Seconding this, but also noting that the board could effectively appoint as many people to the board as they like, so there is no need to limit this to the top three vote-getters. I think we should aim for 7-9 directors, in order to spread the work around.

The bylaws say: "Initially, the number of Directors shall be fixed by the Incorporators, and thereafter it shall be such number as shall have been last specified by resolution (if any) of the Board."

They also say: "Vacancies in the Board, including vacancies resulting from an increase in the authorized number of Directors, shall be filled by the Board (to the extent the vacancies are for Board-Elected Directors, even if the number remaining on the Board is less than a quorum) or by an election by the Members (to the extent that the vacancies are for Member-Elected Directors)."

This means that the board (either the current interim board or the new board of three members that they appoint) could simply pass a resolution setting the number of Directors at 7-9. Then they would be able to vote, as the only members of the foundation at that moment, to elect the remaining winners of election, in order to fill the vacancies.

I urge the interim board to move forward with an election this month, in line with the clear wishes of the community.
posted by ssg at 9:29 PM on June 3 [14 favorites]

Good points, ssg. I do agree with adding more members and your logic of how to do so.
posted by NotLost at 9:32 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]

I agree. While there are lots of opinions about how things should be run, specific bylaws and many other things, there is clear agreement that the community wants an elected board in place as a matter of absolute priority. I've copied below (from the current bylaws thread) a couple of ways I think this could happen under the existing bylaws and with existing functionality.

The existing board can make this happen, if they have the will. Here's how it could happen:

1. Board adopts a membership policy consisting of the following words - 'A member of MetaFilter Community Foundation is any natural person that participates in a vote conducted through the MetaFilter platform for the purpose of electing directors'
2. Board determines to conduct an annual meeting on a specified date
3. Board determines to conduct an election via the MetaFilter platform, with the voting platform to be open for one week prior to the annual meeting date
4. Board sends out a notice via MetaFilter of the relevant dates and voting and meeting arrangements, as well as the mechanism for nominating as a director
5. Voting is conducted, votes tallied and results presented at the annual meeting
6. Members present endorse the election results and the Board is formed
7. (non) Profit!

A simpler method could be:

1. Board determines that the number of directors shall be X (I suggest 9)
2. Board determines to conduct an election on MetaFilter as quickly as can be arranged, allowing time for nominations etc
3. Board appoints the required number of persons to fill the vacancies resulting from 1, in accordance with the outcomes of the election and the Board is formed
4. (non) Profit!

I'm not a lawyer and don't even play one on TV, but I believe either of the above would be in accordance with the existing bylaws. In any case, the only real risk is if someone were to lodge a complaint with the relevant government agency that the board was not properly elected. I believe that risk is very low and more than worth taking. Some will no doubt be upset that the existing board members may choose to remain, but that should be the least of our concerns at this point.

If it's not clear, I'm suggesting the functionality previously used to vote for steering committee members be used to conduct the vote. Also, the 'voting confers membership' part is based on participating in the vote for board members, not some previous activity - this also defines who can vote, being anyone with an account (it's already been identified that sock puppet accounts can be readily dealt with). I would suggest ranked-choice voting, but that's a decision the board can make with no more than 5 minutes of discussion.

Establishing the first elected board in this way does not (and should not) create any obligation to act in the same way for future elections, which can be held after proper bylaws and policies have been established. This would be a one-off quick and dirty election to put a much-needed representative board in place.
posted by dg at 9:33 PM on June 3 [12 favorites]

I concur with the need and the urgency. We have a list of potential candidates and an existing voting system that was used previously.

I’m less sure we’re in a position to hold elections in June, but I think we can use June to establish the initial process and hold elections in July. I tried to plot out a timeline (acting under the assumption that we would create an election committee of volunteers to help make this happen) and there are a lot of tasks to be completed.

extremely rough, straw-man timeline
posted by samthemander at 9:48 PM on June 3 [8 favorites]

eager to hear from the election committee on that time line. (extremely rough, straw-man timeline)
posted by clavdivs at 10:21 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]

The interim board needs to comment, soon, indicating they support the community’s will on this.
posted by umber vowel at 10:28 PM on June 3 [10 favorites]

Clavdivs, what election committee?
posted by Pre-Taped Call In Show at 10:57 PM on June 3 [4 favorites]

Yes, please. Let's get this done.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:28 AM on June 4 [1 favorite]

Grandfathering in the unelected group to the new board means that the new members of board will burn out at a rate that a 2025 Metafilter can not replace. They will be as frustrated in their attempts to do anything as the whole community is now.
posted by Ashenmote at 1:37 AM on June 4 [3 favorites]

Here's how you could have an election in June:
* One week for an actual official call for candidates.
* One week for "campaigning" -- candidate statements, Q&A.
* One week for voting.
posted by NotLost at 4:53 AM on June 4 [5 favorites]

Here's how this could work under the current situation the board has created:

1. The board decides the new board will have 7 members
2. The board decides its members will not have to run as candidates but are automatically part of any new board.
3. The board uses the power it gave itself without any discussion by the larger community to appoint 3 members.

Result: Metafilter has a 7-person board with 1 elected member, the 3 current interim unelected board members, and 3 members hand-picked by the current interim unelected board.

It seems like madness to me to hold an election with that outcome a possibility.

Is that what the interim unelected board will do? I guess that depends how much faith you have left in the folks who've delayed and obfuscated the process of an election for months. We still haven't heard from any of them about whether they want to continue as board members, which, you know, would be nice to know.

But the current bylaws certainly allow the scenario above.
posted by mediareport at 5:12 AM on June 4 [2 favorites]

What do you suggest instead, mediareport? It seems like under any other scenario, the community will be waiting indefinitely.
posted by NotLost at 5:16 AM on June 4 [1 favorite]

But the current bylaws certainly allow the scenario above.

The issue is that any option has to go through the current board - whether it's amending the bylaws or approving an election on terms the community actually agrees to.

The board has been asked multiple times in multiple threads this month to commit to holding elections soon. Or even to state their current position on holding elections soon. They're actively choosing not to respond. (This is not okay.)

Rhaomi et al., if you're seeing this: You didn't like the "nice site, shame if something happened to it" comments in previous threads. You're not wrong, they suck. In so many ways. But if they're the only way to get you to actually respond to things the community asks for - which, insane as it is, seems to be the case - then that really is on you. Stop waiting for arson to light a fire under your asses.

What you need to come out and say is "We're committed to holding elections by end of June ideally and end of July at the absolute latest. Technological challenges? We'll make it work. Not enough time for us to handle it? We'll recruit and empower assistance. Minimal restrictions on Metafilter members voting aside from sockpoppet votes, which are forbidden. We promise to honor the results of the vote. We promise to not take advantage of the clause we inserted* into the current bylaws that allow us to handpick three members of the new board. We will report on progress towards the election on a weekly basis at minimum."

* secretly, never bothering to inform anyone in the community we supposedly are acting on behalf of until absolutely cornered to do so. 6 months after the fact.
posted by trig at 6:09 AM on June 4 [14 favorites]

June of what year?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:14 AM on June 4 [6 favorites]

Oh, good catch! (Gotta laugh so I don't cry...)
posted by trig at 6:17 AM on June 4 [3 favorites]

For the sake of clarity, I mean that a board election should be held this month, in June of 2025.
posted by NotLost at 6:19 AM on June 4

It is in the interest of the foundation to have a board elected by whatever users of the site wish to become members of the foundation. If the interim board wants to propose candidates, let them do it, and add those candidates to the pool that are being voted on. If any members of the interim board want to stand for election, let them add themselves to the pool of candidates to be voted on. Every single person on the first elected board should be elected by the community.

We don't want to taint the first elected board with the stench of the interim board and their questionable actions/inactions. That's not a way to move forward. If all three members of the interim board and every person they propose for the board get elected by the community, then that's a clean slate as far as I'm concerned.

Obviously every aspect of the foundation is in the complete control of the interim board, by design. It's up to them to let the community have a real election or they won't. If they actually care about the community, they will.
posted by snofoam at 6:30 AM on June 4 [6 favorites]

Board members and their last site activity:

Gorgik - Mefi comment on April 19
1adam12 - Mefi comment on May 12
Rhaomi - MeTa comment on June 3

Might be worth pinging them about the existence of this thread if they show up on other subsites.
posted by Diskeater at 6:51 AM on June 4 [9 favorites]

NotLost: I’m not convinced we have enough information about the shape of board terms to post more than a preliminary call for applications. Although maybe I’m wrong.

Diskeater: great point. Maybe some of our board have effectively left the organization without notice.
posted by samthemander at 6:55 AM on June 4 [1 favorite]

Current bylaws say terms are one year.

A new board could (and should) amend the bylaws in any way they agreeed on, so the term could be changed (which is always going to be true). But right now they're one year.
posted by lapis at 6:59 AM on June 4 [3 favorites]

Might be worth pinging them about the existence of this thread if they show up on other subsites.

I tried this for an earlier thread. Also sent them a link to this summary. The only response I got was a snippy one from Adam. (Is Gorgik still alive?)
posted by trig at 7:01 AM on June 4 [3 favorites]

With the caveat that they could amend the bylaws to say that certain portions (e.g., ones covering issues relating to the Board's size, time and manner of elections, handling vacancies, etc. require something other than a simple Board majority, for instance a vote of the membership or a Board supermajority).

But anyway, as has been noted many times by many people, the current bylaws offer a path to an elected Board by virtue of the Board committing to run an informal poll and abide by its results. That is all that needs to happen right now.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:03 AM on June 4 [7 favorites]

Might be worth pinging them about the existence of this thread if they show up on other subsites.

If you want to be accused of harassment.
posted by snofoam at 7:03 AM on June 4 [7 favorites]

While the community action these past few weeks has been great to see, the amount of overthinking things has also been over the top. Part of that is the impedance mismatch between input to and output from the interim board, but part of it is also just the Metafilter site culture of overthinking a plate of beans. The truth is that there are very few meaningful rules to follow or consequences to be concerned with here.

If the interim board just appointed the 6 or 7 people who showed interest in running in that other thread I think that could be a great step forward. It would certainly meet the informal criteria of a good faith effort to involve the community. The people who really care about this are the people reading and commenting in these Metatalk threads. It's safe to assume that most users who have something to say have already said it at this point. So just appoint the people who have expressed interest in being board members and start moving forward. Six new board members will make everything else happen more smoothly, including future bylaw revisions and elections.
posted by grog at 7:04 AM on June 4 [22 favorites]

If you want to be accused of harassment.

That would count as site activity so as long as they do that in this thread I'm fine with that.
posted by Diskeater at 7:05 AM on June 4 [3 favorites]

Grog, I really appreciate the reality check. Like, we could skip the election basically.
posted by samthemander at 7:07 AM on June 4 [5 favorites]

What do you suggest instead, mediareport?

Come on, I've suggested it over and over, but trig has it above: the board announces they are candidates (if they choose to run) and publicly commits to abide by the results of an election using a very similar process to the Steering Committee vote (which Rhaomi was also prepared to use for the 2nd Steering Committee vote that didn't happen). Requirements to vote are minimal; the board publicly renounces its ability to appoint any new board members; a third party not involving any current board members or staff tallies the votes, and we get a fully elected new board.

All of this depends upon us putting enough pressure on Rhaomi, 1adam12 and Gorgik that they feel no choice but to abide by what the community is asking of them. We have no ability right now to force the board to do the right thing, so must solely rely on ramping up public pressure, which they've shown is the only thing that works to get them to stop their delays and power grabs and get on with actually turning MeFi over to the community.

Absent that loud, ongoing pressure I have no faith in the current interim unelected board to do the right thing here. Instead of rushing to hold an election under conditions the current untrustworthy board has created and can easily abuse to stay in control of the site, we need to keep up the pressure.

Honestly, the next move if the IUB fails to give us the most basic courtesy of telling us their own plans to either 1) run as candidates, 2) grandfather themselves in to any new board and/or 3) reserve the right they gave themselves to appoint 3 new members of the board is simple:

A posting and commenting strike that starts as a one-day event and continues until the IUB actually responds to those issues.
posted by mediareport at 7:08 AM on June 4 [4 favorites]

I guarantee that would get their attention.
posted by mediareport at 7:10 AM on June 4 [2 favorites]

mediareport: "I guarantee that would get their attention."

Why would it?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:42 AM on June 4 [1 favorite]

Why can’t the election just be held without the interim board? I was on the interim board for a short stretch in the fall / winter of 2023 / 2024 until life got in the way and I just didn’t have time anymore. NotLost was on it much longer. Nobody ever gave me any magical special MeFi Board Powers - just a slack channel. There’s no scepter and ring. NotLost can probably get the new Board members on the slack. If you say you’re the Board, you’re the Board. Honestly I think it’s just that simple. I don’t see why you can’t hold elections, mediareport and snofoam and whoever else wants to do it. Just do it.

Rhaomi, Gorgik and 1adam12 are all good people, just snowed under as are we all in this worst of all possible timelines. Maybe running an election right now is more than they want to deal with. It’s certainly more than I would want to deal with. So just do it and tell everyone the results and there you go, the winners are the bosses now and good luck to them.
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:08 AM on June 4 [7 favorites]

. Nobody ever gave me any magical special MeFi Board Powers

Unfortunately this has since happened, with Rhaomi et al. now being the legal owners of the Foundation.
posted by phunniemee at 9:10 AM on June 4 [18 favorites]

1. I don't have access to the board Slack anymore.

2. FYI: Shadow cabinet.

3. The community could plausibly hold an election. Whether that would be accepted by the board is another question. Most things are another question.
posted by NotLost at 9:18 AM on June 4 [2 favorites]

I think regardless of what we call things (election committee or just volunteers or whatever), we will need an informal group of 2-7 people, including one person who can act as the “voice”/point-of-contact for the group, who will spearhead and move the election process forward.

It’s clear the existing board is not interested in taking on this task.

Should we begin by defining this group of people? That group can then meet (separate from MetaTalk), discuss, and bring a more unified proposal to MetaTalk for the community to review.
posted by samthemander at 9:34 AM on June 4 [4 favorites]

And NotLost: I want to say, I think you’re basically doing this already. I just think it would help if we pigeonholed a few people to directly support you over the next month to make this happen.

NotLost, thank you for all of your commitment and work on this so far.
posted by samthemander at 9:36 AM on June 4 [6 favorites]

samthemander: "We have a list of potential candidates"

That post is full of comments from people who are not running. I am reiterating the request to have a list of people who are actually running, no jokes, and their platforms, with no other commentary. If they want to include their former usernames, that would be useful to me as I cannot keep track of that kind of thing.
posted by soelo at 9:55 AM on June 4 [6 favorites]

I am reiterating the request to have a list of people who are actually running, no jokes, and their platforms, with no other commentary.

At some point, we had talked about each candidate having a MeTa with their candidate statement and a Q&A, and one MeTa linking to all of them. I think the situation is working toward that.

The current list of potential candidates was intended to be preliminary to get an idea of the field. Things are evolving.
posted by NotLost at 9:58 AM on June 4 [4 favorites]

I’ll start.

I volunteer to actively participate as a member of the election committee/team, with the goal of executing an election of members to join the MeFiCoFo board.

FMy availability will be dramatically narrowing approximately August 12 (baby #3 forthcoming!). If there are sufficient volunteers who can serve longer if needed, I can step back.
posted by samthemander at 9:59 AM on June 4 [4 favorites]

I think an elections team will need to make two slightly different proposals, to account for whether the interim board chooses to cooperate with the team during the process.
posted by NotLost at 10:57 AM on June 4 [3 favorites]

Good grief people. I understand the frustration, but creating another committee with zero authority is going to do absolutely nothing.

The only thing that can be done to move things forward is for the Board to present a definitive plan and timeline. They are the sole members of the Foundation and have full decision-making authority over it, subject only to the laws of the great state of Delaware. We are all just people with user accounts on the Foundation's website.
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:57 AM on June 4 [11 favorites]

I support board elections right away. I also feel like anyone who wants to be on the board and receives more than one vote should be elected. The attrition rate for people who have attempted to be on various steering committees, advisory bodies, boards, and other voluntary positions here has been brutal. So we should have the largest possible board even though that’s potentially awkward. But there needs to be a way to clear out members who have become inactive without allowing for one faction to illegitimately oust another.
posted by rikschell at 10:58 AM on June 4 [4 favorites]

The only thing that can be done to move things forward is for the Board to present a definitive plan and timeline.

i am announcing my candidacy for the new Moving Forward Committee
posted by secret about box at 11:27 AM on June 4 [4 favorites]

Tiva, I hear you 100%. But they’re not doing anything. They don’t have bandwidth, which is human and understandable, so my hope is that by standing up a framework we can create something that the board can just “bless”/accept.
posted by samthemander at 11:57 AM on June 4 [1 favorite]

I agree that we should have elections as soon as possible.

But realistically, a June deadline isn't someone one member of the interim board can just agree to, and then tell us in the thread. I think all three would have to agree on a date.

Also, casually setting deadlines and then not meeting them has been a huge source of tension on the site. I assume frimble would have to set up the voting on the old site, so they also have to ensure that's possible at a minimum.

This thread is less than 24 hours old. I think we have to allow more time than that for the interim board to meet with each other and consult with technical staff before committing to a workable election date.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:09 PM on June 4 [5 favorites]

I say continue to plan and talk about the election but until we hear from the board and clarifications of the bylawsI think it would be rushing a June election.

and it would be really helpful if an election committee was formed real quick.
posted by clavdivs at 12:41 PM on June 4 [1 favorite]

I can serve on an election committee. I'd like to see at least one more person join, but the more the merrier.
posted by NotLost at 12:49 PM on June 4 [3 favorites]

Tiva, I hear you 100%. But they’re not doing anything. They don’t have bandwidth

Right but they're already whining about having to wade through "hundreds" of comments. All the information they really need is already contained within these threads, whether it's things that have broad consensus (elections ASAP being the main one obviously), things where there's a few options that just need to be settled on (e.g., what voting platform to use, whether to have a separate registration or an integrated vote/register situation, how many seats should be on the Board) or things like "what date should the election be".

Standing up a committee to rehash these things all over again is just going to be more things that they'll feel they need to wade through before making, god forbid, a decision.

It's my opinion that as annoying as all of this is and as much as we would like to figure out some way to make them move, there's simply not much more to be done at this moment. Ball is in their court. Once they've made some of these calls, then I think they ought to ask for help on various things and that's where it makes sense to spin up a few working groups from the community.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:59 PM on June 4 [4 favorites]

Standing up a committee to rehash these things all over again is just going to be more things that they'll feel they need to wade through before making, god forbid, a decision.

