal Voting" board.  Another option is the author may decide to withdrawal the proposal and resubmit a different version if there are significant modifications to be made.  Councilmembers vote on the proposal after it has been submitted to "Proposal Voting".  This vote would resemble the method of voting that the council previously did over email.  We could experiment with the poll function, or just have members post their votes as they did before.  After the vote, the Facilitator moves the topic to the board labeled "Proposal Results".  A sticky post is added to the topic with the information of the vote (such as the number of votes, passed/failed, etc.)This system separates the drafting process, discussion process, voting process, and the results of the vote.  This allows the boards to be kept neat and usable.  An obvious advantage of a forum over an email listserv is that each proposal is a separate message board topic with its own thread of discussion.  This allows a smoother discussion process without the information overload of the old system.  This will allow a lot more quality discussion to take place.  The structure that I am recommending is designed to keep the forum organized and usable.  It allows proposals to get feedback before they are voted on so that they can be improved.  It allows those that just want to participate in the voting process to easily do that.  It allows councilmembers to easily view the results of past votes.

hmmm. do you realize, jonesy, that the unintended consequence of "a lot more quality discussion" means a lot more time that volunteer reps from all our chapters must spend interacting on the state level instead of working on the local level. i'm fine with a discussion group on the state level, but forcing all chapters to be part of this (what could be very busy) council or be ruled "inactive" is worrisome. i was hoping we might restructure our organization, rather than replicate what we've had, but in a new venue.

[Ryan Jones]

Art,I see where you are coming from.  My goal was always to improve the communication structure for the Council as it exists currently.  Some of my comments may not be applicable if we change the role of the Council or state party.  Whatever does happen, I am glad we got the forum up.  My suggestions for the organization of the council on the forum are intended to provide an improved environment for council.  I felt there was a risk that the council could continue to face issues with disorganized communication if there wasn't some kind of structure in place during the transition.  I hope that council will suggest enhancements to this structure as they see fit.  I think it is time for Council to resume business.  I also hope that we can continue the discussion on the role of the state party.  It would be great if we could have some restructuring proposals to present at the next state meeting.  I will join the conversation on The Function of the State Party topic.http://gpco.fullydefiant.com/forum/index.php?topic=5.0

[maddy]

Perhaps, the reason for so few being involved in discussions, is that there are others like me who find this forum method not to be familiar at all, which is contrary to what has been stated a couple of times. I'm never sure what to do or how to do it.  Mostly i'm talking about the high-level design of this type of communication.  It seems unwieldy with all these different topics and subtopics; how does one keep up with discussions when there are so many of them?  maddyswco greens

[Art Goodtimes]

i think maddy must be right on some level, since so few have joined us here (except for a handful). could there be a forum tutorial here so folks could get basic info on how to proceed?i agree with jonesy. i think having this forum up is important. while i think we ought to decentralize, i know that not everyone is in agreement, and whatever we decide on the direction of the state council in colorado, we ought to have a good functioning process for state decision-making. and while i appreciate maddy's comments, i think that the old listserve model had some serious flaws and led us to an impasse that needed fixing.finally, thanks bill for explaining the "locked" function on some messages. we may need a tutorial at our next state meeting on how to access and utilize the forum...

[Bill Bartlett]

Hi all!  I've posted some quick start hints to the forum;  the new information is accessible from the home page under Usage Guidelines.  You can find it here: http://gpco.fullydefiant.com/forum/index.php?board=37.0

[Art Goodtimes]

how come threads start with the oldest post, instead of the latest post. oldest should be at the bottom, no?

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