h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Paul - what do you think of the points based system I proposed, whereby all you need to do is sign up, so long as you are around a certain amount of time later? The approach I used meant they had to stick around for 10 months which is a bit long, I actually think that 3 months is reasonable.

Interesting point about voting against, Martin. Most of the time we won't need elections, just volunteers. For example we have

jobs we need lots of people to do (subbing, aceing, scouting) - no election needed
jobs which only one person is likely to volunteer for (updating the twitter feed) - election unlikly
jobs which can be done on a rota (updating the front page) - election unlikly

The one election here I was involved in took place in order to prevent an individual from getting a certain role (the role was Editor of the Underguide).

So there are certain strategic roles which will attract people with either a lot of ambition or a lot of vision. The problem comes when someone who doesn't "get" the site in some way decides they want one of those strategic positions. I'd be carp as Editor of the Guide, because I'm way too Underguidey by temperemant.

I'm not comfortable with votes against, but I am aware that most elections will be to prevent someone getting a particular post.

I must ask Jordan and Waz what they recollect of the UnderGuide elections, and I must ask Bel how the Post has managed over the years.

Ben

I remember that election very well Mrs Zen - rarely have I been so keen to cast a vote...

The other election that is relevant is the one for President of Hootoo that Hypatia won.

It was only a bit of fun, but several people were surprised to see that there were significant parts of hootoo (Lil's Atelier in this case) that could mobilise round a candidate and win.

In other words, an election is the fairest way of choosing between individuals belonging to different groups on the site, operating in relative autonomy, so that the 'obvious' candidate will not necessarily be the person from 'your' group.

Clearly, ideally we should have people from various sections of the site on the committee, and I think we do on the whole. Also this is now less of an issue as the site has shrank so much.

The post has had a few transition issues over the years as well - EMR's appointment was not universally welcomed...

sprout

"Paul - what do you think of the points based system I proposed, whereby all you need to do is sign up, so long as you are around a certain amount of time later? The approach I used meant they had to stick around for 10 months which is a bit long, I actually think that 3 months is reasonable." [Ben / Mrs. Zen]

That looked like a very reasonable compromise. I could go for it. I also take HappyNerd's points about contributing time/money to the public radio station, etc. There's logic behind the points. What I want to caution against is going too far. We aren't trying to be Mensa or Navy SEALS.

Oh, those pesky salonistas.

My exposure to the Post went from Shazz straight to Bel without me being aware of anyone in between. I'd like to understand more about how they've managed things in the past.

I'll ask Bel of course, and Shazz for that matter, but who else should I talk to about that? And would you be able to expand a bit more on your comments? Email me privately at [email protected] if you don't feel it's a conversation appropriate for the whole site. As you can see, I'm wary of raking over old coals when learning from the UG Editor's Election and I would want to extend the same courtesy to those involved in transitions with the Post.

Ben

I didn't even realize there was an election for the Editor of the UnderGuide. I'm also rarely aware of what's being talked about at Ask H2G2.

It would be kind of fun to ask one or two of our artists to draw a "Map" of H2G2, making it look like so much fun that everybody would want to explore.

So paul, your concern is about getting the balance right and not making it ridiculously complicated?

As I see it we can have a simple system that's got problems or a complicated system that's got problems. The question is which problems do we prefer?

I admit to being enamoured of the points system (of course I am, I thought it up!). It enables people who "only" read things to vote, but it also rewards involvement by letting talkers and writers qualify for voting faster than readers.

It's intended to make sure that people have some understanding of the site before they vote in the elections.

Hopefully it would prevent people signing up 50 FB buddies to vote for them. That UG election could have been very different if it happened today. That's my big fear - the 50 FB friends - and that's why I think that it shouldn't be number of posts in a conversation, but number of conversations posted in (or maybe even number of forums, so just posting in Ask wouldn't do it).

Anyhoo, this is a topic which will run and run before we get it right. And we must learn from the experience of those who've already done things like this here and elsewhere.