You have a good point. what I purpose is a flash committee, formed by the twin Wonder Powers consensus. committee would have days or week to go over the pertinent information one more time and address document the questions which are many, some very important, if not addressed by that time. this would be a ramrod committee, basically creating both documents would encompass community concerns.

I'm about to throw up a serious flare. but I don't want to bog down Adam with the tedious question, so I'm going to go to my local rep. or if need be, Brandon and I don't want to use his him as some sort of courier.
posted by clavdivs at 3:05 PM on June 4 [1 favorite]

Yeah, my intention is less to “hash things out” and more to “compile feedback into categories, identify the leading option per category, and write out some draft language for the board review and approval.” I just suspect the board doesn’t have bandwidth to do this alone. If they can chime in and say are already doing this, then fantastic.
posted by samthemander at 3:07 PM on June 4 [4 favorites]

I retract my above comments. I would love to join the clavdivs twin wonder powers flash ramrod committee. I don't know what it is but I want to be there.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:10 PM on June 4 [7 favorites]

That's fair. I still think it's best to wait a bit to see how the Board responds to all of this, but yes that will likely be helpful sooner or later.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:12 PM on June 4 [1 favorite]

I can serve on an election committee.
posted by joannemerriam at 3:33 PM on June 4 [4 favorites]

I strongly support the clavdivs twin wonder powers flash ramrod committee for election excellence!
posted by Vatnesine at 3:35 PM on June 4 [1 favorite]

committee would have days or week to [do the stuff]

Yes please.

This site's staff and leadership have almost always done things in one of two ways: baroquely overcomplicate tasks and drag them out interminably (and let them fall between the cracks half the time), or declare deadlines but treat them like loose suggestions.

Setting short tight deadlines for small, doable tasks - and doing what it takes to meet them, for once - is what needs to happen.

I vote for letting Rhaomi, Adam, and Gorgik have 1 full week from today to catch up on whatever information they've been ignoring and discuss whatever they need to. There's no reason for their discussion to take longer than that, and every reason to believe that if given longer they'll still drag things out beyond that. (They've had weeks now to follow along, if they cared to.)

At the same time let's use this week to clarify what essential questions actually need to be settled for an election to happen, and whether we already have a consensus on them. "We" can be a committee discussing offline, but I'm not sure that it can't also happen as an open discussion here if we set up tight, focused threads with short timelines.

If by next Thursday the board hasn't managed to come out with a non-vague commitment on holding elections with an approach and timescale acceptable to the community, then it's time for us to assume they will continue to obstruct. In which case we should give ourselves another week's deadline to discuss and get a consensus on answers to whatever questions are still open. At that point we should have a solid plan to present to the board with a short deadline for them to consider it. If the board rejects that, then it's time to take a day to figure out if we're witholding donations or going on strike or what.

Thoughts?
posted by trig at 3:41 PM on June 4 [12 favorites]

I've only commented a few times in these threads. It's possible that there is a MeFi consensus around quickly holding elections and I'm just weird in... not having that urgency? Like I'm fine continuing to donate as is. I'll keep making the occasional post. Earlier elections would be better than later, but waiting longer for them is not going to be enough for me "go on strike" or anything.

Ever since the consensus of needing elections right away started to explicitly declare itself, I've been a little nervous about saying anything counter to it, but eh, I lived through the megathreads, I guess I can say this.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 3:51 PM on June 4 [12 favorites]

As far as I can tell the questions that need to be answered for an election to happen are are:

Policy:
--- Which accounts gets to vote? (consensus is hovering around "any account that is not a sockpuppet")
--- What happens to sockpuppet voters? (consensus seems to be "permanently ban them")
--- How many board members will there be?
--- Any requirements that candidates need to meet?
--- If there are as many or fewer candidates as the number of seats to be filled, do those candidates all get elected, or do they need to get some minimum number of votes to make it through?
--- What happens if seats remain unfilled?
--- Can interim board members run? (consensus seems to be "yes")
--- Can interim board members handpick members of the future board without community confirmation? (consensus seems to be "no")
--- When will the newly elected board take over?
--- What will the handover process be like, if interim board members don't carry over?
--- What documentation does the interim board need to provide the incoming board?

Technical:
--- What platform to use for voting? (consensus seems to be "same one as was going to be used for 2nd Steering Committee election")
--- How will votes be counted?
--- How will sockpuppets be weeded out? (needs an answer from frimble or possibly kirkaracha)
--- How should candidates present themselves? Separate AMA-style threads here on Metatalk for each one?

Scheduling etc.
--- Draw up the quickest achievable schedule to follow with intermediate stages and deadlines for each stage
--- How should members be notified about each stage?


What's missing?
posted by trig at 3:55 PM on June 4 [8 favorites]

It's possible that there is a MeFi consensus around quickly holding elections and I'm just weird in... not having that urgency?

There does seem to be a consensus around it. I think this is for 3 reasons:

1) If the board had said "We'll have elections in August, and that's a firm commitment" that would have been one thing. Instead the board said "we'll have elections at some point after the site rewrite is finished". The site rewrite is a nebulous and ambitious project with no realistic projected end date that I'm aware of. On top of which there's no reasonable reason for those to things to even be connected in the first place.

2) If the board had been operating all this time openly and with transparency, communicating and engaging with the community, that would have been one thing. (People would probably have been begging them to stay on.) Instead they've been even less open and engaged than the previous leadership, which is saying something. And when finally pinned down and made to do even the most basic things they'd promised over and over to do like, oh, release the bylaws they've been legally operating under all this time, it turns out they've done some massively anti-community stuff, like define the three of them as the only members of the nonprofit (and therefore the only ones who get any input into how its run, or any ability to vote), give themselves the right to handpick new board members, and so on. The thought that maybe the community should be kept aware of things like this appears to not have even occurred to them - and that's the best-case scenario.

3) If the board had shown basic competence in things like straightening out the site's finances -- not even raising funds, just untangling the amateurish and hopefully not illegal accounting mess we've got -- people would probably have given them a lot more leeway. Instead we've gotten the usual dragged out timelines and missed deadlines followed once again by incomprehensible financial reports and a refusal to answer straightforward questions in a straightforward way. We still don't know how much money the site has, how long it can realistically keep running for, or whether funds are available to hire anyone to do things like proper accounting or admin or management.

Add to that the contempt with which they've been engaging over the last several months (to the extent that they've been engaging with anyone at all), the way they've dropped the ball on accepting offers for help, the way they've been deadweight at best for the site rewrite project and the moderator oversite committee, and so on. And the awareness that this is how this group has seen fit to act after seeing the pretty awful, and predictable, results of the exact same behavior by loup+jessamyn and, before that, cortex.

All of these things together make it hard to trust (a) that they see their role as serving the community, and (b) that the site can actually survive having them in charge for too much longer, whether because of their financial and operational incompetence or because of members continuing to leave the site out of frustration with their behavior.

And hard to trust that they'll leave within a reasonable timeframe without massive pressure to do so.

It's fine if not everyone agrees, but this isn't some random bunch of members making a ruckus for kicks.
posted by trig at 4:28 PM on June 4 [23 favorites]

--- If there are roughly the number of candidates as open spots (or even if not), what is the threshold vote for being elected? Sorry if I'm dumb but I haven't seen this brought up before. I'd like to think anyone being on the board should be able to get a check mark on >50% of ballots cast.

OK, it turns out I'm dumb and this is the fifth point above. I haven't seen it brought up before that.

In this context, I expect voters are going to be approving the whole ballot more or less so putting up a majority requirement shouldn't be a problem. Maybe the newly elected board could, at its discretion, invite sub-50%'s if they need more people.

Otherwise someone like me could say, "I'd like to be on the board", put someone popular's nomination statement through ChatGPT, and be on the board with 10% of the ostensible boy-band-permaband-Rogan-watching-belt-notching group voting for me. The were quietly watching me for years and understood that, as well as obviously being one hell of a lady's man, I was 50% more open to Eating Old Food than average here. Spoiler: eating old food correlates with conservatism in a number of senses (cf. 1. Wilson, Norbert Lance Weston, and Ruiqing Miao. 2025. “Food Waste, Date Labels, and Risk Preferences: An Experimental Exploration.” Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 1–29. 2. Oleniuch, Iwona & Cichocka, Izabela. 2018. "An Attempt to Determine the Scale of Food Conservatism – Results of the Pilot Study." Humanities and Social Sciences Quarterly. 25(4))

You don't want that and neither do I. They and I are the very ostensible security threat that has held up this election for months, and you are this close to not having me, and the malign influence of them, who I totally acknowledge will be sockpuppeting me (I think they call it meat-puppeting, but I just hate to write that; even worse, old meat-puppeting, we're grilling steaks we threw on the roof of the frat last year, and I don't think that stuff ever comes out), on the board, with reasonable voting requirements.
posted by sylvanshine at 4:52 PM on June 4 [4 favorites]

Trig- for first point- one person, using one user account, has one vote. I don't think we need to ensure that socks don't vote, as long as people only use one account to vote. One person one vote, no matter how many accounts/brand new days/socks you have.
posted by freethefeet at 5:13 PM on June 4

Ever since the consensus of needing elections right away started to explicitly declare itself, I've been a little nervous about saying anything counter to it, but eh, I lived through the megathreads, I guess I can say this.

Thanks for saying this. I don't agree, for the reasons trig gave in response to you, but I think it's a valid point of view and I'm glad you felt comfortable to voice (what is probably) a minority opinion.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:45 PM on June 4 [9 favorites]

What's missing?
questions on membership eligibility.
posted by clavdivs at 5:54 PM on June 4 [1 favorite]

What's missing?

That seems fairly comprehensive to me, thanks for putting it together. Off the top of my head, the only thing that I don't think has actually been addressed is the question of the voting structure itself. I assume that we're looking at everyone having N votes where N is the number of open seats, but I don't think that's actually been discussed. My thinking on that is that we don't need to get fancy with any single transferable vote kind of thing, it sounds from the other thread like we'll have somewhere in the low double digits of candidates which is fine for seven or nine seats (which I think are the two most mentioned number?). The other thing we might consider is approval voting, where you can vote for as many people as you approve of (which could be just a few, or everyone).

Realistically, though, I think outcomes are likely to be about the same with any system, and probably the same system that we used in the previous election is the easiest to implement.

I think it is fair to set one week as a deadline for substantive board action. I don't really know whether, like, a boycott or something would really help at that point though if they continue to be unresponsive.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:55 PM on June 4 [2 favorites]

questions on membership eligibility

No, that isn't required. Under this plan, the membership will continue to be the three Board persons who are at this time the only legal members of the Foundation. In their capacity as Board members, they agree to name the winners of the election as Foundation members and Board members. The new board (which is either majority or fully elected) then works on issues like fixing the bylaws, establishing membership criteria and so on, in conversation and consultation with users of Metafilter (us).
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:58 PM on June 4 [6 favorites]

so the 6 month eligibility requirement is only for the three board members currently and not for members running for the board.
posted by clavdivs at 6:09 PM on June 4

The existing Board members can choose to name themselves / stay or not (and really, I'd prefer they did at least for a while in order to be able to help transition things over). But the post-election Board would (continue to) have the power to amend the bylaws however they like, which they would be doing in consultation with all of us. So that would extend not only to amending bylaws to establish a process for becoming a Member of the Foundation but also to establish how the Board is constituted -- election process, terms of office, number of Board members and so on. Ultimately, the goal would be to have that all hammered out and then start conducting business based on those rules (bylaws).
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:19 PM on June 4 [3 favorites]

If only there were some way we could harness all this energy for some useful purpose!
posted by snofoam at 6:35 PM on June 4 [5 favorites]

I don’t have strong feelings about an immediate election. I want Metafilter to survive more than I want it to be led by particular people. I am curious why three successive creative and competent people/teams have taken the helm and then gone silent. I wonder whether there is something I don’t know that would make that make sense. I am also a little skeptical about how much of the little-m membership actually is feeling this urgency, since I know we in MetaTalk are not a random sample of users. I fear some of what I am seeing character-wise in the self nominations is the opposite of what a functioning board needs, and it makes me sad. I also know there’s no way I’d volunteer for this role myself and so I feel guilty too. I feel a lot of things, in other words, I care about this problem and this place, but I want things to happen well more than I want them to happen now.
posted by eirias at 6:39 PM on June 4 [28 favorites]

MeFiCoin... every comment gets put on the blockchain... new MeFiCoin created on commit. Hodl.

There, useful purpose.
posted by one4themoment at 6:40 PM on June 4

While the community action these past few weeks has been great to see, the amount of overthinking things has also been over the top... The truth is that there are very few meaningful rules to follow or consequences to be concerned with here. -grog

Thanks for that comment, it really clarified thoughts and concerns I had while considering standing for election. I kept running into hurdles: "Well, if I were on the board, I'd like to see this bylaw changed, and really, this should be set in stone before there's any sort of election, blahblahblah..." and just going around in circles playing with hypothetical policies.

If there is any substantial reason why the Interim Board cannot use their authority to sanction an election and appoint the winners to the Elected Board/Foundation I've not seen it. The only things needed are agreements on the number of seats, eligibility, and a date set for voting.

(Personally I like 9 elected with the three IB members grandfathered in. 12 may seem like a lot, but life happens and too big a number attrition-proofs the board and oh god I'm doing it again.)
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:57 PM on June 4 [2 favorites]

I am curious why three successive creative and competent people/teams have taken the helm and then gone silent.

I am not sure I agree 100% with the specifics, but I do see what you are saying. I think there are people who want to do stuff and then there are people who want to fiddle with the theory around how to do stuff. Somehow, this site filters out the do stuff people and leaves the meta people in charge.
posted by snofoam at 7:01 PM on June 4 [11 favorites]

Honestly, my sense of urgency about the elections is 90% related to the budget. From what I can tell, we are not on a trajectory to continue paying our moderators for much longer, and an uncontrolled/accidental manner of losing our mods or tech support by “oops check bounced” seems like the death of this place.

I donated monthly for years…
posted by samthemander at 7:01 PM on June 4 [13 favorites]

samthemander: "Honestly, my sense of urgency about the elections is 90% related to the budget. From what I can tell, we are not on a trajectory to continue paying our moderators for much longer, and an uncontrolled/accidental manner of losing our mods or tech support by “oops check bounced” seems like the death of this place.

I donated monthly for years…"

Bingo, this exactly, and add basically what I said before here.
posted by phunniemee at 7:04 PM on June 4 [8 favorites]

I, and a lot of others, stopped monthly donations when it became clear our money was going into a mysterious black hole. Financial is also my main concern here.

But also, can we please finally start doing some of the things we were doing when the first Steering Committee was active?

Edit to add, for historical context: They had a lot of great energy and momentum, and had to stop doing things because it was determined volunteers couldn't work for a for-profit. So now we're a non-profit, let's get some of the enthusiastic visionaries back in charge.
posted by umber vowel at 7:08 PM on June 4 [9 favorites]

I love that idea, umber vowel. I'm afraid that we might have lost those people, or burned them out. That's part of what I'm worried I don't understand, that I wish I could understand before pushing for a specific remedy.
posted by eirias at 7:19 PM on June 4 [2 favorites]

Lots of people are offering to help at MeFiCoFo. The vibe from the Interim Board feels like “nah we got this”.
posted by umber vowel at 7:32 PM on June 4 [3 favorites]

The existing Board members can choose to name themselves / stay or not (and really, I'd prefer they did at least for a while in order to be able to help transition things over)

I also hope that the Interim board will hold themselves available to advise the new board and help with the transition.

But there is no need for the old board to BE on the new board to do that.
posted by Ashenmote at 9:07 PM on June 4 [4 favorites]

If we are scheduling weekly goals for the interim board, is there anyone that wants to communicate that to them directly?
posted by NotLost at 10:43 PM on June 4 [1 favorite]

I have written to the other volunteers for the election committee to get their e-mail addresses. Then we can get the ball rolling among the team. We will report back in a timely manner.

If anyone else wants to join us, please send me MeMail with your e-mail address.

Thanks to the other volunteers, and to everyone who is contributing to the discussion, including with favorites!
posted by NotLost at 11:08 PM on June 4 [2 favorites]

So now we're a non-profit, let's get some of the enthusiastic visionaries back in charge.

But we're still not community governed, which is another aspect that becoming a nonprofit was supposed to accomplish.
posted by NotLost at 11:09 PM on June 4 [1 favorite]

About the future of the current board members: The bylaws put terms at one year. When their terms started is open to interpretation. But one way to look at it is that the terms started with the approval of the bylaws in November 2024. So I can see their terms running out in November of 2025. Getting everything aligned is a matter that can be left until later.

And there is an argument to keep them on, such as for some continuity.

The bylaws say we can have up to 12 total directors. So I think we should elect nine, especially to make up for past and expected attrition.

I think we now have slightly more than nine candidates. Possibly we could get more with more publicity and more of an election plan.

I am leaning toward approval voting. But I would also be fine with ranked-choice voting.
posted by NotLost at 11:31 PM on June 4 [1 favorite]

Favorite this comment if you prefer ranked-choice voting.
posted by NotLost at 11:32 PM on June 4 [11 favorites]

Favorite this comment if you prefer approval voting.
posted by NotLost at 11:32 PM on June 4 [19 favorites]

Favorite this comment if you prefer some other electoral method.
posted by NotLost at 11:32 PM on June 4 [1 favorite]

I'm just weird in... not having that urgency?

the rainy season...
posted by HearHere at 1:27 AM on June 5

If we are scheduling weekly goals for the interim board, is there anyone that wants to communicate that to them directly?

If we're okay with doing this then I'll MeMail them, and maybe someone else can email them.

Are we okay with it? "It" being giving the interim board a full week's time to discuss whatever they need to discuss amongst themselves and give us a concrete statement on whether they commit to having elections on a timescale acceptable to the community and agree to abide by its results.

(If they don't respect that deadline or make a statement that they refuse the above, we can go from there in terms of working to force the issue. If they do - great, we've finally got a starting point.)

Again, the reason for this approach is to prevent things from dragging out interminably and get a clear answer on the basic question that anything else depends on.

It's 7-10am now continental US time, which as far as I know is where the mods are. I'll send the MeMail in two hours unless people prefer I don't.
posted by trig at 7:09 AM on June 5 [3 favorites]

It's 7-10am now continental US time, which as far as I know is where the mods are. I'll send the MeMail in two hours unless people prefer I don't.

