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In lugnet.admin.general, Ross Crawford wrote:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Rob Hendrix wrote:
> > I move to form a new organization (not led by myself), that consists of
> > members (if you aren't a member of LUGNET, what's the holdup?) of the LUGNET
> > community. The association would govern the majority of the members needs,
> > desires, problems, solutions, suggestions, etc and be a main trunkline for
> > information, a highway if you will, between the LUGNET administration and
> > the members.
> >
> > All administrative structuring changes, policies, governing principles, etc
> > would then come from the admin team to the members association for review
> > and discussion before being implemented.
> >
> > All member suggestions, ideas, etc. would first be reviewed by the member
> > association for validity or need and then proposed in a formal manner to the
> > administration.
>
> I too see this as unnecessary - there is still no requirement for the
> administration to act on any recommendations of the LMA, in effect they can say,
> as they have already done several times now, "We have made the decision and will
> not respond to any further debate".
Let's clarify what's meant when that sort of thing is said. (and what was
omitted when it was said) This is, at some level, a governance question
(governance in the general sense of "how things are organised")
It's important to distinguish between policy decisions and responses to specific
incidents.
Policy provides a framework for responding to incidents consistently. Policy
ought to be dispassionate, and ought to be couched in general terms, not with
reference to any specific person or to specific incidents or events, it ought to
articulate principles.
Policy is something that may need to be reviewed or revised periodically. And we
have seen that happen many times in the history of LUGNET. Policies change.
Community input is always welcome, if it's provided constructively. The P&P
document under consideration, that we wanted input from the LPRV from, is an
example of refinement of policy. It does NOT contain any radical change in the
overall philosophy of how to administer LUGNET ought to be. But it DOES clarify
things that weren't clear before.
And at the appropriate point, it will be presented to the community, and we
expect that some feedback might occur. But by chartering the LPRV as an
intermediate step we were hoping that just about every significant change that
might be needed in it would already have been identified, discussed, considered,
and decided upon, reducing the amount of general community discussion that would
be needed. So we'd put it in place after it exited the LPRV process, and if
warranted, modify it then.
So policy grows and evolves and changes, and it's to be expected. And community
discussion helps that along. Decision (about what policy ought to be) is not
OWNED by the community, but it is influenced by it. That is something that not
every community features. Most LEGO related communities, in fact, do not.
Despite the fact that members (and participants who are not members) of LUGNET
have privileges rather than rights, member input to policy (within the spirit of
the LUGNET plan and the overall vision) is important.
Specific incidents, though, are another matter. Once a reviewing action is
taken, it's taken. So discussing it after the fact is problematic. Couched in
the context of specifics, it is very difficult to avoid letting feelings enter
into the discussion, very difficult to avoid damage to reputations, very
difficult to avoid emotion. Also, unlike policy, which can be modified, which
can change over time, once an action was taken, it was taken, there is no going
back and having it not have happened.
So for that reason, the admins (like so many other community admins) don't see
that it is necessarily useful to debate a reviewing action endlessly once it was
taken. We have a process for making decisions, and we use that process, and once
we've decided, that's it, the decision happened. You can't change history and
say it un-happened.
Granted, there are lessons that can be taken, but endless debate (about specific
reviewing actions) has proven (in many many other places, not just here) not to
be useful. So when, for example, some discussion of a reviewing action occurs,
at some point you are going to see an admin remind the community that the
decision was taken and that decision can't be undone and the debate isn't going
to change the fact that it was decided that way in the past because you can't
change the past.
Do you agree that's valid?
"We are not going to debate" might not be the best phrasing but that's the
important idea to convey. How would you phrase it differently?
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