Call for Directors

You can do this with a report button, but keeping them hidden so you don't encourage pile-ons

If your directors are happy to moderate then you have killed two birds with one stone because of the directors' liability. Seems only right that the directors are mods if they wish but others could be as well

Split the Treasurer, Secretary role into 2 positions?

In the finest of CoOp trads form a committee of 10 or less. Chair, vice Chair,Secertary and Treaurer, roles. With possibly Sub Comittees of Finance, Moderation, Technical, Volunteering. Gettting professional help with Auditing and Legal?

A governance structure that looks like that?

Personally I think going down the anarchist route is better, as Dee has already outlined, but if it’s a case of formalising it I’d happily put my name down for the risk.

• Lebowski
  
• andyp
  
• Skydancer (short term)
  
• DoubtfulAce
  
• Aroogah
  
• mashton
  
• snottyotter
  
• Oliver Schick
  
• frank9755
  
• slippers
  
  

I appreciate I’m not a huge poster here (although I’ve been a lurker for 15 years, only posting recently), but this place has absolutely changed my life, and needs to exist in this same form.

@Velocio, in just two words, thank you, but there is a heart full of praise for your work in ways than I could not say.

Lebowski
andyp
Skydancer (short term)
DoubtfulAce
Aroogah
mashton
snottyotter
Oliver Schick
frank9755
slippers
Jaitch (pending compliance requirements for current job)

Will need to check with work what requirements I need to meet with regards to reporting this to them and others should check they don't have similar. For instance I cannot be the treasurer given my current role without jumping through some serious sign off hoops)

automatically removed for moderation

This is the kind of system that trolls game. The risk of that would have to be carefully weighed against the risk of not having it. Personally, I think it's more trouble than it's worth.

But what's the risk of hiding posts that are down voted?

Making the forum unusable because trolls and bullies abuse the system. You do want the forum to be preserved because it's fun and useful, right? Not just so that there's a website called LFGSS.

Yeah sure, I guess I just don't see how they'd achieve that.
Someone posts something trolling or offensive, it gets 10 down votes and is hidden until moderated. Seems fine
Someone posts something non trolly or offensive but 10 individual people decide to down vote it coz bullying, it gets temporarily hidden but permanently reinstated shortly afterwards, content is preserved, nobody is silenced. Seems fine also I'd have thought. Where is the opportunity for exploitation?

We shouldn't use this thread to discuss minutiae of moderation. We should call a meeting of those interested asap. This should be a mass meeting without any pressure to get involved and to gauge everybody's skills.

If we get an experienced chair, treasurer, and company secretary out of that, the other committee members will be able to learn on the job, or we can arrange training.

As Velocio knows, the main difficulty is the technical side. This will significantly influence our business model, e.g. whether we need to pay programmers (despite all the goodwill towards LFGSS, we shouldn't expect to get work for free).

We really should meet asap, ideally in early January.

Believe @skydancer is organising an in person meeting early in the new year. Maybe he’s mentioned it in another thread and not here..

Ah, I haven't seen that and haven't heard.

If moderation is entirely automated, it will scale to anything but can be abused without limit. If it's part automated and part human, the trolls can just abuse it to a point where the human moderators can't cope. The abuse can be scripted, detecting and fixing the abuse reliably can't. So your second example is just wrong.

If the number of "downvotes" passing N didn't automatically hide posts, one effect of the abuse would stop, but it would still create a todo list for the moderators that they couldn't cope with and so moderation of genuinely abusive comments would break down.

If this were easy, Velocio wouldn't have to worry about OSA in the first place. It's hard, and simplistic solutions fail. You're suggesting a solution that dates back to the early days of Slashdot and kuro5hin and it didn't work then, when the Net was a lot smaller.

That's the plan. With people who offered support 8n some way. I'm going to praise the lfgss collective thread to see who and what thir offer is and arrange a (likely online) meeting depending where people are.

I'm not suggesting anything. I said I use another forum that works this way and it works well.
But sure, go off

Agree we need a meeting asap.

Also feel we need to start fundraising asap, as whatever path we follow, having significant capital will probably be vital.

If we had (say for the sake of argument) £25k surplus funds in the bank, it would be very reassuring.

Reading through here, and I am not an expert, but is there not cause to register as a charity rather than a company?
Hell, the community here is a anchor point for many - I believe there might be less risk exposure that way

The intention is to register as a CIC which is a community interest company.

Summarised from Google:
The main differences between a charity and a community interest company (CIC) are their purpose, how they are perceived, and their tax treatment:
Purpose
Charities are established for charitable purposes and must provide public benefit. CICs are designed to benefit the community and have a social mission, but they can also engage in commercial activities.
Perception
Charities are often seen as providers of services without a commercial edge. CICs operate more like businesses, but with a clear social mission.
Tax treatment
Charities are not subject to corporate tax and are eligible for charitable tax reliefs. CICs are subject to corporate tax regulations and are not eligible for charitable tax reliefs.
Other differences
Ease of setup: CICs are quicker and simpler to set up than charities.
Fundraising: Charities are better for fundraising than CICs.
Income: Charities are typically reliant on grants, donations, and fundraising for a large proportion of their income. CICs can receive income from a variety of sources, including contracts, trading income, and grants.
Asset lock: CICs have an asset lock that ensures the company's assets can only be used for community benefit.
Dividend cap
CICs have a dividend cap that allows for the distribution of up to 35% of distributable profit each year.

Charity status is different to legal structure, companies can be registered as charities though I'm not sure if that would be possible or suitable here, as charities can be established only if their work is for charitable purposes – possibly being a community interest company (CIC) could be a good idea, as well as not having that requirement (and regulation) there's more operational freedom for the directors.

(I'm on the board of one charity and have been on another previously, and) I'd have thought the best structure would be a private company limited by guarantee (not one having share capital), and explore whether the asset lock (or other features of a CIC) are desirable and whether people think the community interest test can be passed.

Edit: jaitch posted while I was distracted mid-reply but will leave it here

CIC registration process is easier and quicker than a charity registration from my experience and for us time is a factor.

Roger that, and very sensible

whether we need to pay programmers (despite all the goodwill towards LFGSS, we shouldn't expect to get work for free)

Programmers work for free in the evenings and weekends on open source projects, virtually all of which are hosted on GitHub. So long as the new forum software is open source, on GitHub, and has one or two committed leaders, this thing could work and not involve paying money.

I myself am a programmer (C, C++, C#, JavaScript, but mainly C# for the last 22 years) with 39+ years of professional experience, and am willing to get involved.

I read recently somewhere in all these discussions about Velocio talking about re-writing the frontend in Go. I don't know Go, but am happy to learn. This could be a nice retirement project for me, and a long-term endeavour of worth and value - something I believe in.

Putting my name down here as happy to help out in some way.

Shall we organise an online chat for anyone wanting to be a director? Maybe early in the new year? Finding a date/time is going to be hell*

I think it will be important to hear from the group who are leading the effort to understand the new OSA guidance and code of practice, so that we can fully understand the risk and possible mitigation strategies.

Once we are clear on that, then we can start setting up a CIC (or other entity), set up Open Collective and start fundraising, organise the tech team and get started building possible tech safety features, organise mods with guidelines etc.

*if only there was somewhere we could asynchronously communicate with each other. Like a message board or something.

It's all open source. The back end was on GitHub for years but then it was moved to git.dee.kitchen a while ago.

The front-end rewrite is still on github (here, now?). @Velocio and @pascalo made great progress but it seemed to stall a year or two ago. Not sure why.