I like your optimism! Send that email!
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:24 AM on June 5

I'll send the MeMail in two hours unless people prefer I don't.

Maybe we should give 24 hours from when you posted the schedule, to better ensure opportunity for community feedback. But I am in.
posted by NotLost at 7:25 AM on June 5 [1 favorite]

I posted it at 4pm Pacific Time yesterday according to the timestamp. I'm not going to be available at that time today, but if someone else can do the emailing/memailing around that time I'm fine if it waits until then.
posted by trig at 7:32 AM on June 5 [2 favorites]

Ultimately, the goal would be to have that all hammered out and then start conducting business based on those rules (bylaws).
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:19 PM on June

I think it's really neat for you to tell me that it's not necessary. that's how all productive boards and meetings go. when a person is not sure of the answer, they ask a question. they called this feedback. did you answer the question. Ahah..did you answer the question. no, you did not I have no idea what you're talking about pertaining to bylaws in the future. so I'm not going to restate the question. I'll just wait for it to show itself. I understand not hearing from the board in a timely manner and even I'm wondering what's going on. maybe what's going on is up to us and not them but that sounds like a convenient way to compartmentalize the problem.
so far in this election thing I've seen more problems than actual solutions or progress.
I think coming to the conclusion that one can't be nice to communicate with the board and even suggesting some sort of strike is facile and I won't have anything to do with it. go ahead and strike if you want there'll be more than enough members to make up contributions. hell take it over to Reddit. those folks are funny.
posted by clavdivs at 7:43 AM on June 5 [1 favorite]

I don't know why you're mad at me, clavdivs. You raised the question of whether member eligibility needs to be worked out before elections can happen and I explained why that isn't the case as clearly and simply as I could.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:55 AM on June 5 [2 favorites]

I do agree that threatening to / going through with having a strike or whatever is unlikely to be productive, but if people feel like they want to do that then that's up to them. I guess cancelling recurring donations is probably somewhat more useful, but I cancelled mine a long time ago so at least in my case it's kind of moot.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:58 AM on June 5 [2 favorites]

The only people who would participate in a strike are the people who 1) pay close attention to MetaTalk and are 2) het up about things, which means all a strike would accomplish is that the yappers [inclusive] stop yapping. Which would be a benefit exclusively to the people who are annoyed by us yapping.

Board/mods watching a "strike" happen.
posted by phunniemee at 8:49 AM on June 5 [5 favorites]

I'm more angry at the proposed actions that yourself don't quite agree with.

upon a third review, I do believe you have answered the question the best of your ability. however, it does not satisfy the questions I have with the wording of the bylaw.
I'm beginning to believe that the original bylaw concerning membership would just be a general caveat to cover the three existing board members for purposes of nonprofit stuff or what have you.

I just have a problem exactly fitting in section c with article 9 as it pertains to membership. this too could be legalese in case the existing board members decided or have changed at their usernames.

Trig and others have done a marvelous job compiling the relevant questions in aggregate.to have one document for the board to purview concerning all these questions would be advantageous for expediency, in my opinion.
I'm not mad at you tiva, I would say I'm mad because I have not received the answer that I expect but this has to come from the board and not us at this point,.

if the board or someone on the board has stated the 6-month eligibility is not a requirement to run, I might have missed that comment and if it exists could someone throw me a link.
posted by clavdivs at 8:56 AM on June 5

Board/mods watching a "strike" happen.

(Will Gerr.gif)
posted by clavdivs at 9:02 AM on June 5

clavdivs: "if the board or someone on the board has stated "

The problem is...the board hasn't said much at all.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 9:04 AM on June 5 [4 favorites]

Okay, this is what I have written. Sound okay?

If nobody volunteers to send it or some amended version to the board by let's say "the evening of June 5th, US time", I can MeMail it to them about 4 hours from now.

I'd rather not wait till tomorrow, since I'd like to reduce chances of getting into things like "We didn't see this until Friday afternoon/night/the weekend, we have full lives, etc."

If anyone objects, let me know. If you think we might as well extend the deadline to Sunday night so they have *2* full weekends, let me know.

--

Hi Rhaomi, Adam, and Gorgik,

As you know, there are currently a lot of conversations going on in MetaTalk about holding elections for a permanent board.

These conversations started several months ago and gathered steam about one month ago. They have also branched out into a variety of directions, which may be difficult for some people, and possibly the board, to follow.

Rhaomi previously commented that you are or will be going over the discussion on bylaws. However, a consensus has been emerging that we need to keep things as simple as possible.
Bylaws and other extraneous issues can be settled after elections are held, by an elected group. The current bylaws can accommodate an open election - if the interim board agrees to appoint a new board based on the result of the vote.

There are technological and methodological questions to figure out before holding an election, but the question everything depends on is:

Will the interim board commit to
(a) holding such an election, using methods and crucially a timescale that the community accepts, and
(b) appoint a new board based solely on its results?

We have been asking for concrete clarification on this question for weeks.

We recognize that it takes time to read through all the threads, and that the board is also dealing with other issues currently.

But to prevent this dragging on for yet more months, we request an answer to the basic question above. If we don't receive an answer to it by next Friday (let's say, end of day), we'll assume the answer is a negative.

If the board does commit to the above, we hope to discuss, research, and arrive at consensus as a community on the more down-to-details questions within a timetable that is as quick as can be reasonably achieved. If the board is too busy to participate in that process on a reasonable timescale (understandable), we are able to do so ourselves and present the board with the results for approval.

We feel a week is sufficient time for a board of three people to discuss and answer this question. If you feel otherwise, please let us know a concrete deadline by which you are willing to provide an answer.

Again, an answer to this question is the only thing we are asking for at this point.

Thank you for your time and consideration.
posted by trig at 9:37 AM on June 5 [22 favorites]

It's fine if not everyone agrees, but this isn't some random bunch of members making a ruckus for kicks.

I don't think anyone's here in MeTa discussing bylaws and elections "for kicks". It is my assumption that basically everyone here is operating in good faith and that they are operating with different ideas about what is true (or can be inferred) and what is effective.

People interact with this site at different timescales. I interact with the site at a faster timescale than the IB seems to, and there are many others that interact with the site at a faster timescale than I do. That seems like it would be more or less okay- if the situation that the IB confronted allowed them to act as slowly as they seem to. It's easy to appreciate the financial motivation for wanting things done quickly; if the site had, say, less than six months to live, then I'd be in that camp, too.

The financial state of the site has varied over time. The fragmented, disorganized reporting of that state has given site members a lot of uncertainty. I think MeTa narratives have understandably arisen to help make sense of that noise, but it is possible for narratives to become out-of-sync with the evidence. There have been situations when the site was in a really bad place, but also some successes, and it's possible that the effects of those successes have not fully been assimilated into our collective understanding.

A (former?) user who appears to be wise in the ways of finance (I'm not) has compiled a spreadsheet of MeFi finances over the last fifteen months. What the spreadsheet appears to say is that MeFi's revenues and expenses are reasonably well-balanced with each other- about $400 in the red per month. The sheet itself does not include information about cash reserves as far as I can tell, but the person that compiled it called Rhaomi's previous estimate of 18 months of reserves "conservative". With the caveat that, again, I don't know what I'm talking about, I would be a little concerned with the month-to-month variability here. But it just doesn't look like we're in "die within 6 months" territory.

I feel like Rhaomi et al are probably in a pretty defensive mode (not just in terms of communications in MeTa, but on a deeper level- trying to defend the stewardship of the MeFi nonprofit from some kind of subversion). I'm not super concerned about subversion. I can see possible reasons for Rhaomi et al to be moving slowly, and for people here to be pissed about that / at them. I can see why people want to say [we should depose the IB as soon as we can] and why that might exacerbate any potential concern the IB might have about creating a stable ongoing governance structure for MeFi. I wish people could extend the IB some more grace (if for no other reason than we might have more runway than you previously thought we did), and I wish that IB could trust in a simple system of bylaws and elections, administered transparently, to provide MeFi governance for the future. I can't magically change the dynamics that have arisen here. Anyway, that's where I am.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 10:09 AM on June 5 [15 favorites]

Trig, I like your email draft, although I suggest you add specific dates (eg, June 13 or 15) for clarity.
posted by samthemander at 10:44 AM on June 5 [1 favorite]

The problem is, being asked to step down at the end of your term isn't something anyone should feel defensive about. It's not a disgrace, it's not an insult or resolution of non-confidence, it's just what happens.
posted by Ashenmote at 10:51 AM on June 5 [5 favorites]

a faded photo of their beloved: I see that DIY spreadsheet as emblematic of the problem. It’s not actually based on direct knowledge of our accounts; it’s based on reports that have since been called flawed by the people that produced them. And it’s been months and months.

I would love to see substantive evidence of a healthy runway for Metafilter that I could feel confident in!
posted by samthemander at 11:04 AM on June 5 [4 favorites]

samthemander: "a faded photo of their beloved: I see that DIY spreadsheet as emblematic of the problem. It’s not actually based on direct knowledge of our accounts; it’s based on reports that have since been called flawed by the people that produced them. "

And obviously doesn't include any information at all on the mysterious old accounts that are apparently (?) collecting (?) and remitting (?) funds.
posted by phunniemee at 11:17 AM on June 5 [3 favorites]

trig, I think an editor May suggest to shore it up, about of us have gotten that, but I think every word fits the desired intent for the statement. though,

"Bylaws and other extraneous issues can be settled after elections are held, by an elected group. The current bylaws can accommodate an open election "

the committee I spoke of yesterday is everyone was responding in this thread.

I'm sorry but I still got hang up with article 9 section c.
so it's best if I ask the committee, which is all of us, what exactly are the requirements for a current member to run for a new seat on the board. this would be applicable to any who have declared candidacy in the open declaration thread.
posted by clavdivs at 11:31 AM on June 5

Okay, I just MeMailed them. I changed the date to EOD Sunday the 15th to try to maybe mitigate some of the expected defensiveness, and specified the date per samthemander's suggestion.

(And fixed a grammar mistake, added an "at this moment" to the "keep things simple" sentence, and unsplit an infinitive for the heck of it. This is Metafilter, after all.)

I will update if I get any response.

If anyone wants to email or otherwise contact them, please do!
posted by trig at 2:05 PM on June 5 [7 favorites]

They didn't respond to my last polite email sent on May 27th, a few days before they released the revised bylaws on the 30th, so it seems unlikely they'll respond to another. Here's what I sent on May 27th:

Hi, all. I know you're working on posting the revised draft of the bylaws, but just wanted to make sure that your next communication to Metafilter members also answers the questions below:

1. Do the three current members of the board plan to stand as candidates in the next election, or do they plan to automatically be part of any new board without needed to stand as candidates?
2. Is the current board willing to give up the part of the bylaws that give it the power to appoint 3 members of any new board?
Thanks,

The revised bylaws did not, in fact answer either of those two questions.
posted by mediareport at 2:11 PM on June 5 [7 favorites]

OK, this is progress, but really slow.

It seems like the main need right now is to enable elections this month.

In order to do so, we do NOT need to have perfect bylaws. This is to elect the first real (non-interim) board, and on assumption of office, that board will be able to amend the bylaws to their heart's content if they so wish. All we need right now are guardrails to ensure the first board can function. A few of these items require further research and processing of member sentiment before a reasoned decision can be reached; for that reason, we should not be wasting time on them now.

Below are my suggestions for a limited number of changes aimed at immediately enabling elections.

Section I.5: Change "educate the public on the importance of" to "to maintain." Because we cannot demonstrate that MeFi educates the public about online discussion, unless "the public" is just construed to be "readers." You don't want to be immediately out of charter.

Section II.8: Remove any quorum requirement for members in order to conduct the first election. This can be amended by the board at a later time if they see a need. It is rare for general member meetings/votes to have a quorum as the total number of voters is unknown.

Section III.2: The Directors need to clearly fix the number of Directors for the first election. After that it can of course change. It should not be left vague at this stage, because people need to know exactly what and whom they are voting for. This also entails the IB clarifying whether they intend to continue in a Board role.

Also III.2, delete some language "thereafter Directors shall be elected for terms of one (1) year or until their successors are duly selected and qualified." The future Board can determine what terms they want. The current board simply needs to fix the number to be elected for the first election.

III.13: Just strike this entire string: "No Director shall be compensated for services unless so authorized by a duly adopted resolution of the Board....shall be set by a committee composed of persons who have no financial interest in such determination." Right now, a good faith election means that no director should be compensated for services or anticipate the possibility of compensation, full stop. The future board can change that if they feel there is a good argument for director compensation.

III.19 Advisory Board - Totally unnecessary and does not need to be in bylaws at all. Have an advisory board whenever you want - it's not structural.

IV.I Officers Serious problem: there should be a provision that the Treasurer cannot hold more than one office. This is basic checks and balances to prevent self-dealing or embezzlement. Surprised to see this here.

IV.6 This is super aggressive. Typically, the senior employee (ED, Manager, whatever you want to call them) is given authority to handle all matters of the staff below them, and the board just hires/fires the Director. This may make sense for now given that there's no ED for MeFi, so the board is supervising everyone as acting ED; but it shouldn't last long. No one wants a situation where a Board member takes a dislike to an employee and summarily fires them over the ED's head. Great way to get some wrongful termination suits going.

VII.1 Eligibility: As many have noted above, scrap the six month requirement and the points system in order to have the broadest enfranchisement of MeFites with active accounts. Let's do the first election and if anyone on the Board then wants to introduce a points system, they could amend the bylaws.

Interim Board, I would be happy to volunteer to work more closely with you to shape final language for counsel review.
posted by Miko at 2:32 PM on June 5 [23 favorites]

I hope we can use the time until there's an answer (or until there is definitively no answer) to work on figuring out acceptable-to-the-community answers to the questions relevant to the election (prelim list here, plus a few notes in the subsequent comments).

I say "we" but I mean either the election committee that seems to be forming here, or all the participants in this discussion in general. samthemander, are there enough people in the committee that you feel that should be the way to go?

To the concern raised above that all the community planning in the world won't make a difference if the board rejects it - agreed. But we may as well come in with a clear and practical ask. I think it's much easier for the board to wave off endless threads of "hundreds of comments" than it is to wave off a solid plan that has community support behind it.

mediareport, I'm not really optimistic either. As I said I memailed Adam and Gorgik two weeks ago to summarize phunniemee's thread and hope they would join us there, and all I got was some "full life" sarcasm from Adam. All I could think was "imagine if he'd used the time it took to write this to write a quick placeholder note in the thread instead."

Which is why the message says "If we don't receive an answer to it by next Sunday (the 15th, let's say end-of-day), we'll assume the answer is a negative." Again, might not do us any good, but I think it would be a clear signal for us that we're going to need to come up with our own solid plan, build community support, and force the issue.
posted by trig at 2:32 PM on June 5 [7 favorites]

trig: "all I got was some "full life" sarcasm from Adam"

As a dickhead I feel pretty comfortable classifying this as a real dickhead move. Hell.
posted by phunniemee at 2:36 PM on June 5 [2 favorites]

OK, this is progress, but really slow.

What you proposed is ...like 30 mph to 55.
(80 highway)
agreed on the course on eligibility.
(thanks for pulling me out of traffic on that zoom thing)
posted by clavdivs at 3:01 PM on June 5

Well, it's worth not doing 80 because that would make more work for the new Board. This is more like how we get to a minimum viable bylaws without undoing too much of work already done.
posted by Miko at 3:09 PM on June 5 [6 favorites]

As I said I memailed Adam and Gorgik two weeks ago to summarize phunniemee's thread and hope they would join us there, and all I got was some "full life" sarcasm from Adam.

This is very disappointing to hear.
posted by easy, lucky, free at 5:12 PM on June 5 [5 favorites]

But Miko, none of those amendments to the bylaws strictly need to happen before an election (and subsequent naming of the winners as Foundation members and Board members by the current Board). I think even the most obvious deficiencies in the bylaws should wait until we have an elected Board at this point.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:00 PM on June 5 [6 favorites]

Yes. If there were evidence that the bylaws could be revised in a very short period of time, then I'd agree it'd be nice to have them done pre-election. But there's not. It apparently took seven months to post them after approving them. I'd rather get an elected board in place under the rules that currently exist, and then that board can focus on the bylaws.
posted by lapis at 7:13 PM on June 5 [3 favorites]

clavdivs: "I'm sorry but I still got hang up with article 9 section c.
so it's best if I ask the committee, which is all of us, what exactly are the requirements for a current member to run for a new seat on the board. this would be applicable to any who have declared candidacy in the open declaration thread."

clavdis, the current bylaws are what's currently in effect. There is no article 9 section c in the current bylaws. The current bylaws do not specify any requirements to be a board member other than "Directors ... shall be natural persons at least eighteen (18) years of age... Directors need not be residents of Delaware or the United States. Directors should have an ability to participate effectively in fulfilling the responsibilities of the Board."
posted by lapis at 7:17 PM on June 5 [3 favorites]

But Miko, none of those amendments to the bylaws strictly need to happen before an election (:.:

Yeah they do. Because they haven’t been approved at all yet, they are in draft form, and we can’t have the election under the current bylaws. Some set of bylaws need to be approved now, and the recommendations listed mean that the IB would be approving something that doesn’t go directly counter to the wishes of members and set up a governance system which might never ever be revised again.
posted by Miko at 8:22 PM on June 5 [6 favorites]

Also this doesn’t have to take a long time. It can be voted on my existing IB in a 20 minute meeting or by email exchange and wrapped up within a day. There’s no reason for this to be taking so insanely long. It doesn’t have to. Remember right now these are not “amendments,” because these are not yet bylaws; instead they are text revisions and that requires no amendment process. They’ll be approved in the whole.
posted by Miko at 8:33 PM on June 5 [7 favorites]

Trig, yes between the three of us, I think we can push through this! I know NotLost snagged my email, so we can coordinate separately.

I love your list of pending questions. I think it would be good if we started there, maybe with another cursory review for any additional pending questions that fit within the election team scope.

We could then write out basically what we could propose as language/guidelines (ie with full sentences) that could ultimately form the MetaTalk announcement of 1) the call for candidates, and 2) the call for voting. (We would also need to talk through a process for generating additional feedback/review on this.)