Ben

I agree with a lot of what you've said, Ben. The fifty FB friends could be a problem or an opportunity [Einstein said that every problem is an opportunity]. Maybe 15 or 20 of them would see something here that they like so much, they might stay and become contributors, telling their friends about it, some of whom might also join. Would that it were always this easy to get 50 people through the doors.

Well, the 50 FB Friends could vote if they took part in enough different conversations...

Come here, nice FB Friends, friendly FB Friends, lovely FB Friends.... come and join our party...

That's the spirit!

I don't have an exact count of the number of conversations I've been involved in, but it probably ranks in the tens of thousands. Having an attractive map of the site on the front page would encourage people to sample different parts of H2G2, meeting lots of different researchers in the process. Pierce's Pirate Ship alone has hundreds of nooks and crannies, many of which have ingoing conversations. There's also the Evil Army, which has sadly lost its main organizers (EvilClaw and SuperMoo). The Muse Home was created by Dragonfly, who rarely even visits now.

So many empty places here...

I want to know what Peanut thinks of my proposal.

B

I disagree in principle about earning a vote, it's an idealogical thing. I am also very practical so try to keep everything as simple as possible.

I've been thinking about checks and balances, I think we need to set the bar at the nomination stage rather than voting stage. Define the roles and write a job description and only thoses that qualify can stand.

Then my thoughts went to teams, a editing team, a community team so difficult decisions would be decided by the team rather than one individual, so while one person may have a carrying vote no one person has ultimate control

We need clear guidelines, what's in the guide for instance and what not, codes of conduct in forums etc once ratified these can't be changed unless it is by community vote.

None of the above prevents someone from signing up their FB mates but if they do, they will be qualified to the job, won't be all powerful and are bound by community guidelines.

and anyone?

Love Peanut

Thanks for replying Peanut.

YOu are bang on the button about teams, I'm sure will happen informally but it makes sense for there to be formal teams.

I agree some roles require specific qualifications, for example I don't think you should be able to stand to do the job of accepting or rejecting Scouts' picks unless you've already written edited entries (a set number of edited entries?) and already been a scout and maybe also a sub. (Rules me out then). Different roles would have different qualifications, of course. Oh, and I think there should be a nominations process too.

But I also think that some roles should be open to anyone. I'm thinking of something like feeding the twitter feed. It doesn't require any particular skills or experience, but can be quite fun and it would be good for soemone who wants to learn about marketing using social media.

We've got a lot of guidelines already so that's

Here's where I think we've slightly different approaches.

The suggestion I've put forward enables everyone from lurkers to people who've written 250 entries to have an equal vote in the future of the site.... but you have to have had some commitment, maybe only of time or maybe of effort as well, in order to qualify to vote.

You see, what we have here is precious. It's open to anyone to read, join and contribute *which is how it should be* but it's still precious. So I think that anyone who votes in an h2g2 should have some sort of understanding of the site and some sort of stake in it's future. I don't fear the 50 Facebook friends, what I fear is the 50 *uninformed* facebook friends who join, vote, and never visit the site again.

A map of the site on the Front Page you say?
Excuse me but isn't that what the Community Central is for?
I would vote to feature it on the FP (to keep the conversation on voting).

Hi Ben,

My preferred approach gives everyone who has been signed up for 3 months or more and who has registered to vote the opportunity to do so.
Your preferred points system gives people the opportunity to earn a vote more quickly, I'm not going to chain myself to any railings over it but I do think it's unnecessary, it over complicates something that could just be kept very simple and it doesn't add a great deal of value to the election process.

This is a discussion that we need to have but we might be getting a bit ahead of ourselves. I think a couple of people have suggesed that we may not need immediate elections but I recognise that appointing people even for a temporary period might be as fraught as running an election.

Taking a sideways step, prehaps we would be better off defining roles, writing job descriptions and working out team structures, then put out feelers for who is willing and able to step forward and see what comes from that.

