Axel <axel@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> scrawled:
> On Wed, 2 Apr 2008 01:54:45 -0500, kest <kest@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> wrote:
>>Last time we discussed, people seemed to think the current voting and
>>bid process is mostly ok with perhaps some better voter education and
>>some slightly tighter rules about having a.g. folks chairing or
>>heavily involved in the committee.
>
> That analysis is fundamentally flawed.
>
> You cannot program good behaviour.
>
> No system of rules is immune to manipulation, gaming & hacking. Add
> more rules, tweak the system, you just force the people trying to take
> advantage of the system to be sneakier.
>
> As long as Convergence is an attractive property, which it will be as
> long as there's a goth scene, there will be people wanting to exploit
> it for their own purposes.
>
Hm, that's interesting. I agree that there's a risk that people will try
to game the system, either by throwing up a few posts here to try to
claim they are members of the community or by sweet talking some
members, but that's where the part about voter education comes in - in
helping people identify that crap. I don't see any way around it - bids
must come from the community rather than outside, and how else are you
going to ensure that other than putting it in the rules?
> The best way to avoid hacking is to have everything out in the open.
>
I agree. Did I say something that made you think I thought we should
cover something up?
> Secondly, and this is a really big piece for change - the current
> processl is that the Cabal make sure the bid meets minimal criteria as
> to whether the bid is coherent & vaguely plausible and it's up to the
> voters to look at the bids in depth & decide.
>
I'm not sure if you're saying here just that it would be a big change,
or that you think we ought to change it. I think I'm advocating a bit
of change on both ends...raise the minimal criteria the Cabal accepts
*and* help voters do a better job of looking at the bids in depth.
>
>>> 1. The mail-in registration. Originally intended to allow people
>>> from the newsgroup who had never been to a Convergence a vote. Final
>>> result; Voter registraion drives by bidding committees.
>
>>Voter registration drives are obviously bad,
>
> No it wasn't - mail in registration was a good tweak at the time to
> accomodate people who wanted a voice but weren't in the database.
I didn't say mailin registration was bad. I sad voter registration
drives, like where someone takes a bunch of envelopes down to the club.
Those are bad. It seems likely that this is why we can't have nice
things, and the baby must go with the bathwater.
>> but it would be nice to
>>still be able to give votes to a.g.ers who haven't yet been able to
>>make it to convergence. Maybe an existing voter could sponsor 1 or 2
>>newbies each year? Like invite codes?
>
> & the same potential flaw exists - if I have a bunch of friends on
> the system & can get their invite codes then I can take over the vote.
>
Hrmmm. How are we currently ensuring one net.goth, one vote?
>>> 2. Committees. we restrict who can put in a bid? If so
>>> what restrictions make sense?
>>
>>I think they can't just throw in a newsgroup representative as an
>>afterthought. A percentage of the committee rule is one option. (And
>>they must be active contributers. Not 'oh, I know where it is and
>>might have posted an ad for my club night there once.')
>
> How to we regulate that?
> What counts as enough people?
> What counts as active participation in the bid?
> & this approach means not just active contributers to the ng, also
> active contributers to the committee.
>
Yes, all of those are issues. As I said, a percentage rule is one
option. Therefore 'enough people' might be 'at least half'. If the
size or make up of the committee changes, the rule remains. Active
participation...well...we know ours when we see them. If we had to
quantify it, some certain number of non-ad posts spanning a certain
amount of time, I guess.
> To my mind, the only way that rule can work is if the Cabal are
> comfortable actively rejecting bids.
>
> Which to my mind really turns up the heat on us, makes us far more
> Sooper Speshul 733T than we should be & (and this is the really evil
> bit) requires WORK!
>
Yeah, there is that. :/ Weren't we at some point in the last discussion
throwing around potentially some sort of a two stage bidding process?
Where it gets posted here first and has to get ratified or some ****,
before the actual vote?