Ideally we would also draft up a slightly more robust timeline with some slack built in for delays, but we’d need frimble on board to talk through some technical details and timelines associated with the voting mechanism.
posted by samthemander at 8:51 PM on June 5 [1 favorite]

Miko, I am supportive of your edits generally, but also unclear on the timeline. There ARE bylaws in place that were adopted in November 2024 (although I haven’t seen a “Final” document that explicitly clarifies WHEN they were adopted…).

What Trig, NotLost and I are advocating for is asking the board to (in alignment with current bylaws) voluntarily agree to adhere to a community-led election even without explicitly making the election process part of the bylaws. The board would then “choose” and appoint new members to the board, but those choices would be directly guided by the community-led election results. And then, the new board members can come together collectively to refine the next iteration of the bylaws.
posted by samthemander at 10:03 PM on June 5 [6 favorites]

You trust the interim unelected board enough to rely on their word at this point, samthemander (and tivalasvegas)? I don't. They do not appear to want to lose control of the site. As you say, there are current bylaws that were initially adopted, without input from the larger community, as a needed step to incorporation, but everything we've seen the IUB do since has been obfuscation, withholding and delay. The initial bylaws include elements that are appallingly unnecessary and undemocratic (which probably helps explain why we didn't see them for 8 months), and we still have heard nothing from the interim board about *how* the larger community will have its long-promised input.

I agree with Miko that the interim board should quickly change the most obnoxious parts of the currently adopted bylaws, but also like tivalasvegas's deadline for a reply. I guess what I'd ask you both, samthemander, (and NotLost) is this: what is your plan for when, after folks here have put in the work to make an election happen without the IUB, the IUB then comes back with "Well, we *wanted* to do what y'all wanted, but Our Unnamed Lawyers tell us it would horribly endanger the new corporation if we did"?
posted by mediareport at 4:28 AM on June 6 [2 favorites]

If they said they were going to go along with what’s been proposed, I for one would trust them to hold to it. If not, why trust them to change the bylaws either?
posted by Pre-Taped Call In Show at 5:43 AM on June 6 [4 favorites]

Pre-Taped Call In Show: "If they said they were going to go along with what’s been proposed, I for one would trust them to hold to it. If not, why trust them to change the bylaws either?"

Yes. They are the only ones with any power to do anything here. At least starting with elections means there will be more people on the board to help with revisions to the bylaws, which seems like something that could be more invisibly delayed than a public election process.
posted by lapis at 8:09 AM on June 6 [6 favorites]

The illegitimate board has complete control of the foundation. I don't trust them, but any outcome depends on them doing something. I think the best situation is to have them instate an elected board as soon as possible and then have that board revise the bylaws. Either they do that or they don't, but there's no need for trust.

The alternative is further delaying having an elected board while new bylaws are drafted by the illegitimate board, with whatever amount of community input they feel like including. This option seems to require a lot more trust: that they will do the bylaws, that they will reflect the interests of the community, that the bylaws will allow the installation of a legitimate, elected board, etc.
posted by snofoam at 8:16 AM on June 6 [4 favorites]

If not, why trust them to change the bylaws either?

I don't, which is why we should keep a member strike on the table. Or at least in our back pocket as we sit around the table.
posted by mediareport at 9:10 AM on June 6 [1 favorite]

Can we have elections for the member strike committee?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:25 AM on June 6

Alvy Ampersand: "Can we have elections for the member strike committee?"

No, we need strike bylaws first, and we don’t know if we can afford the lawyers we need to help us write them because the finances are borked. /s, kinda.

I see the impetus for a strike but I don’t understand how that would work. Mefites are, by and large, a noisy snarky bunch, it’d take a lot for us to coordinate ourselves to silence. And then if we did? Well then the board would be under even less pressure to do anything we want them to do because we wouldn’t even be bitching anymore.

I suppose we could start filling the site with nonsense posts with recipe links.
posted by Vatnesine at 10:49 AM on June 6 [1 favorite]

Miko, do you have a link to an explanation of why the election can't happen under the current bylaws? The way I read it, the current bylaws do require the directors to include 3 selected by the current board. But there's nothing stopping the current board (in fact, only 2 out of 3 of the current board) from selecting themselves but agreeing that only elected board members will continue to serve. That seems more efficient than trying to hash out new bylaws when the current board isn't empowered by being elected.

I strongly disagree that the current board is illegitimate, by the way. They're the board of the Metafilter Community Foundation and were elected fairly. If any of us wanted to be on that board, we should have run for it at the time it was being elected. No one is perfect. Thinking about the non-profit organizations I have personally be a part of, only one is really well run, and that's largely because the board is either retired or wealthy enough to be a non-working spouse and have lots of time to devote. The others range from moderately well-run to disorganized. But even the ones that I feel are not well-run are still legitimate. Professional management is expensive and requires its own maintenance. Metafilter as a community foundation is still a baby.
posted by wnissen at 10:58 AM on June 6 [7 favorites]

Okay, so this is an interesting impasse worth thinking through. Either way, it depends on the IB taking action. Confidence in the IB is low.

I suppose asking the interim board to commit to elections along the lines we've asked seems like a simple enough solution. And they might honor it. Problem is that anyone elected by the community depends on the interim board to recognize them as directors even though the currently active bylaws do not demand that. We have no guarantee that they will honor them as directors, since at present only the 2 IB members are members/directors. So the structural issue is that there is no requirement that they share power with incoming directors. They could refuse. And if they do, there's no recourse since the incoming board members would not have a way to vote or amend the bylaws,

Asking for bylaws amendments right now would remove that concern, but similarly depends on the IB to make these bylaws amendments. They're slow to do anything and haven't weighed in yet on whether they accept the proposed changes put forward. It would be great if they just partner with people who have offered to help and make the changes ASAP. But will they? If there's more foot-dragging, how long will we wait? A deadline is a good idea. What happens after the deadline passes if the changes haven't been made?

Either way, we DO depend on the IB to either agree to an election under community terms OR revise and approve new bylaws in order to move forward. Personally, I would be much more optimistic about elections and future board function and a quicker liftoff to the process if stronger bylaws specific about directorship and membership are adopted before the election than after, precluding any concern of further power-grabby shenanigans.
posted by Miko at 11:03 AM on June 6 [4 favorites]

man, know who could cut through this Gordian knot with a simple statement?

The International Baccalaureate.
posted by sagc at 11:04 AM on June 6 [2 favorites]

I've only recently started paying attention to all this and it's sad and kind of astonishing we are in this situation.

I think it's vitally important that it's crystal clear that part of the responsibility of being on the board is communicating with the members of the site, making a good faith effort to be transparent, collaborative, and responsive to community concerns and leaning into a community governance approach. This is necessary to maintain goodwill and trust.
posted by overglow at 11:33 AM on June 6 [9 favorites]

They're the board of the Metafilter Community Foundation and were elected fairly.

Um...when was that election?
posted by mediareport at 11:45 AM on June 6 [3 favorites]

Apologies, selected according to the rules would perhaps be more accurate.
posted by wnissen at 11:49 AM on June 6

What rules? What running? None of this happened. There was a non profit committee that lost members by attrition over time, and the last folks circling the drain became the legal owners of Metafilter without any notice or opportunity or communication (as I recall) for anyone else to step up.
posted by phunniemee at 11:55 AM on June 6 [9 favorites]

phunniemee: "What rules? What running? None of this happened. There was a non profit committee that lost members by attrition over time, and the last folks circling the drain became the legal owners of Metafilter without any notice or opportunity or communication (as I recall) for anyone else to step up."

Looks like the push for volunteers began in this thread from 2023

1adam12 and Rhaomi chimed there. The 3 person board was announced in the best month ever, August, back in 2024
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 12:15 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]

selected according to the rules would perhaps be more accurate

Yeah, no, you're still confused. In the mists of time, there was a call for volunteers; about 10 people answered it and - ta da! - were then called the Interim (Unelected) Board. Most of the original volunteers have faded away for various reasons, leaving Rhaomi, 1adam12 and Gorgik as the only volunteers left on the IUB.

They then created a set of bylaws without the larger community's input because they needed bylaws to incorporate Metafilter as a non-profit, promised community input into revising those quick bylaws, then delayed and delayed for 8 months until a mini-revolt here in MeTa finally got them to show us the damn bylaws they'd been operating under since November, which is when we found out those bylaws not only defined the 3 remaining Interim Unelected Board volunteers as the only "members" of the new corporation, but also gave the IUB the power (never discussed in MeTa) to appoint 3 hand-picked members of any new board. The IUB then added a ridiculous "points" system to its bylaws to control who gets a vote in any upcoming election they allow. The blowback to Rhaomi's stated fears about brigades of bad actors as the reason for the IUB's near-total control was fierce and couldn't have been more clear.

Now we have waited and waited for them to respond to members' concerns about things like that in these bylaws. There's been an almost complete lack of any sign from the board that they are willing to quickly incorporate changes to the bylaws they created and kept from us for 8 months, with Rhaomi offering only vague hints about reading a lot of MetaTalk comments and how much work that is. *That's* what has destroyed some members' trust that the IUB will do the right thing, which is why some members are trying to figure out how to bypass the IUB and get this shit done in spite of them.

There. I think that catches you up.
posted by mediareport at 12:16 PM on June 6 [10 favorites]

From Brandon's August 2024 link, a quote from Gorgik:

There will be an initial board with three members, 1Adam12, Rhaomi and Gorgik. Those three will serve until the first board elections can be held and the new board installed, hopefully in the next two to three months or so.

lol sob
posted by mediareport at 12:18 PM on June 6 [7 favorites]

They really gonna send us straight back to the harassment mines, aren't they.
posted by phunniemee at 12:20 PM on June 6 [8 favorites]

Also, I don't think anyone thought of them as illegitimate in any way until it emerged that they were not planning to hold elections until the site rewrite* - a huge project still in its infancy - was finished. Despite that being their actual remit, and something that they had explicitly promised several times to do.

It also didn't help that they never even thought of mentioning this fairly consequential decision until repeatedly pinned down on the question of when the promised elections were actually happening. And it didn't help that when the bylaws that they'd been operating under all this time (and not released, despite, again, a year of promises) finally were published as a result of, once again, being pinned down by a insistent user campaign, it turned out they'd granted themselves - in total secrecy! - all sort of powers like handpicking members of the next board. And it definitely doesn't help that even now, two months after all this started emerging, they have still not shown any sign of listening to the overwhelmingly negative feedback on this.

So the question has been: has their behavior been legitimate for an unelected interim board whose original term was intended, and publicly promised, to be short - and an unelected board of a project that was very much presented as a community organization.


* itself a project no one actually asked for and a controversial way of spending the site's resources. Kirk (and now Kybard) have been the first members of the staff and/or board to visibly be a combination of competent, communicative, and energetic, so that's a been big point in favor of the project. But people had been asking for this money to be used on hiring competent/communicative/energetic admin or managerial staff, and the fact that it wasn't is part of why the board has been struggling, not very successfully, with figuring out what the state of the site's finances even is. For over six months. Among other tasks not addressed or even approached. Like fundraising. Or teaching staff ABCs like keeping on top of deadlines, or communicating, or renewing fucking SSL certificates, or ...
posted by trig at 12:24 PM on June 6 [18 favorites]

Brandon, since you're here (thanks!): is Gorgik, the third board member, still alive and well and communicating with anybody? I MeMailed all three members a message that was put together with input and support from this thread. I know Rhaomi and Adam have been logging in to the site. Gorgik has not commented or posted since April. I also MeMailed him two weeks ago, to which he never responded.

I'll MeMail you the message I sent him and would be grateful if you could pass it on to him. I prefer not to use email in communications with the board or mods.

Thank you.
posted by trig at 12:30 PM on June 6 [5 favorites]

Also, I don't think anyone thought of them as illegitimate in

Great write up on the interim board situation from Trig above, that was very helpful! Seriously, the comment should be mentioned in the MF side bar/below bar so it becomes visible outside this thread.
posted by Ashenmote at 1:06 PM on June 6 [3 favorites]

I think it's vitally important that it's crystal clear that part of the responsibility of being on the board is communicating with the members of the site, making a good faith effort to be transparent, collaborative, and responsive to community concerns and leaning into a community governance approach. This is necessary to maintain goodwill and trust.

I just want to highlight what overglow wrote because it's what I think is at the heart of everything. If bylaws are rewritten, this should be clause 1 of section 1.

Honestly, I've avoided saying this because I don't want to add even a semblance of complication to the elections, but I wish (theoretically) that on top of voting for candidates we could also vote on some essential values for how any Metafilter board, regardless of its makeup, should operate.
posted by trig at 1:13 PM on June 6 [6 favorites]

The lack of consistent communication and the long delay in sharing the current and draft bylaws, and the long delay in holding elections, those are the sins here, and that's enough on its own.

The complaints about the supposedly nefarious clauses in the actual or draft bylaws are misplaced. Some of those clauses might not be right for the site, but they're distinctly not evidence of malfeasance.

For example, some of you keep mentioning how the current bylaws define the board as (for now) the only members of the nonprofit. This is a normal way to get something up and running, and was explicitly discussed in old MeTa threads as the way to do it! (As were discussions about how much site activity membership/voting might require, at which point the current apparent consensus that there should be no site activity requirement for nonprofit membership was, as far as I can tell, barely even suggested, and certainly not widely entertained.)

(Some of you now talking about these as being secret nefarious inserts were even in at least one or two of those threads, but at that point mostly just to agree that the then-proposed "fellows" language for foundation membership was terrible -- and I'm glad to see that language was indeed already dropped.)

Again, it is ridiculous that it's taken this long to open up any of this discussion again since the nonprofit transition. Discussion clearly should have started in January. Voting should have happened in February or March. But the commentary pointing to either of the bylaws versions as evidence of outright malfeasance is just silly.

(I wanted to work "bylaws eating crackers" into this comment, but I couldn't make it work.)
posted by nobody at 1:34 PM on June 6 [5 favorites]

"Malfeasance" is a heavy word with legal implications. I don't think anyone's brought it up except you. I don't think "nefarious" is right either. I don't think these guys have nefarious intentions towards the site.

It's their actual actions and behavior I care about. The output of whatever their intentions are, filtered through the way they perceive the site and their role.

The thing where they're the sole defined members of the nonprofit (which I also didn't bring up) was indeed fine as a temporary thing to get up and running (as was using a boilerplate set of bylaws). But it's not fine for a board that seems set on sticking around. I mean, people were asking when the Annual Meeting - required by the bylaws, seen I think by many people as a chance for the community to take stock and build some consensus on a path forward, not to mention vote on a new board - would be, and it turned out the UIB had just decided to silently skip it because an Annual Meeting is for members and hey, they were the only members!

Even that might have been okay if they'd let anyone know, made sure there was some community approval. But they didn't.

And the "we get to handpick members of the next board" is a hell of an overreach.

I dunno, in that overview I left out a lot of the things I think are problematic. What it comes down to for me is: this is not how a board that sees itself as accountable to a community acts.
posted by trig at 1:59 PM on June 6 [7 favorites]

Miko, I think there is absolutely no chance that the interim board will move forward quickly with any kind of bylaw revisions. They just told us that their current draft, which has been in progress for who knows how long now, was reviewed by not one but two lawyers. Your suggested changes are more substantial than the changes between the current bylaws and the draft bylaws (which again, took many months and two lawyers). It's pretty clear they aren't going to adopt changes quickly; they are going to want to pass any changes through lawyers and generally take who knows how many more months to maybe adopt some small changes to the bylaws.

That's why so many of us are calling for elections now, under the current bylaws, with a commitment from the board to appoint the winners. It's the only option that seems like it might feasibly be completed in 2025.
posted by ssg at 2:01 PM on June 6 [8 favorites]

Sure, say, I understand that wish. I just feel it important to point that it is entirely a wish. If the IUB wants to comply and move forward, they’ll collaborate on elections and make this happen quickly and then everyone can get to work on the bylaws. But by your own evidence, they’ve taken forever to take action even on the simple items clearly assigned to them by their role. So we’re wishing they will not only collaborate with elections, but also sit the other board members to be elected and help facilitate approval of these bylaws. Do they have the goodwill? I understand they have very full lives, so full, so do they have the time? My point is we could have this election and, under these current bylaws, they are free to Ty he . ignore the results, drag their feet on communicating with the new members or ever setting an initial organizing meeting, getting revised by laws in front of a lawyer (which is good practice but I may I note not legally required), and voting on the bylaws. You could be opting in for another year plus of trying to get the IUB to do anything at all, while frittering away a portion of the remaining 36 months of funding the treasurer has estimated.

In short, electing people immediately pre-bylaw approval only solves one of the current problems.

I don’t intend to oppose elections, and want to see the. Happen ASAP. Just want folks to realize they are not binding, and still depend on people who have not given us much reason to think they will be responsive.
posted by Miko at 2:25 PM on June 6 [4 favorites]

I think we do realize that. That is the essence of this entire bind.
posted by trig at 2:30 PM on June 6 [6 favorites]

Totally agree.

We’re all waiting for the board to engage with this. Until they show some movement nothing happens. That’s why I really like the idea of a deadline.
posted by Miko at 2:40 PM on June 6 [4 favorites]

pointing to either of the bylaws versions as evidence of outright malfeasance

Oh, I will own up to at least *wondering* if there's malfeasance afoot. I mean, among the new powers the Interim Unelected Board granted itself in the bylaws no one got to see for 8 months and none of us are currently being allowed to modify was this delightful bit:

No Director shall be compensated for services unless so authorized by a duly adopted resolution of the Board, requiring that: (i) such Director may only receive reasonable compensation for services rendered for the Corporation in carrying out its purposes as established by the Board; and (ii) such compensation (a) is consistent with the Corporation’s financial policies, (b) does not adversely affect the Corporation’s ability to qualify as a Delaware non-stock corporation...and (c) shall be set by a committee composed of persons who have no financial interest in such determination.

Directors may be reimbursed for reasonable expenses in performance of their duties as Board members provided that such reimbursement does not adversely affect the Corporation’s qualification as a Delaware non-stock corporation...

Miko stated yesterday there's no reason for that cute lil bit to be in interim bylaws at all and it should be stricken, and I can't see how anyone could disagree with her:

Right now, a good faith election means that no director should be compensated for services or anticipate the possibility of compensation, full stop.