Love Peanut

If there's a three month wait, then I'm ok with that. And you are right, it is simpler.

>> Taking a sideways step, prehaps we would be better off defining roles, writing job descriptions and working out team structures, then put out feelers for who is willing and able to step forward and see what comes from that.

Are you volunteering?

As I see it we have four main areas of activity: the editorial stuff, the community stuff, the tech stuff, and the business / admin stuff. That was what we drew up ages ago, in February, and it's not come un-picked since then, so I think it's pretty accurate.

Tav did a list of tasks that need doing to run the site: A81280974 back in February too. It's been a while since I've looked at it, but we certainly need to group these together so we can define volunteer roles. I can see some roles as being ones several people can do - like the scouts, the subs and the aces. But I think some roles (like manage the twitter feed) could be done by one person only. Some will require clearly defined experience before someone takes them on, others could be done by more or less anyone.

So.... if you fancy doing a bit of sorting and organizing of the tasks on that list, it would be .... amazing. Really helpful and cool.

Ben

Morning Ben,

I have been boffing up on volunteer roles and thinking how we could approach this. I thought of going to the volunteer homepages and asking them what they think. Do they think that their roles as is could do with tinkering or are they good to go? How do they think a management structure should work for their area of expertise and what minimum requirements in terms of experience, skills and time should there be for new roles.
We could put links to these discussions in the Stockholm thread and on other forums so the wider community can get involved if they feel inclined.

I can spend some time later going through what already been discussed and I'm happy to be helpful if I can.

Love Peanut

Speak to Vip about this, she's done a lot of work on this already, and I'm sure she'd be happy to share. She can certainly point you to links.

My feeling is that there will be SO much change to get used to, that we should keep what we can the same. So I vote (ha ha!) that we existing volunteer groups as they are in the short term, and work to revitalise them in the medium term. Then the volunteers should themselves propose any changes that are needed. I know other people disagree with me on this (nothing new there!) and I've never been one of the formal volunteers, so it's really worth canvassing opinions.

If you email me, I'll send you the stuff that's already been written and sumarised on this topic.

What's interesting and important is working out what the Italics do, and working out how to slice up those tasks so they can be divided up among volunteers. There are two of them: that's about 80 hours per week, at least a chunk of which will be spent on internal BBC stuff we simply don't need to worry about. So say 70 hours per week. Could we create 10 roles which involved an hour a day's volunteering?

Ben

[[What&#39;s interesting and important is working out what the Italics do, and working out how to slice up those tasks so they can be divided up among volunteers. There are two of them: that&#39;s about 80 hours per week, at least a chunk of which will be spent on internal BBC stuff we simply don&#39;t need to worry about. So say 70 hours per week. Could we create 10 roles which involved an hour a day&#39;s volunteering?]] < --- Ben

Hi Ben, I have been thinking about this - and I am sure that eventually there will be an easy way to divide up the time needed to fulfill the existing italics roles. But, if you get ten notional people to spend a portion of time each, you will also need to have a wonderful way of communication between them, ie a handover method, who has done what, when and how. You know what I mean? - it would be the same as in any face-to-face jobshare, where each day you have an arranged period of time to catch up with what is new and what is urgent. If you divide the role into too many small lots, you will need the oil of efficiency to make sure each of the new recruits is in the loop. Therefore, I would favour less bodies, but make sure they have the skills, time and enthusiasm to take on this role.

I also think they need to be team players, rather than have any sort of ego that makes them want to be the Big Boss. They will need thick skins, because they will have to bear the flak if things go down - because obviously it will all be Their Fault. They will need to listen to the opinions of all the researchers and represent the consensus view rather than their own.



Oh, and as for the existing roles of Scouts and Subs, I speak for myself obviously, and would prefer to keep things as they are for now. We can amend and improve over time, once we have the noohootoo in place - should we get the keys to the palace as it were.

About the changing of volunteer stuff only in the long run: I personally would like to see changes at the Photographers/CA's rather fast, so at least medium term.