I guess, thinking through these issues you've presented, there's sort of
two approaches. One is, these are the rules, they are objective rules,
there are obvious ways to tell if you are in violation of the rules. In
this case, 1) someone has to enforce the rules and 2) the rules are
subject to being gamed - people looking for loopholes. On the other
hand, you don't run much risk of accusations of favoritism, as
everything is black and white.
The second approach is **** rules, this is our party and as long as we
know what we're looking for, we can tell who to bounce. While it sounds
really nice and freeform, I am skeptical of this, because it hasn't been
working for us. The constitution of 'we' becomes much more im****tant in
this case, subject to changing whims and attention drift, and someone
may still need to enforce the bouncing, except now they have less weight
behind them and accusations of favoritism run rampant.
>>> 3. Voters. Who can vote?
>
>>I think the feeling last time was voting was mostly ok, but I think we
>>should make an effort to educate people on what this thing's all
>>about. We should have resources available from altgothic.com about
>>the newsgroup, the history of convergence, advice about what to look
>>for in a bid proposal, etc.
>
> Got time to rebuild the website?
> Want to write the Convergence FAQ?
>
I'd say yes and I do feel in fact that I have vaguely volunteered for
this duty before, except I know I also volunteered for rewriting the
newsgroup FAQ and we all know how far that's come....
I don't necessarily feel we need to write volumes. Maybe just a page or
two. Maybe we can throw up a wiki and all contribute.
I just know that I heard a lot of people saying at the c13 panel that
they didn't know about the newsgroup connection or the history, and I
don't necessarily want to exclude them because of that, but it's really
****ing im****tant that they at least know. I also know that people have
traditionally paid more attention to what city the bid is in than
anything else about it, when really that's one of the least im****tant
aspects.
>> And there should be some sort of test. Maybe you
>> have to read the mission statement above and click 'I agree' like a
>> ToS.
>
> Right - 'cos everyone reads those things before clicking 'I Agree'.
>
It's two lines. We'd have a fighting chance.
>> And on
>>the other side I think public newsgroup voting would just be...messy.
>
> We did it before.
I know we did it before, but I kinda feel it was a different world back
then. (insert ObGoldenAge reference here) I'm afraid if we tried it
now it would 1) drown out any other conversations and 2) stick to high
heaven of drama
> Plus, if by this point we don't have as much community cohesion as
> a.g. had in 1994, what's the point?
>
Family Reunion?
>>* Committee and Convergence Presentation
>>I think we should probably have a few more rules ("guidelines"?) for
>>actually putting the thing on.
>
> As previously - rules are made to be manipulated.
> The biggest problem with last years vote process is that we developed
> the rules on a 'if we didn't say it, don't do it' model, but our
> culture normally uses an 'if it isn't forbidden, it's permissible'
> model.
Well, what we really have currently was, I think, meant not so much to
be a 'if we didn't say it, don't do it' as a 'if we didn't say it, ASK
FIRST'. So maybe that's rule number one.
>>I don't care now, because you guys all totally rock,
>> but being a good
>>American I don't believe in creating any government without also
>>creating a sanctioned way to overthrow it. Maybe we give the populace
>>of alt.gothic the ability to call for current Cabal members to step
>>down if we feel it necessary? I'm *really* not sure on this one.
>
> I think that exists - afte we all we do this for the love, not the
> money. Eventually we get burned out & stop responding to e-mails &
> then someone new steps up.
>
But see, that's part of your totally rocking. I guess I'm imagining a
potential dystopian future in which the Cabal has been taken over by
evil monkeys intent on world domination.
> If any of us wereto need 'firing', you could come to our house & punch
> us on the nose.
>
*makes a note*
> Which goes back to my main point that this works by community not
> rules. Which seems to be a fundamentally unamerican way to think about
> governance.
>
I think I covered this above. I'd love for this to continue working by
community not by rules, but isn't that what got us into this mess?
k
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