I asked a week ago for a clear, specific direct answer to the question, "Have any of the IUB's members received any compensation for their activities as allowed by Section III.13 of the newly released bylaws?" We have yet to see any response to that simple question it would take 10 seconds for the IUB to answer.
posted by mediareport at 3:00 PM on June 6 [3 favorites]

All we can rely on now is social and moral pressure to get the board to act. I think the social and moral pressure to appoint the new elected board would be a whole lot stronger than the pressure to revise the bylaws. That would make it a lot harder for the board to ignore election results than dither on the bylaws for another 6-12 months.
posted by ssg at 3:02 PM on June 6 [9 favorites]

Has jessamyn disappeared/washed her hands of the whole process? The goodwill she built up over the years here and never squandered went a long way in appeasing people's worries about this transition. If she said "I've talked to the board and they are overwhelmed but acting in good faith," that would still be meaningful to some of us. Her continued silence suggests to me that perhaps the board could not be described that way. Their actions are not consistent with people trying to do their best to support a community.

I understand wanting to walk away for a bit after a difficult transition, but if you hand the keys over to a group of people who then bury the keys somewhere and ghost all the tenants of the... I lost track of my metaphor here, but it doesn't look good.
posted by rikschell at 3:05 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]

At this point, ssg, I'm happy to follow trig's lead, if the following is still in effect:

If by next Thursday the board hasn't managed to come out with a non-vague commitment on holding elections with an approach and timescale acceptable to the community, then it's time for us to assume they will continue to obstruct.
posted by mediareport at 3:08 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]

Media report, the final deadline given was Sunday June 15. So, we should have some new discussion kicking off on June 16.
posted by samthemander at 3:13 PM on June 6 [3 favorites]

trig: I wish (theoretically) that on top of voting for candidates we could also vote on some essential values for how any Metafilter board, regardless of its makeup, should operate.

Yeah, once we have an elected Board I would like to have an ad hoc subcommittee/working group/whatever that is specifically tasked with helping to work with the community to develop a mission statement (or statement of purpose or however it's stated in the bylaws) that accurately reflects what the community wants Metafilter to be. (side note: I would be happy to serve on that committee.)
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:40 PM on June 6 [3 favorites]

Just a note: no one needs to have suspicions of malfeasance to want tighter bylaws. A rule of thumb about bylaws is to imagine what the worst intended, least competent person might do that could damage the organization and structure them so that no could do those things. This isn’t to imply that anyone involved at any one moment is poorly involved or incompetent, but to set up a structure that anticipates personnel change and can last for decades without creating conditions that could let one individual or a subgroup of individuals do something ruinous.
posted by Miko at 6:30 PM on June 6 [11 favorites]

Oh, I'm totally with you on that, Miko (in case that was at least partially in response to me). I think I mentioned early on in one of these threads: if nothing else, it would be best if the unique powers granted to the President were pared back before a board change, so one person alone on the new board -- even if chosen by the new board -- can't take unilateral action without a majority behind them. And I guess it's unlikely to be an immediate issue, but ideally a decision like, say, closing up the website, would be enshrined to take more than a mere majority board vote. And ideally we'd all be foundation members before a new board is sworn in, with the ability to -- however difficultly -- override certain board decisions. But we'll see how it all goes, I guess.

(And yours was a totally fair response, trig, even if I don't think I really had you in mind while writing. For one thing, given another pass at it, I would have tried to make my point without leaning on "nefarious" and "malfeasance.")
posted by nobody at 7:40 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]

Yeah agreed - I’d say on a healthy board there’s zero unilateral action.
posted by Miko at 9:25 PM on June 6 [4 favorites]

Thank you, Brandon!

I did MeMail Gorgik a message ... and linked him to your above comment.
...I would advise that concerns also be emailed to the Board at [email protected] as I believe that's the Board's preferred method of communication.

As I mentioned, I'd already MeMailed him (and the date in what I sent was different than in the comment in this thread - what I'd sent him was exactly what I MeMailed you.) I asked in the MeMail to you if you could email him since I don't know if he logs into Metafilter anymore to even see MeMail, and I prefer not to use email myself in communication with the board, but I see I wasn't clear in specifying email in this comment.

I'll also leave a note on Slack

Thanks!
posted by trig at 10:58 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]

I am catching up on this thread after a couple of days. But we have a total of four members of the election committee. I have e-mailed them about scheduling.
posted by NotLost at 5:54 AM on June 7 [2 favorites]

For example, some of you keep mentioning how the current bylaws define the board as (for now) the only members of the nonprofit. This is a normal way to get something up and running, and was explicitly discussed in old MeTa threads as the way to do it!

Normal or not, the bylaws were not discussed until just recently, after pressure from the community.
posted by NotLost at 12:55 PM on June 7 [4 favorites]

We didn't even get to see them. We didn't, in fact, know that they had been approved months ago.
posted by Miko at 3:01 PM on June 7 [5 favorites]

samthemander: "Media report, the final deadline given was Sunday June 15. So, we should have some new discussion kicking off on June 16."

I came back to metatalk today to see what this crowd of 200 people with pitchforks and lit torches was going to occupy themselves with until the 16th and I see we are eating our own. Hard to link because I’m on mobile. But that’s a bunch of angry metatalk posts!
posted by Vatnesine at 3:19 PM on June 7

FWIW, as of yesterday, we have 9 definitive declarations of candidacy and potentially 5 more based on conditional statements.

If we are looking at electing a Board of 7, then we have enough people expressing interest in serving — depending on adjudications of eligibility — so that presumably shouldn’t be a reason to delay an election.
posted by darkstar at 9:16 PM on June 7 [6 favorites]

Update: The Election Committee met and are working on addressing trig's questions as a framework and will provide another update after the IB deadline.
posted by joannemerriam at 1:43 PM on June 8 [6 favorites]

So. Yesterday I got a reply from Adam. I wrote him back immediately afterwards:

Thanks, Adam.

Do I have your permission to post this in the thread where the message to you was discussed and approved?

Also, should I read this as a response from you personally, or is it speaking for Gorgik and Rhaomi as well?

I haven't received an answer yet. I asked about permission to post as a courtesy, given that it's been established that users are allowed to quote from private messages sent to them by mods or staff, and I believe that needs to apply to the board as well. I'm not going to quote the whole thing here unless it becomes relevant, because much of it is vitriolic and remarkably aggressive and would probably turn this discussion into a referendum on the personalities of the people on the board, which I think would probably not be the best way to go since I think what we need to be is focused on the goal. However, if anyone wants to read the full thing, or thinks my description might be an exaggeration, or plans to try to communicate with Adam directly and would like some insight into how he sees the world, I will be happy to send you a copy.

I'll quote the most relevant and vitriol-free parts. As a reminder, this is in response to the message here (with the minor changes described here). The (a) and (b) below refer to the main question in that message:

Will the interim board commit to
(a) holding such an election, using methods and crucially a timescale that the community accepts, and
(b) appoint a new board based solely on its results?

Here's the redacted response.

To answer your questions:

a. Yes, if we determine that this is feasible and will produce results not easily subject to manipulation.

b. No, we have no such plans, subject to what I outline below. We don’t intend to appoint ourselves, but we have the power to do this for a reason, like if we determine it will be reasonably necessary for the site to continue operating. Director-appointed directors aren't unusual, this exists to preserve continuity and capacity, not so the outgoing directors can maintain the dead hand of control.

We want to get a full board spun up ASAP but we want it to be done as well as we can manage.
[...]
I’m happy to say that we’ve already gotten many offers of help in the last couple of weeks through side channels.
[...]
What you're proposing seems to be a demand that we rush headlong into a brigading.
[...]
Try also to keep in mind that we have legal duties to the company and must make decisions that we believe are in its best interest. So no, you can’t substitute your judgement for ours because you’re not in our position, nor did you volunteer to be in our position when the time came.
[...]
Nothing we've done since way back in October 2023, when we started meeting, is a secret.
[...]
We have an interim solution that will resolve some of your concerns, and I’m working on a pair of resolutions to put those changes into effect within days. We intend to expand the board such that it has the necessary capacity and interest to figure out the details of how to convene an election more quickly and then to put those plans into action. This expanded board will likely place the existing members into the minority, which means they can vote us all out if that's what they decide. You want control? We want that for you too. Have at it.

More soon.

To me the last paragraph sounds concerning, since it seems to be following the same pattern of backchannel action that's only presented to the community once it's over. But maybe not! Maybe it'll all done in an open, transparent, and responsive-to-the-community way. I will write back tomorrow (I'm offline for the next 12 hours or so) and express the hope that that will be the case. Maybe the conviction that it needs to be the case. Though I don't think it'll be received well either way.
posted by trig at 2:28 PM on June 8 [12 favorites]

Update: The Election Committee met and are working on addressing trig's questions as a framework and will provide another update after the IB deadline.

That's wonderful, joannemerriam.

For the sake of transparency, who's on the committee - you, NotLost, samthemander, and one other person, right?
posted by trig at 2:32 PM on June 8 [3 favorites]

What you're proposing seems to be a demand that we rush headlong into a brigading.

lol
posted by phunniemee at 2:39 PM on June 8 [7 favorites]

(I will say there were some things in the response that make me think he was either conflating me with other people, or using the word "you" to refer to everyone who's raised criticisms of the board over the past months.)
posted by trig at 3:14 PM on June 8 [2 favorites]

trig: i would like to see a copy if you'll memail me.
posted by adrienneleigh at 3:17 PM on June 8

Remember folks, if you think that comment might be about you, it is.
posted by phunniemee at 3:21 PM on June 8 [4 favorites]

Okay, based on this communication, this suggests that they are developing a couple of resolutions that the current board can vote on, one of which is probably to expand the Board to a certain new number (greater than 6, in order to leave the current Board members in the minority). They likely would then have elections for the unfilled 4 (or more) new Board seats.

This is at least some progress, though depending on the number of the new Board seats, if they retain a 2/3 Majority required to unseat any Board member, it might mean that there would be no way to remove one of the Interim Board members short of having a new election. 2/3 of 7 is 4.7, so it would require 5 Board members to vote to remove a Board member. I.e., probably not possible to remove an Interim Board member through this mechanism.

If the Board were expanded to 8 -- by adding 5 new seats -- then this would require 5 votes to remove a Board member. Presumably this would entail all 5 new Board members voting to remove one of the Interim Board members -- probably unrealistic.

So depending on the number of new Board seats in an expanded Board, this could still mean having our three IB members on the Board, at least until there were a new election. For that reason, if this is the intent, my preference would be to expand the Board to nine total, entailing electing six more Board members. (If the IB weren't taking this approach, I think a Board of seven would be sufficient, but not if they get to appoint the three members to continue.)

All that being said, it may be the case that having a few more Board members, even if the IB folks remain, would result in significantly more accountability and transparency than we have now.

(Speaking of which, it is reflective of this whole rich tapestry of concerns that the Board is currently considering/drafting/developing two new resolutions, the details of which the community is not permitted to know at this stage -- and which has not been the result of significant engagement with the community -- despite hundreds of comments outlining possible frameworks. BUT...this may be the most streamlined approach to get us "half a loaf" in the short term an at least open up the Board to more significant community engagement.)
posted by darkstar at 3:58 PM on June 8 [5 favorites]

If my candidates even get elected, the board will be stacked with enough counter-directors to neutralize them. Is this a joke?

Director-appointed directors aren't unusual

Directors appointed by unappointed directors who started out as the election committee and then had a severe case of mission creep are alarming!

This expanded board will likely place the existing members into the minority, which means they can vote us all out if that's what they decide.

And that wouldn't feel like brigading to our lidless guardians because...?
posted by Ashenmote at 4:25 PM on June 8 [4 favorites]

And besides, 'directors eliminating each other from the board' is hardly a better model for conflict resolution than a vote with uncertain results.

Funnier, perhaps.
posted by Ashenmote at 5:08 PM on June 8 [2 favorites]

Re Election Committee -- The people who have signed up for the election committee are: dg, dorothyisunderwood, joannemerriam, NotLost and samthemander.
posted by NotLost at 5:21 PM on June 8 [4 favorites]

It strikes me that dg, dorothyisunderwood, joannemerriam, NotLost, and samthemander are all people who would likely receive little objection from any quarter if they were asked to join an expanded interim board, to lend their election committee work the weight of official acts.

(Not sure if any of them would be interested in that, given that it requires having one's full name, address, etc., posted publicly.)

(And I get how that could be seen as yet another example of volunteers being handed power merely because they volunteered, but that would also make it no worse than where we are now, and might nonetheless represent a chance to automatically rebuild some trust in the process?)
posted by nobody at 5:40 PM on June 8 [1 favorite]

Just noting that the list of members who have volunteered to serve on the election committee does not overlap robustly with those who have expressed candidacy for election to the Board. So if we were going to add more members to the Board, I think it would be preferable for them to be elected out of the candidate list, rather than the election committee.

At this point, though, the priority is to get significantly more new Champions of Accountability & Transparency (CATs) on the Board than just the original Interim Board Three (IB3). So whatever method gets us there more reliably…
posted by darkstar at 6:25 PM on June 8 [2 favorites]

nobody: "t strikes me that dg, dorothyisunderwood, joannemerriam, NotLost, and samthemander are all people who would likely receive little objection from any quarter if they were asked to join an expanded interim board, to lend their election committee work the weight of official acts."

I would strongly object to one of those being added to a board ;-)
posted by dg at 6:31 PM on June 8 [6 favorites]

1adam12 quoted by trig, emphasis mine:

This expanded board will likely place the existing members into the minority, which means they can vote us all out if that's what they decide.

What is that unsettling "likely" doing in there? Is the unelected interim board actually considering a scenario that *wouldn't* place the existing members into the minority?

darkstar: I think a Board of seven would be sufficient, but not if they get to appoint the three members to continue.

I think it's worse than that. It appears not only will the 3 interim members will stay on, but 1adam12 is strongly hinting that they will *also* handpick 3 members to the new board, so if that's the case, there will be 6 members of the new board who will be unlikely, to say the least, to vote any interim board members out (not saying they should, and I like the idea of at least one interim member staying on for continuity). That needs to be clarified in the interim board's next round of pronouncements. We need to watch for a situation where, say, they announce the new board will have 7 members, 3 of which will be themselves and 3 their choices of folks friendly to them, which will allow them to continue to carefully control all aspects of the site's operation.

That would be a clearly absurd outcome - one that would demonstrate that Rhaomi, 1adam12 and Gorgik are digging in and not conceding any power at all. Guess we'll see how far they intend to go to hold on.

(Btw, 1adam12, this excuse is just laughable at this point:

nor did you volunteer to be in our position when the time came

Y'all lost *that* freaking good will looong ago. Used it right up. It'll be fascinating to see what you three have actually gleaned from the MetaTalk discussions you promised we'd have, discussions the members created in spite of you, and which you've barely participated in. I'm not optimistic.)
posted by mediareport at 8:19 PM on June 8 [6 favorites]

Why don't they just talk to us?

What's so hard about sharing this information and activity as updates to the community?
posted by Miko at 8:50 PM on June 8 [28 favorites]

When the Interim Board meets, do they take notes for their meetings? Are these notes publicly accessible or available in some way?

I might be wrong here but I have the impression that it's customary (or even required) for the boards of non-profits to keep and share a record of their meetings and votes.
posted by overglow at 10:44 PM on June 8 [5 favorites]

I'm not optimistic.

Well, the important thing is that we're not escalating things rancor-wise. I'm writing this not having seen the complete message so maybe there's a part where they write Fuck That Alvy Ampersand In Particular, but the current Board still has my good will. I disagree with a lot of choices they've made - not even the choices, but how they've communicated them - but ultimately they did step up and shepherd the site towards non-profit community ownership, and I still appreciate that. I don't think they expected this process to take as long as it has or the twists and turns when they signed up, but if this site still exists in four years it will be because of them.

I do think they should be on the elected board. Realistically, practically, they are needed just to make it happen, but it will also be useful for continuity. On a sentimental level they helped get the process started and, if they so desire, deserve to see this phase of the transition through to completion. It's heartening to hear about the upcoming resolutions and expansion of the current board, I feel like that will go a long way towards alleviating the bunker mentality and making communication a lot easier.

BTW if anyone thinks I'm sucking up and angling for an appointment, go fuck yourself.
Also please vote for me
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:54 PM on June 8 [6 favorites]

I have the impression that it's customary (or even required) for the boards of non-profits to keep and share a record of their meetings and votes.

The pattern of withholding information really is striking, from Rhaomi's claim that the board simply couldn't possibly share any record of the discussions that resulted in the current bylaws because they were sadly too scattered and disorganized to collate for us mortals to the ongoing radio silence in these MeTa discussions they promised they'd let us have. It's all so very convenient.

I'm honestly happy there are still folks here who can hold goodwill in their hearts for this not-so-interim-really-we-intended-to-be-permanent-no-need-for-us-to-be-candidates board; your trust is admirable and I've said multiple times I'm honestly sad I can't be there with you.

But I can't.
posted by mediareport at 3:29 AM on June 9 [5 favorites]

Of course they should be being far more transparent than they are being, regardless, but there would be no legal requirement to share the minutes with us, I presume, because none of us are members (yet) - only the three IB directors are members.

It strikes me that dg, dorothyisunderwood, joannemerriam, NotLost, and samthemander are all people who would likely receive little objection from any quarter if they were asked to join an expanded interim board, to lend their election committee work the weight of official acts.

Thanks. :) If the IB asks me, I'll be happy to step up on a *temporary* (under six months) basis. I'm not resident in the US, which AFAIK is not an impediment to serving but I feel should be mentioned in case I am wrong about that. I read my memail and my email is my username at gmail.com, in case that's different from what I signed up with (probably is).
posted by joannemerriam at 5:11 AM on June 9 [1 favorite]

I might be wrong here but I have the impression that it's customary (or even required) for the boards of non-profits to keep and share a record of their meetings and votes.

I think the bylaws call for minutes. But I think there is no requirement anywhere for those to be shared. I think U.S. law basically requires one certain form to be filed annually, of which I don't remember the name, for nonprofits to list their officers and some financial information. But I'm not sure they are even an IRS-approved nonprofit yet.
posted by NotLost at 6:52 AM on June 9 [1 favorite]

I'd like to see the full email trig, if you could send it to me as a MeMail. But what you've excerpted is very disheartening (I wish I could say surprising, but honestly it's not.)

I don't know if members of the Board are even reading this thread, but if so:

Hey. We are competent human beings here who are trying to work with you to get this community established on a healthy financial and democratic framework. You are not working with us. That needs to change, or this site will die. You have an ethical responsibility, as people who stepped up to help with this transition, to work with this community.

Over the past few weeks, we have seen this community work pretty hard to try to work out as many details as possible to make it as easy as possible for you to hand off the work to an elected Board. But we do not have the legal authority to make things happen -- that's in your hands and to date you've not been responsive to reasonable requests for engagement.

All I can say is, that needs to change.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:55 AM on June 9 [11 favorites]

I think the bylaws call for minutes. But I think there is no requirement anywhere for those to be shared. I think U.S. law basically requires one certain form to be filed annually, of which I don't remember the name, for nonprofits to list their officers and some financial information. But I'm not sure they are even an IRS-approved nonprofit yet.

I think this is accurate, I don't think it's legally required (and IIRC the paperwork to become a non-profit in the IRS's eyes has also not been done yet, but it's hard to say that for sure given the general lack of communication). But there is no reason that minutes shouldn't be shared (sensitive or personally identifying information can always be redacted from the formal minutes) and that would certainly be best practice for a governing board over an organization like Metafilter which is to be run by its community. Ordinarily there should be very few discussions or decisions which happen in Board meetings that can't be shared with the community or posted publicly.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:00 AM on June 9 [2 favorites]

However, if anyone wants to read the full thing, or thinks my description might be an exaggeration, or plans to try to communicate with Adam directly and would like some insight into how he sees the world, I will be happy to send you a copy.

Jesus, y'all, that full email from 1adam12 is something to see, for sure. "Furiously entitled" begins to describe it. I have even less faith that he is a good person to continue on the board after reading it.
posted by mediareport at 8:27 AM on June 9 [4 favorites]

I don't think we should be shy about posting the full content of emails we receive from the board. They are sending those emails to members as part of their role as a board members, there is no reason that these need to be kept secret or redacted (especially since the board has opted to barely communicate with the community here on the site in favour of emails). This is the same situation as sharing emails from mods (which is now allowed).
posted by ssg at 8:59 AM on June 9 [7 favorites]

What you're proposing seems to be a demand that we rush headlong into a brigading.

Are these brigades in the room with us right now?
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 9:07 AM on June 9 [6 favorites]

I did read the whole email (Trig forwarded it to me), for what it's worth the above excerpts are more or less the gist of it and I don't have any further reaction after having read it in its entirety than I did to the summary upthread.

Just disappointing, unnecessarily aggressive and defensive, and still (still!) weirdly obsessed with offsite conversation and the threat of brigading, and seemingly no real acknowledgement that people in this community have actually been trying to help in good faith even after months slash years of slamming our heads against brick walls here when we try to bring, in many cases, actual and professional experience in doing various tasks and projects that need to be done for Metafilter.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:30 AM on June 9 [6 favorites]

I'm happy to post 1adam12's full email, without asking for permission because I agree that his emails are subject to the same expectations as mod emails. He starts off by chastising trig for having the temerity to ask the mods to please contact the interim unelected board to ask them to respond to concerns they'd been ignoring for weeks.

(For reference, here are trig's 2 questions that 1adam12 replies to near the top:

Will the interim board commit to
(a) holding such an election, using methods and crucially a timescale that the community accepts, and
(b) appoint a new board based solely on its results?)

And here's the interim unelected board member's reply; I don't have time to annotate it, but will later because a lot of it is ridiculous:

First of all, the mods aren't your messenger service. You sent us a message on THURSDAY with a deadline for a response of 6/15. There was no reason to bother the mods to put pressure on us for a response. Knock it off.

To answer your questions:

a. Yes, if we determine that this is feasible and will produce results not easily subject to manipulation.

b. No, we have no such plans, subject to what I outline below. We don’t intend to appoint ourselves, but we have the power to do this for a reason, like if we determine it will be reasonably necessary for the site to continue operating. Director-appointed directors aren't unusual, this exists to preserve continuity and capacity, not so the outgoing directors can maintain the dead hand of control.

We want to get a full board spun up ASAP but we want it to be done as well as we can manage. While we’re gratified to see such a huge swell of interest in site governance, most of the people making demands now didn’t answer our repeated calls for help, or openly mocked them here or on Reddit. Let’s see if interest now translates into actual participation, which I am hopeful it will. I’m happy to say that we’ve already gotten many offers of help in the last couple of weeks through side channels.

"However, a consensus has been emerging that, at this moment, we need to keep things as simple as possible."

What you're proposing seems to be a demand that we rush headlong into a brigading. This isn't an IRC channel circa 1998. There are real consequences if a bunch of dormant sockpuppets, long-moribund accounts, and new signups looking to grind old axes barge in from their plague nest on Reddit and take over. Try to imagine that we're not acting out of malice, laziness, indifference, or stupidity, thanks.

Try also to keep in mind that we have legal duties to the company and must make decisions that we believe are in its best interest. So no, you can’t substitute your judgement for ours because you’re not in our position, nor did you volunteer to be in our position when the time came. The people taking over as board members or officers will have to supply real names. The person(s) who will manage finances will have to give their real names, addresses, dates of birth, and social security numbers, and provide copies of their government issued ID or. I won't be able to transfer control of the bank accounts to them. It’s all fun and games until you are personally responsible for thousands of donations and a list of bills and government-mandated reporting that has your real name and SSN on it.

When you're presuming to be entitled to make demands on my time, keep in mind that we are all working on this every single day, but all of us also have full time jobs and lives outside of Metafilter. I derive absolutely no benefit from this work, I haven’t taken so much as a penny for hundreds of hours of my time that's taken me away from more important obligations, so when you demand that I revise thousands of transactions from March by hand, or wade through a 450+ comment MeTa thread, consider this before asking.

Remember too how we got here: NO ONE ELSE wanted to do what we’re doing. There were no other volunteers. The site was going to be shut down at the end of December if we hadn’t volunteered to take over, and we weren’t ready to assume control because that’s not how any of us thought the interim board would play out. None of us were even the chair before taking over - none of us had any specific role at all, we’d lost our third chair just prior to the deadline, but we were the last three people standing so we did what needed to be done to keep the lights on. I’m not looking for any gold stars, I did this because I wanted to do it, but when you (speaking generally) are making threats, making veiled accusations of criminal activity, or demanding that we volunteer even more of our time to satisfy your whims or curiosities, try to keep that in mind. I am happy to generate different Quickbooks reports people ask for if they wish to see more / different documentation within reason, as long as the requests are specific enough for a report to be created. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that of the people suggesting that I’m engaged in some kind of impropriety, not one has actually made such a request. I nonetheless stand ready to supply that information to anyone who asks. Nothing we've done since way back in October 2023, when we started meeting, is a secret.

We have an interim solution that will resolve some of your concerns, and I’m working on a pair of resolutions to put those changes into effect within days. We intend to expand the board such that it has the necessary capacity and interest to figure out the details of how to convene an election more quickly and then to put those plans into action. This expanded board will likely place the existing members into the minority, which means they can vote us all out if that's what they decide. You want control? We want that for you too. Have at it.

More soon.

More soon.
posted by mediareport at 9:32 AM on June 9 [9 favorites]

will have to give their real names, addresses, dates of birth, and social security numbers, and provide copies of their government issued ID

Jen Lee
December 5 1985
miss me with this bullshit
posted by phunniemee at 9:39 AM on June 9 [10 favorites]

I just don't get it. I've worked in non-profits for pretty much my entire career and most non-profits would kill to have the level and caliber of volunteer engagement on offer here, but for years various incarnations of leadership have consistently thrown those offers back at people, often quite rudely, and then went on to whine about how much work there is to do and how hard it is and how we should all feel bad for them.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:40 AM on June 9 [14 favorites]

(to be fair, the transition team was mainly an exception to that, I think.)
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:41 AM on June 9 [3 favorites]

As someone who is really pushing the election committee idea, and participating in it: my response to 1adam12’s email is essentially:
- thank you for doing all of this; despite what may feel like a lot of complaints, many more people are quietly grateful
- please accept our help in bringing more support to you and your fellow board members by moving this election process forward
- if you’d like to engage at any level with the group working on some potential election next steps, we would love that. Please DM any of us (me, NotLost, JoanneMerriam, DG or dorothyisunderwood) with your preferred email and we can loop you in.
posted by samthemander at 9:54 AM on June 9 [7 favorites]

man, how do you end up in a place where you think that is a reasonable thing to send?

at least it gets it out in the open - the fear is that the complainers will get a vote.
posted by sagc at 9:55 AM on June 9 [11 favorites]

Yeah, I think it's pretty disqualifying. He should not be on any Metafilter board.
posted by mediareport at 9:58 AM on June 9 [8 favorites]

How proactive has the board been in reaching out via email or memail to people who have good suggestions in these threads? How much effort have they made to articulate their actual concerns in pubic, rather than via insinuation and back channels?

The board is absolutely not acting as if they want help.
posted by sagc at 9:59 AM on June 9 [4 favorites]

The last bit of hope I'm clinging to is that Gorgik has been MIA because he's embarrassed to be associated with the other two.
posted by phunniemee at 10:19 AM on June 9 [4 favorites]

Alternately: Threats! Brigades! Plague Nests!
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 10:48 AM on June 9 [2 favorites]

I want to help too! But are there any rewards for the spotting of a Brigadier, other that getting on the good side of the unelection committee?
posted by Ashenmote at 10:49 AM on June 9

Try to imagine that we're not acting out of malice, laziness, indifference, or stupidity, thanks.

I would have ordered it: indifference, laziness, stupidity and malice.

Does anyone remember that phrase that works as the caption to any New Yorker cartoon?
posted by snofoam at 10:56 AM on June 9 [1 favorite]

snofoam: "Does anyone remember that phrase that works as the caption to any New Yorker cartoon?"

>First of all, the mods aren't your messenger service. You sent us a message on THURSDAY with a deadline for a response of 6/15. There was no reason to bother the mods to put pressure on us for a response. Knock it off.

Is it this one? wait, no
posted by phunniemee at 11:01 AM on June 9 [3 favorites]

Trig in no way deserved that hostile bullshit, but otherwise I'm still sympathetic. In unions it can be easy to putter along doing your thing and then turn around and realize a vacuum you weren't aware of or thought was negligible since no one really seemed to care that much has seemingly been suddenly filled by a lot of people who care a lot. What started as a good-faith mostly boring and thankless task blows up and you're on the defensive as people you were doing this quotidian work in service of impugn your intelligence and integrity, threaten actions that could have legal or professional consequences, and generally seem to expect you to eat their shit and smile and ask for seconds.

The gap, perceived or otherwise, between MeFi members and mgmt/admin has grown steadily over the years, which definitely doesn't help avoid Us V. Them dynamics. If you weren't already somewhat distanced from the community for that or other reasons, you're sure as shit going to be alienated from it now, and a natural reaction is to say fuck it, fuck them, I don't need their bullshit, I'm going to keep my head down and do the work the way I've been doing it. Obviously can't say this is what happened or how the board feels, but it would be surprising if there weren't parallels. I genuinely wonder how many MetaFilter members (On either side of this) actually have to deal with human beings on a regular basis, or at least human beings who are not subservient to them in some way.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:04 AM on June 9 [6 favorites]

most of the people making demands now didn’t answer our repeated calls for help
After the interim board was formed, where were these calls for help posted?
posted by soelo at 11:04 AM on June 9 [6 favorites]

soelo: "After the interim board was formed - where were these calls for help posted?"

This thread perhaps could be interpreted that way.

Unfortunately the framing and timing was extremely poor, since it opened with a suggestion that Metafilter would have to raise yet more funds from the community right on back of the multiple fundraiser failures by the paid (!) staff and multiple assurances from management that the site was solvent. Further in that thread there was a lot of pushback that the IRS form needed to be completed in full at all, or that it could be crowdsourced, and left with bad feelings all around.

If there has been any other public call for additional board volunteers between the time that dorothyisunderwood was nominally in charge of the transition board to now, then I have missed it.
posted by phunniemee at 11:11 AM on June 9 [10 favorites]

That request is the only one I could remember as well.
posted by soelo at 11:33 AM on June 9 [1 favorite]

... dorothyisunderwood was nominally in charge of the transition board ...


Just to clarify the terminology:
* Around the time of the handover between Cortex and Jessamyn was the Transition Team.
* During part of the time Jessamyn was the owner, we had the Steering Committee.
* After a gap, a team of volunteers formed the Preincorporation Interim Board, of which dorothyisunderwood was a chair. The current members of the Interim Board are those who were left after attrition.
posted by NotLost at 11:36 AM on June 9 [8 favorites]

NotLost: "The current members of the Interim Board are those who were left after attrition."

Thanks NotLost. Do you remember if there was ever a public call for additional volunteer support as the pre-team dwindled?
posted by phunniemee at 11:43 AM on June 9 [2 favorites]

Why is it that everyone who was part of the transition, steering and board groups burned out and/or now has open contempt for the user base? Did everything that happened prior to cortex leaving just doom anyone who tried to be in charge? I mean that totally tracks but it's nuts how almost to a person anyone who tried ended up pissed off.
posted by SpiffyRob at 12:13 PM on June 9 [9 favorites]

I wonder how much communication style contributors to that attrition. In any organization I have worked for or consulted for, that e-mail from a board member would result in a formal conversation and expectation setting for future communication parameters.

Look, leadership is hard. If you can’t work with a lively and engaged community that includes both well-intended by frustrated people and chronic curmudgeons, you don’t have the skills for nonprofit leadership. You just don’t. I understand it’s shitty at times to feel you’re working hard with good intent and people don’t appreciate it. But if what you’re doing is either not what the community values and needs, or they just have no idea you’re doing it cause you’re not communicating: then the fault lies at your own feet. It’s on leadership to shift the dynamic.

The people holding the bag at MetaFilter always seem to paint themselves into the same corners, either due to their lack of experience or lack of collaborative temperament or both. You can’t both complain about nobody being willing to help and also insult people when they are indicating they are more than willing to help.

When you start feeling bitter about a role you’re in, feeling unappreciated, it’s time to vacate that role. These are service roles, not ego-fulfillment roles.

The only way to reset this stuff is a distinct BND in communication style and frequency and a clear message that users (or whatever you call the community your org is responsible to) are not the enemy but the org’a biggest asset: if those in power now can’t make that change in their own approach, they will continue to feel and express hostility and in turn continue to draw increasing hostility to themselves. The vicious cycle needs to be stopped or site support with continue to dwindle.
posted by Miko at 12:23 PM on June 9 [37 favorites]

Why is it that everyone who was part of the transition, steering and board groups burned out and/or now has open contempt for the user base?

You know, I don't think this is true. Even in this thread we have at least one person who was part of the pre-incorporation Interim Board (which had started out with a lot of people). And we've heard from a lot of former Steering Committee and (I think? I lose track) Transition Team members in Metatalk in ways that are far from contemptuous. Many of the ones who got burned out said that what burned them out was trying to work with the staff, not the user base.

Regarding the message from Adam - part of the reason I didn't post the whole thing was that I figured a lot of people would have negative reactions to it, and then we'd have a lot of comments expressing our impressions, and it's cathartic but I think we (Metafilter users in general, in every context) then often get distracted from the question of "okay, what do we do with this".

That said, I do think it provides some insight as to where Adam's at, which can be helpful in going forward. And tbh I also found other people's impressions of it helpful, because when I first read it I found it really offensive, and then I let it sit 24 hours and still found it really hostile, but now after another day and a calmer read, and getting more people's takes, I probably wouldn't describe it as "vitriolic and remarkably aggressive" (as I originally did). It's possible that part of what I read as vitriol was more about his general, unrelated-to-Metafilter communication style, and part was probably the effect of reading something like that aimed at me. I do still find it inappropriate and badly judged, as well as unconvincing. But I think (and have said this before about the board and mods) that in the end you have to get past the emotional reaction and focus on the content.

I think a lot of the reason that the mods, and now the board, have "burned out" is because they don't have the training or instinct to do that. It's really difficult! But I think it's a really critical element for anyone holding that kind of position. Because even when people express themselves like assholes (or plague nests? plagues?) that doesn't mean they actually are. Or that the points they make don't matter.

If you don't have that training or instinct, and just read all criticism as an endless stream of attacks, then you'll get "burned out" quickly. I put it in quotes since I'm not sure it's the most fitting term. There's some element of radicalization/tribalism/siege mentality/ego fragility that goes beyond overwork or stress.

Anyway.

Someone I forwarded the message to had a very interesting insight: that the key to understanding the board's behavior might be that they don't believe that Metatalk represents the feelings of the userbase as a whole - that the criticism here may be vocal but represents only a small minority of Metafilter members.

I am not sure how to convince them otherwise. (Besides an open election...)

I'm also not sure how to convince them that - at least on a number of important points - it shouldn't matter.

Even if only a small minority cares enough to complain about the board being almost wholly silent, surely active communication is still Good Governance 101. (Not least when the organization being governed is, of all things, a community/forum specifically built around the idea of public discussion, and one that has discussion of community policy so built in to its DNA that it's also built in to the site as a whole dedicated subsite.)

Even if only a small minority cares about governance, surely following best practices like publishing bylaws is the right thing to do.

Even if only a small minority cares about elections, surely at minimum communicating about the change from promises originally made ("we'll hold elections in 2-3 months" -> "elections can only be held after the site rewrite is finished") is the right thing to do. Surely running that by the community, building a case and community support for it, is a best practice.

Even if it's just a small minority that doesn't see brigading as a significant threat, and even if that view is incorrect, surely it's still the right thing to actively investigate ways of mitigating that threat that don't rely on something as complex (and, as someone noted, totally orthogonal to the concern) as an entire site rewrite to be completed.

I think the way Kybard's been handling the site rewrite project is an example. There aren't usually a lot of comments in his update threads. Few people here have the expertise, time, or interest to navigate github and so on. But what he's been doing - predictably regular updates, even when there's not much to announce; frequent monitoring of input; reliable engagement with that input; and even putting out requests for community input on various decisions - is good governance. It builds support for the project (for example, I saw and still see the rewrite as a bad use of limited funds; but you know what? It's being carried out so well and so competently that I'm able to be optimistic about it.) It builds a lot of good will and trust. And it actively reduces the chances of a scenario where, after months of trying to get an answer from the board or staff about the status of the rewrite, we suddenly get an "oh, by the way, it'll take another two years" or "oh, by the way, we're switching to the new site next week, hope everyone likes the permanent changes we made without consulting you".

A scenario like that would predictably devolve into the kind of criticism that causes "burnout". In contrast, I'm willing to bet that if the steady communication, engagement, and active responsiveness to feedback we've been seeing continues we will not have that kind of explosion, and if criticism of the project does happen it will be minimally "mean" and there will be a notable majority supporting Kybard and kirkaracha's work and decisions.


So I think that even if we all are a tiny minority, following basic good practices for good governance isn't just the proper thing to do on a truly ABCs level, it's also the right thing to do on the very practical level of sowing well to reap well.

(In other words, what Miko said.)

But I don't know how to convince the board of that.


Adam's information regarding the board's next moves is vague enough that I don't know what it means:

- Will their appointment be discussed with the community first, or will it be presented after the fact?

- Will the handpicked new members be people we all approve of and relieved to see? Or will they be unfamiliar or objectionable to many people, whose negative criticism will be taken as confirming the board's opinion that there's just no pleasing "the community" and therefore it's right to ignore it?

- Will the new members work to be responsive to the broader community in a way the current board isn't? Or will they continue the current patterns of conduct?

- Will the new members actually outnumber the current ones? Will there be an actual diversity of opinions, or will their opinions have been vetted before selection?

- Will we get any kind of timeframe for the elections, or a continued "when we feel it's right"?

- Will the new group pass new bylaws without involving the community in the process, and taking public feedback on board?


I'll try to write Adam to raise these points, but I don't know if it makes sense to expect anything to come of it.

One thing I hope is that these new members are reading this thread, do see all this input, and do have the temperament or training to look beyond whatever negative emotional reaction they might first have, and respond to the substance.
posted by trig at 1:45 PM on June 9 [29 favorites]

I do hope the election committee here has the energy to keep working on their suggested answers, for the same reason as before - to have a viable alternative plan to present to the board and to the community if necessary. But if you don't, I definitely understand!
posted by trig at 1:48 PM on June 9 [7 favorites]

For whatever reason, this foundation seems to be highly susceptible to Irritable Board Syndrome.
posted by snofoam at 3:18 PM on June 9 [6 favorites]

You know, I had my account reopened because I was feeling optimistic about the future of metafilter and the direction it’s going with elections and being community run.

Seeing people returning to the site described with such derision, suspicion and hostility by the board is rather a slap in the face. What must it be like to live in such a brain where you see people returning to a community and take that as a sign of secret hostility instead of little signs of hope. Do you also tear out crocuses when they bloom in the snow in the spring?
posted by Bottlecap at 3:23 PM on June 9 [19 favorites]

I think the email from 1adam12 is pretty poor in the style of its communication and a member of the board needs to treat people with more respect, but I appreciate it being sent and shared because now I have a tiny window into the board's thinking. I've never believed there was any form of malice or hidden agenda on the part of the current board, despite my ongoing frustration with the lack of communication. I continue to believe they are doing what they think is best, although I also think they're wrong about what is best. I do have some sympathy with the view that lots of people are criticising who didn't want to volunteer, because I've felt that way lots of times in my life. But that's not helpful or healthy (I've learned the hard way) and it's a waste of energy to criticise someone for not being able to do something you are able to do.

It's now clear to me that the board is obsessed with this 'brigading' idea and believes someone or a group of individuals is waiting in the wings to take control of MeFi for some nefarious purpose. Maybe they're right. I doubt it based on what I know and can see, but maybe the board has other evidence that there is actually some plotting going on. If that's the case, the board has an army of experts and other enthusiastic but less expert people at its disposal and if they can't see that, they must be blind. If this is a real threat, share it with the community and the threat will be quickly neutralised. Equally, the community may be able to confirm the threat is not real or can be neutralised by simple means. Either way, the board doesn't need to and absolutely should not be holding onto the belief that only the board can deal with this. It's pretty clear they can't anyway, if this supposed threat is still around after all these months.

It's also important the board remember that a feature (not a bug) of a community-driven non-profit is that the community gets to decide what happens. If the community decides to hand over control to some bunch of ratbags using Reddit as a staging forum to gain control and make MeFi what they want it to be, that's the community's decision to make, not the board's. The board's primary role in such a scenario would be to make sure every member of the community is alert to what's going on so they can make informed choices.

If anyone from the existing board is even reading here - tell us what's on your minds! We're here to help and are at least as invested in this place as you are. But keeping everything a secret can only end badly for everyone. Can you not see that, if this threat of 'brigading' is real, the only way to counter it is to arm the community with knowledge? The most important thing for a board to remember is that they are answerable to the community, not the other way around. Please, just take your fingers out of your ears and join the conversation!
posted by dg at 4:06 PM on June 9 [19 favorites]

This thread perhaps could be interpreted that way.

At the same time as that thread (November 2024) the mods had also expressed that they didn't have the bandwidth to go through a recent huge Metatalk thread and collect feedback. I offered to do so (for a reduced fee from my normal rate for qualitative data analysis, using money they had set aside to fund projects by community members) and created a summarized document for them which was shared publicly. It was reviewed/followed up on by Brandon in December.

I'd like to provide some info on various back-channel stuff that's happened since then, for transparency:
- In a Metatalk thread in December 2024 NotLost reached out to the board to volunteer to help with bylaws, elections, and governance; I offered in that thread to join NotLost on bylaws, governance, and 501c3 paperwork and NotLost said they'd reach out to me when they heard back from the board.
- I offered this again in a Metatalk thread in March 2025 and NotLost reached out to me by MeMail saying they had forgotten about my previous offer to help (no judgement there) and were waiting on Rhaomi to clarify their next stage.
- Later in March NotLost said they were still waiting on next steps and encouraged me to e-mail the general board address to get more involved. I e-mailed them and provided Rhaomi, Adam, and Gorgik some answers to questions and concerns they had about 501c3s and bylaws back and forth over the next couple of weeks.
- In April NotLost MeMailed me to say they were still waiting on feedback on the feedback they gave on bylaws.
- In May I e-mailed the board asking if they needed any support in finishing up and publishing the bylaws and was told by Rhaomi that Adam was collating the feedback from multiple individuals and planning to work on this on May 25th and suggested I reach out to him; I e-mailed Adam and offered to help with collecting that into a final draft. I told him I had time on that day and Memorial Day (May 26th) to take a look at what he produced.
- On May 28th he emailed me a draft and asked me to review. I read it and on May 29th said it looked fine from a nonprofit standpoint but I had suggestions specific to Metafilter's goals as a community, but preferred those to be discussed publicly with the community and urged the board to post it. I followed up offering to post it myself if that would be easier, and sent a second follow-up the next day (May 30th).
- On May 30th Rhaomi responded saying he was going to post them that day (and did).

I've also been publicly engaging in Metatalk thread along this whole way, but hadn't typically gotten responses that way so started using e-mail per NotLost's suggestion. I've tried to take back to Metatalk what's been going on when I could, though haven't always had the bandwidth to mirror conversations in multiple locations. I'm posting this timeline now not as really a refutation of anything in any direction, but just to clarify what some of the backchannel stuff has looked like.

In all honesty the process is not that unusual for nonprofits. Yes, it's messy, and the timeline is extended, but with a board of only three and without any nonprofit background (which based on the board bios it looks like no one has except possibly Gorgik in a non-leadership volunteer role), it makes total sense that things are taking as long as they are and that the organization and follow-through with volunteers has been poor. I was able to volunteer, but it took following up in multiple channels with multiple people and without clear goals for what needed to happen, which happens to be very much in my job description, but it's not in many people's.

The main issue is really the lack of public relations/community engagement background on the board, which is even more critical for Metafilter than for many nonprofits. There have been a ton of mistakes made because frankly, the board does not have the skills that they need for the job that is required of them (which is perfectly understandable given their backgrounds, and no shame or shade to the backgrounds they have). I think this is what the community as a whole has come to realize and hence the push for elections. It's important to recognize when you're hitting the limits of your competence and need to reach out for help. It sounds like that's happening with expanding the board, but the process for doing that being shrouded in secrecy and backchannels is another one of those public relations mistakes that is worsening the situation. And I don't know if anyone being brought on has that missing background either.

I'm not sure what the answer here is. If there isn't anyone you can bring on with that background, I think the board getting coaching on this area of weakness could be beneficial, but I think it would be best for that to happen when either the expanded or elected board is in place so that that information can reach more people. If that's something that the board decides they would like to pursue, depending on availability and my own burnout I may be able to provide a Zoom session on public relations and community engagement (I have ten years of experience in these areas) if they would prefer that to trying to bring in an outside resource. I would request a donation to a trans charity in exchange, if that's something the foundation is able to do.

I will e-mail that offer to the board later if I don't get a response here, but I'm posting it now to encourage the board to engage with the community publicly.
posted by brook horse at 4:08 PM on June 9 [33 favorites]

ChatGPT (yes, yes, I know) is pretty good at providing a first pass theme analysis from a corpus of survey feedback. It does require a subsequent human validation pass, but I’ve found it saves a lot of time in generating a rough draft of themes.

If the Board were truly interested in hearing key themes/suggestions in a MeTa thread, it would be fairly straightforward prompt engineering to generate an initial list within a few seconds.

Also, adding my agreement with Bottlecap’s frustration that former or inactive members may not be welcome to come back to participate in community governance, because of mistrust or animosity toward those members of that other Reddit forum blowing off steam. I’m not a member of that Reddit group, and a lot of former/inactive members aren’t.

We are not brigadiers or members of a plague nest. We just want MeFi to thrive.
posted by darkstar at 4:24 PM on June 9 [5 favorites]

it's only a real brigade if it comes from the plague nest region of reddit, otherwise it's just a sparkling sock
posted by phunniemee at 4:29 PM on June 9 [20 favorites]

Yeah for the record I've never posted in that subreddit and have never communicated directly with anyone on that subreddit about anything related to MeFi.

I also agree that it's bizarre for Metafilter's interim unelected board to be frightened to death of "long-moribund accounts" when re-engaging those accounts will be a key element of revitalizing the site. Particularly given the complete lack of any other moves to improve engagement from existing site leadership.
posted by mediareport at 6:37 PM on June 9 [13 favorites]

I haven’t taken so much as a penny for hundreds of hours of my time

Yay! It had to come from a leaked email for some absurd reason, but we've now heard from one of the remaining volunteer interim unelected board members that no compensation has changed hands.

One down, two to go. Rhaomi? Gorgik? Care to weigh in on that publicly, since you haven't replied privately?
posted by mediareport at 6:43 PM on June 9 [3 favorites]

Here's the actual question for Rhaomi and 1Adam12, which of the declared candidates is the brigade pick?

Please, go on. Share with the class.
posted by phunniemee at 6:44 PM on June 9 [11 favorites]

The brigading thing is such utter bullshit that the community has pointed out again and again in MeTa is easily addressed by candidate requirements, but 1adam12 (and probably the other two IUB folks) ignores that and clings to a paranoid fantasy that keeps them in near-total control of the site.

Knock it off, indeed.
posted by mediareport at 6:48 PM on June 9 [11 favorites]

One thing that is a bit surprising about the boyzone brigade, and something that hasn’t really been mentioned as far as I can remember:

This brigade is made up of uncouth former users from the dark ages of Metafilter, but also this brigade didn’t exist when everyone who wanted to join was able to join the interim board or whatever it was called. If there was a brigade, they could have just volunteered when the current board members did and the only thing they would have had to do to take control is just not quit.

If there were a brigade, the easiest takeover would be to volunteer and then drag out the process until everyone else quits and develop a system by which the brigade can maintain control over the foundation. Which is, of course, exactly what happened. Either there was never and will never be a brigade, or there is one AND THEY ARE ALREADY IN CONTROL.

Welcome to the boyzone, baby!
posted by snofoam at 7:07 PM on June 9 [13 favorites]

There is no cabal brigade.
posted by nat at 7:18 PM on June 9 [3 favorites]

What's so hard about sharing this information and activity as updates to the community?
Why see a MetaTalk, answer the questions and move on? Why not let it grown to 400 comments and the complain that it's too long to read.

If there were a brigade, the easiest takeover would be to volunteer and then drag out the process until everyone else quits and develop a system by which the brigade can maintain control over the foundation. Which is, of course, exactly what happened. Either there was never and will never be a brigade, or there is one AND THEY ARE ALREADY IN CONTROL.

Sadly I am starting to think the same.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:24 PM on June 9 [3 favorites]

No matter how this turns out, we definitely need to add a recipe for brigadeiros to the cookbook, whenever that comes around.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 7:25 PM on June 9 [5 favorites]

Don't want to brag but I had letters printed in 2 issues of Brigade
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:36 PM on June 9 [1 favorite]

any word on the bylaws.
posted by clavdivs at 12:50 AM on June 10 [2 favorites]

Yes, of course. The word is "soon."
posted by mediareport at 2:25 AM on June 10 [1 favorite]

mediareport: "Yes, of course. The word is "soon.""

Two lawyers said 'soon'
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:19 AM on June 10 [1 favorite]

New plank in my platform.... I resolve to not refer to anyone who has announced interest in being a board member as coming from a plague nest. In my managnimous generosity, I shall also extend this grace to all users, currently active or not.


I think I'm the alleged, nonexistent "brigade candidate "??? I reactivated membership after quitting in protest of the lack of accountability. I didn't volunteer for the transition team. I am coming out of the woodwork like some kind of diseased vermin to volunteer now. I am proposing at least examining the need for radical changes. And I absolutely do hang out in plague nest central. There, I'm the plague candidate. Can we hold elections now?
posted by Previous username Jacen at 7:27 AM on June 10 [14 favorites]

Oh, I will own up to at least *wondering* if there's malfeasance afoot. I mean, among the new powers the Interim Unelected Board granted itself in the bylaws no one got to see for 8 months and none of us are currently being allowed to modify was this delightful bit:

No Director shall be compensated for services unless so authorized by a duly adopted resolution of the Board, requiring that: (i) such Director may only receive reasonable compensation for services rendered for the Corporation in carrying out its purposes as established by the Board; and (ii) such compensation (a) is consistent with the Corporation’s financial policies, (b) does not adversely affect the Corporation’s ability to qualify as a Delaware non-stock corporation...and (c) shall be set by a committee composed of persons who have no financial interest in such determination.

Directors may be reimbursed for reasonable expenses in performance of their duties as Board members provided that such reimbursement does not adversely affect the Corporation’s qualification as a Delaware non-stock corporation...

Miko stated yesterday there's no reason for that cute lil bit to be in interim bylaws at all and it should be stricken, and I can't see how anyone could disagree with her:

Right now, a good faith election means that no director should be compensated for services or anticipate the possibility of compensation, full stop.

...

One down, two to go. Rhaomi? Gorgik? Care to weigh in on that publicly, since you haven't replied privately?

I almost responded to your first comment, but I am not Miko. But since you are bringing this back around, my reading of her comment does not quite match yours. Specifically, I saw her as calling for striking the first paragraph referring to compensation, but not the separate line calling for reimbursement. They are distinct concepts, and while I agree that there is no reason for our Board to receive compensation for their time, I think it is eminently reasonable for them to be allowed reimbursement of costs related to work that benefits MeFi and not them personally. If they each had to pay a notary to witness them signing bylaws for instance*, I would expect that cost to be covered by MeFi, not by the individual Board members. Those sorts of costs can also be managed by paying them directly with a check from a MeFi account, except I wouldn't expect all Board members to have the ability to sign such checks, I would think just the Treasurer would. Personal payment followed by reimbursement would be entirely fine.

*This is an example. I do not know if this specific expense was incurred, or if it was, that it was paid via reimbursement. I am not trying to argue about what reimbursements are or are not appropriate. I am trying to state my belief that such reasonable reimbursements EXIST, and expanding the demand to the Board to meet an even stricter criteria than is reasonable is counterproductive to the goal of transparent communication from them.
posted by solotoro at 9:39 AM on June 10 [11 favorites]

I still think the ask here should be that the board focus completely on (1) establishing the framework for and conducting elections and (2) setting the financial records in order so the incoming Board has a reasonably good handle on where things stand money-wise.

If there are changes to the bylaws which absolutely must happen in order for those things to happen, then sure -- but if not, my position is that no matter how obviously something should be stricken/amended/added we should try not to expand what we ask the Board to do any further than is necessary to accomplish the above.

Regardless about my or anyone else's feelings on what the Board has done or failed to do or how they've done it or justifications, all of that, that's IMO the stance most likely to accomplish the goal of getting a responsible (elected) and responsive Board in place as soon as possible. Which, as far as I am aware, is the stated goal of everyone here, including what Board members themselves have repeatedly stated in public and private correspondence.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:06 AM on June 10 [6 favorites]

while I agree that there is no reason for our Board to receive compensation for their time, I think it is eminently reasonable for them to be allowed reimbursement of costs related to work that benefits MeFi and not them personally.

Agreed, thanks for clarifying this. I would simply add that any such reimbursement should be explicitly noted as a line item somewhere visible to the community.
posted by mediareport at 4:00 AM on June 11 [2 favorites]

the goal of getting a responsible (elected) and responsive Board in place as soon as possible. Which, as far as I am aware, is the stated goal of everyone here

It isn’t. We’ve had two people in this thread (I’m one) express ambivalence on this point. I’m nervous about some of what I see, from the standpoint of good governance. I think a rush to change stuff, bylaws be damned, is not good governance. I think some of what people are complaining about is just, but some of it is plain ignorance, and I’m not excited about seeing MeFi run into the ground by “drain the swamp” types whose main qualification is not knowing anything about nonprofit governance. I grant you that the team we have now is also learning as they go to some extent and that’s not great either. But mainly I’m super irritated by people claiming to speak for everyone. You don’t! You don’t even speak for everyone in this thread! Stop it.
posted by eirias at 5:09 AM on June 11 [5 favorites]

I’m not excited about seeing MeFi run into the ground by “drain the swamp” types whose main qualification is not knowing anything about nonprofit governance.

I'm not sure who you think those types are, but as someone who knows a lot about it, I see a lot of thoughtful and responsible commentary going on. It's clear to me that many of the commenters have a lot more experience with this work than the IB itself does.
posted by Miko at 9:52 AM on June 11 [7 favorites]

Thank you, eirias, for the reminder that MeTa is not monolithic in its views regarding the current needs for improvement in site governance. It is always good to keep that in mind.

However, I would strongly suggest that using “drain the swamp types” to describe folks who are, in my opinion, justifiably concerned with the current Board’s accountability and transparency, is a serious misharacterization.

I say this respectfully, as someone who has served on more than a dozen non-profit boards and has given seminars on board governance best practices. So I think I qualify to have an opinion.

Again, it is good to consider the need for care in this process. But I don’t see the calls for having a Board election to be precipitous or ill-advised. It is something that the IB should be eagerly embracing, in order to establish a baseline of governance normalization, and frankly seems overdue.

That it is so overdue seems to be a significant factor in the elevated emotional investment folks are bringing to this, and not that they are an ill-informed, hyperpartisan rabble recklessly urging for revolution.
posted by darkstar at 10:15 AM on June 11 [7 favorites]

[Since the mods implied I should post it here]

Seriously, the thousands (millions?) of words discussing convoluted processes that go nowhere. Fever dreams of a horde of people signing up to re-route an election to achieve...something? $250K a year to pay, among other things, moderators who can't do basic moderation. An executive director and a 9 person board. Metafilter, you are drunk, go home.
posted by thepuppetisasock at 10:37 AM on June 11 [4 favorites]

It isn’t. We’ve had two people in this thread (I’m one) express ambivalence on this point.

Thanks for this comment, I stand corrected. If you look back over my comments, I have tried to be clear about when I'm voicing my opinion about what a general consensus may be on a particular point but I certainly recognize that complete consensus is nearly impossible, and it's important to the process that particularly voices which are not in the majority are heard and given a fair shake.

That being said, I think it's also fair to say a large majority of commenters in these threads are generally in agreement with this goal, and I agree with miko's point that a number of people (including myself) who have been commenting on this thread do have a significant amount of experience in working in non-profits, serving in leadership roles in non-profits and so on.

Seriously, the thousands (millions?) of words discussing convoluted processes that go nowhere. Fever dreams of a horde of people signing up to re-route an election to achieve...something? $250K a year to pay, among other things, moderators who can't do basic moderation. An executive director and a 9 person board. Metafilter, you are drunk, go home.

Agreed on the first part, MeTa discussions are not a great way to make decisions, and I think I've been quite clear on my opinion to that effect throughout the last few weeks. I do disagree with you that this is a "fever dream". A board of 7-9 members (again, my sense -- which may be correct or not -- is that this is where people have generally landed) to oversee a small non-profit with a budget in the low six figures is... pretty standard.

I also agree that there may or may not be restructuring of scope and/or staffing that needs to happen based on the actual needs and financial situation of the foundation, but unfortunately we do not have enough information about that to have anywhere near a clear discussion about what that looks like IMO. (Which is, I believe, a big part of why these threads have often been so tedious -- we keep going in circles because the people who have the ability to make decisions and to provide information are largely absent from the conversation so it gets understandably filled with noise and speculation.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:33 PM on June 11 [5 favorites]

Was there an election committee formed before the Declaration thread was made.
posted by clavdivs at 2:22 PM on June 11

Was there an election committee formed before the Declaration thread was made.

The election committee was formed within this thread.
posted by NotLost at 3:24 PM on June 11 [2 favorites]

Seriously, the thousands (millions?) of words discussing convoluted processes that go nowhere.
Not our fault none of it went anywhere, is it? I think a lot of people were hoping their words would have some kind of impact.

Besides, this is a space to discuss features of the site , it says so about 2 inches down from this comment* . We’re discussing features of the site :)

*Your ruler may vary.
posted by Vatnesine at 3:27 PM on June 11 [2 favorites]

Concerns for upcoming election even the candidacy for those who are going to run for an election should have been addressed in an election committee before the candidacy thread went live.

many talk of the failures of moderation, the board etc. and this does not detract from those valuable members who have been working very hard and advocating with professionalism to get things going forward.

but community failed here by not having a committee for the election process before it began. But down the road, I really don't see it as a long-term problem, long-term meaning a month or two, just simply reorganize, get the concerns down, get the offical bylaws have a dedicated thread for candidacy perhaps a follow-up thread and then the election.
posted by clavdivs at 4:41 PM on June 11

huh? What would the committee have done? Why is this a failure?
posted by sagc at 5:03 PM on June 11 [6 favorites]

don't be obtuse
posted by clavdivs at 5:15 PM on June 11 [1 favorite]

first of all I said failed- past tense. we don't have bylaws, we don't have an election date, we don't have much of anything except for a thread of candidacy and a lot of good ideas swirling around a lot of different threads that have not been put into synopsis.
I digress, trig a few others have done a marvelous job in the consolidation of these matters.

going on the premise that a election committee formed before the candidacy thread could not do much, what can the committee do today, other than compile information and advocate and try to communicate with the board.
posted by clavdivs at 5:26 PM on June 11 [1 favorite]

The main goal of the candidacy thread -- to my eye -- was to feel out how many people might even be interested in running, largely because if the answer to that question was very low then we'd be having an entirely different discussion. That's now information that the subsequently formed election committee can take into account, and I assume when the time comes there'll be a more formal final call for candidates.

This all seems fine, no?
posted by nobody at 5:37 PM on June 11 [10 favorites]

sagc: "huh? What would the committee have done? Why is this a failure?"

You always need a committee. In fact, the committee committee, needs a committee. How else do you plan to plan, when the time to plan comes?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:02 PM on June 11 [1 favorite]

You also need to conceive a concept, and ideate ideas.
posted by NotLost at 6:53 PM on June 11

The interim board declared there would be no election. So the committee had no space for success or failure.
posted by umber vowel at 7:26 PM on June 11 [1 favorite]

umber vowel: "The interim board declared there would be no election"

They did? Do I need to cancel my 'Vote for me!' buttons?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:37 PM on June 11

1adam12's email said that they are going to appoint more board members, and then an election can be looked at later "when it's determined feasible" and when it can be done securely. I think we can take it as a given that there won't be any elections any time soon.

It is to be hoped that appointing new board members will be a good path to getting more of the transparency and community leadership that we have been wanting.
posted by umber vowel at 8:03 PM on June 11 [5 favorites]

It is to be hoped but I'm out of hope. It is beyond me how anyone can sit on an election committee's whilst holding such a disrelish for elections.

Perhaps next time the candidates could be screened for such attitudes. That is, if you somehow find a way around the Committee Against Next Times Or A First Time Really.
posted by Ashenmote at 1:47 AM on June 12

It is beyond me how anyone can sit on an election committee's whilst holding such a disrelish for elections.

Who do you mean by that?
posted by NotLost at 4:41 AM on June 12

Rhaomi and 1Adam12. Sorry, I thought that was obvious.
posted by Ashenmote at 5:16 AM on June 12

Ah - I think that's the confusion; they're the Interim Board. The Election Committee are, effectively, the people here trying to figure out how to run an election in the complete absence of board support.
posted by sagc at 5:18 AM on June 12 [6 favorites]

umber vowel: "1adam12's email said that they are going to appoint more board members, and then an election can be looked at later "when it's determined feasible" and when it can be done securely. I think we can take it as a given that there won't be any elections any time soon."

I read The Email above but was so distracted by the tone that I missed the message at the end: We intend to expand the board such that it has the necessary capacity and interest to figure out the details of how to convene an election more quickly and then to put those plans into action. . No dates, no plans, no acknowledgment of the 200 people who want elections ASAP or the good ideas generated in all of these threads. I’ll be surprised by an election now. Well, that’s disappointing.
posted by Vatnesine at 5:28 AM on June 12 [4 favorites]

Entirely my bad! Yes, the Interim board. I'm still hung up on the fact that the IB was meant to do all that and now the TEC has to it around them, somehow, and also navigate their demands for gratitude.

No disrelish whatsoever spotted on their lot.
posted by Ashenmote at 5:39 AM on June 12 [2 favorites]

Vatnesine: " I’ll be surprised by an election now. Well, that’s disappointing."

I'm not surprised. I didn't think we'd even make it to non-profit in December. This is still effectively that though. Disinterested owners who dictate, but take no direction.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:19 AM on June 12 [1 favorite]

I'm genuinely surprised that Rhaomi and 1Adam12 have both doubled down on the brigaders fever dream. It's obviously complete bullshit, it suggests that members of this community have formed some sort of actual non-meme cabal against them, and it's disrespectful.

I'm not surprised one iota that everything is a stonewalled mismanaged travesty, that feels, you know, on trend. But I am surprised that these two folks are so comfy showing their asses in this particular way. It's embarrassing for them and insulting for the rest of us.
posted by phunniemee at 6:52 AM on June 12 [8 favorites]

Agreed. What would happen if we ignored them? In what precise way do we need their buy in on elections etc? Do these rules and bylaws and all this have any actual power outside of our belief in them?
posted by Vatnesine at 7:04 AM on June 12

Legally, they are both the board and the only members of the foundation, which owns the money and the site.
posted by demi-octopus at 7:12 AM on June 12 [5 favorites]

Vatnesine: "What would happen if we ignored them"

How do you imagine we'd get things done?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:14 AM on June 12

We have committees, we have a lot of good ideas, we have capable people. We’re not getting anything done now.
posted by Vatnesine at 7:43 AM on June 12

phunniemee: "I'm genuinely surprised that Rhaomi and 1Adam12 have both doubled down on the brigaders fever dream. It's obviously complete bullshit, it suggests that members of this community have formed some sort of actual non-meme cabal against them, and it's disrespectful."

Just chiming in to say that the Board being concerned about this doesn't sound odd, based on emails to the admin email, a few comments here and elsewhere on the web, and in few places where mefites or ex-mefites hang out.

Were these comments actual threats or just people blowing off steam or talking in the moment? Hard to say? But there's been enough of those types of comments that if the Board wasn't taking it into consideration, I'd advise them that they should.

That said, it's not an insurmountable problem, even if it comes down to checking the ID of every single vote in some public manner.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:46 AM on June 12 [2 favorites]

(Election committee member here.)

Agreed, we do need board buy-in.

That said, to be fair, our infant election committee just formed last week and met on Sunday (today it’s Thursday AM here). We’ve shared that update here. We’re working on some write ups compiling community consensus/feedback this week, and will share updates as we proceed. We hope to work with/support the board as they hold the keys to the car, but don’t have an update on that just yet.
posted by samthemander at 7:50 AM on June 12 [4 favorites]

Vatnesine: "We have committees, we have a lot of good ideas, we have capable people. We’re not getting anything done now."

yeah but say you want to add a feature to the site....how would you get frimble to do that?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:55 AM on June 12

Brandon, can you please provide quotes, links, something? What are the examples of people posting on the web that they have the intent and ability to take over mefi by brigading the election in ways that not a single one of the previously-proposed solutions can prevent?

Just say that you're afraid of the reddit posters (many of whom are still here! the rest of whom, barring pretty egregious past behavior, should be permitted to vote if they decide to come back!) who might want to fire you, or provide some damn proof that this isn't just some exhausting imaginary threat.
posted by sagc at 8:04 AM on June 12 [16 favorites]

Were these comments actual threats or just people blowing off steam or talking in the moment?

I am having trouble understanding the threat. It seems like there would be two arenas for bad actors: First, having someone with bad intentions run for the board; second, having a large group of people with bad intentions vote in the election.

However, for there to be an actual threat, wouldn't both have to be true, and wouldn't there have to be sufficient numbers of bad actors to significantly affect the vote?

Here's what I mean. Say there's a group of disgruntled ex-mefites who come in to vote. Without a bad actor running for the board, there's no real problem--it's just a bunch of people voting for the same slate of candidates we already have.

Say though there is a bad actor running for the board. If the disgruntled ex-mefites aren't a significant portion of the vote, then once more there's no real problem--most people will vote for the same slate of candidates they would've voted for anyway.

If the bad actor were to make it to the board, they would now have to take the further step of getting other board members to vote their way, to further their bad plans...which is a stretch. And that bad actor's real contact information would be publicly available, forcing a certain amount of accountability on them.

In other words, the only way there is a real threat here is if enough bad actors run for the board and convince enough normal mefites to vote for them...and that does not seem realistic?

I would love to know if I'm missing something here in the threat-model, because I've been trying to think it through ever since the concept of 'brigading' was raised.
posted by mittens at 8:07 AM on June 12 [18 favorites]

There could be an open-ballot election in a Metatalk thread. Everyone writes in the candidate they want, and after a fixed time limit we count up the votes by hand.

It would have no official force, but it might pressure the Interim Board to either accept the result or hold an official election. An open ballot would also be hard to "brigade" as a bunch of new or long-dormant accounts would be obvious.

The Interim Board could just get the mods to delete the thread of course.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:07 AM on June 12 [3 favorites]

The board (and apparently the mods) are making it more and more clear thar there are a variety of outcomes that they simply do not find acceptable.

Instead of the users constantly guessing at what problems the board/mods are trying to solve, they should come right out and say it. What categories of user do they not want to vote? What sites can you post on without being disqualified from voting? Which candidates are the brigade candidates that they would disallow? What have you tried to solve this problem, and why isn't it working?
posted by sagc at 8:08 AM on June 12 [12 favorites]

Just chiming in to say that the Board being concerned about this doesn't sound odd, based on emails to the admin email, a few comments here and elsewhere on the web, and in few places where mefites or ex-mefites hang out.

Were these comments actual threats or just people blowing off steam or talking in the moment?

The more knowledge the community has of these real or perceived threats can only help the situation. I think that was the point of the "Metafilter is at risk of being brigaded by bad actors" post.
posted by NotLost at 8:09 AM on June 12 [9 favorites]

Brandon Blatcher: "a few comments here"

Bullshit. Actually bullshit. Without revealing any emails or any off-site activity, you're now saying there have been plans to brigade posted directly here on Metafilter? Link to them.
posted by phunniemee at 8:21 AM on June 12 [18 favorites]

922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a: "Vatnesine: "We have committees, we have a lot of good ideas, we have capable people. We’re not getting anything done now."

yeah but say you want to add a feature to the site....how would you get frimble to do that?"

Exactly the same way I would do it now, I’d open a metatalk to say hey what if we did Great Idea X, let’s discuss, and everyone would chime in saying Wow what a great idea, and the mods would see “wow, this is definitely something we could do, let’s ask Frimble to do this when they can” and they would do it. Where is the board required to give frimble permission to do things?

There could be an open-ballot election in a Metatalk thread. Everyone writes in the candidate they want, and after a fixed time limit we count up the votes by hand.
As for Elections with No Official Force, I ran one for the Metafilter Poet laureate a few months back. People generally ignored it but it was kind of fun.

What if the brigading was out in the open and not on Reddit?
posted by Vatnesine at 8:24 AM on June 12

Part of this is me blowing off steam and being frustrated by things I don’t understand and part of it is a serious question. I’m kind of fascinated by the tendency of people to follow rules and obey authority for the sake of following rules and obeying.
posted by Vatnesine at 8:31 AM on June 12 [2 favorites]

Nobody's comment echos my thinking exactly. I see no problem that the candidate interest thread was launched slightly before the election committee. I fully support said committee and think it full of reasonable users who will have a reasonable proposal. We now have the facts that several quality participants are interested in being on the board, and that is valuable information for everyone going forward.
posted by Previous username Jacen at 8:44 AM on June 12 [2 favorites]

I hope everyone reads 'the other board' sparingly as a hobby and that is not a part of the punishing workload everybody burns out over.

Both Mods and Interims feel like they can't afford to look at hostile comments on Metatalk but instead they keep Reddit under surveillance, where they will feel extra powerless over the same old hostility. Well damn, it is THAT feeling that is all over your threat assessment and that's why you can only flail around when people want to see what you're on about.

I once made an icon for a beloved Fandom_Wank mod, in which Gandalf gives Frodo a big hug and the caption read 'A good Mod would mod the whole Internet', to remind him he shouldn't try to do that.

What I'm trying to say is: Metafilter really needs Icons!
posted by Ashenmote at 8:52 AM on June 12 [2 favorites]

Just chiming in to say that the Board being concerned about this doesn't sound odd, based on emails to the admin email, a few comments here and elsewhere on the web, and in few places where mefites or ex-mefites hang out.

Were these comments actual threats or just people blowing off steam or talking in the moment? Hard to say? But there's been enough of those types of comments that if the Board wasn't taking it into consideration, I'd advise them that they should.


Citation needed.

Really - post snippets of the emails. Quote or link to the comments from here and 'elsewhere'.

The staff and board are taking this threat seriously and it would be great to actually see the caravan of migrant posters.

But you won't do that because there's nothing to show since it's all bullshit.
posted by Diskeater at 9:00 AM on June 12 [16 favorites]

Yes. Rhaomi himself had the open door opportunity to provide any example at all and he didn't:

Rhaomi: "There's nothing specific to share -- partially because the original (offsite) posts have since been deleted or made private, partially because we don't want to reward the trolly accounts that posted them with attention. But they were just warning signs -- the point isn't any specific threat, it's the possibility of people abusing duplicate accounts at all."

(Also, "deleted" my butt. It's the internet, we've all been here a long time. If you really think something is worth a future concern, you'd take a screenshot.)
posted by phunniemee at 9:14 AM on June 12 [7 favorites]

Every time I see brigade comments I just laugh. Mathowie's Metafilter is never coming back.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 9:22 AM on June 12 [3 favorites]

Well, it's in the backups. You could always jump back a few years.
posted by Ashenmote at 9:27 AM on June 12

922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a: "Every time I see brigade comments I just laugh."

Yes, they would be laughable if those comments weren’t justification for subverting the expressed intent of the community to hold elections.
posted by bluloo at 10:14 AM on June 12 [3 favorites]

bluloo: "922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a: "Every time I see brigade comments I just laugh."

Yes, they would be laughable if those comments weren’t justification for subverting the expressed intent of the community to hold elections."

Like I said, I've never thought the whole non-profit/community thing was going to work anyway. So.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 10:22 AM on June 12

"We know something. It's important-- trust us. For everyone's benefit, we can't say more than that."
posted by CtrlAltD at 10:25 AM on June 12 [6 favorites]

Just chiming in to say that the Board being concerned about this doesn't sound odd, based on emails to the admin email, a few comments here and elsewhere on the web, and in few places where mefites or ex-mefites hang out.

Just chiming in to say that this could be a lie, but also be Brandon just not knowing what the brigading claim is and thinking of some other comments from somewhere that were negative but had nothing to do with brigading. Or, now that he has been asked for examples, he may come back to say he never said this, like with the storytelling spammers who got free accounts but also never existed. There is literally no way of knowing what this may or may not mean.

This is apparently called “Moderation & social media and communications.”
posted by snofoam at 11:06 AM on June 12 [8 favorites]

This all seems fine, no?

ok, yeah. I like that. so if we treat the current candidacy thread as a preliminary, feeling interest thread, I totally am on board with that but we should have candidacy thread if the current one goes past 30 days and if no relevant information comes in.

and I really want a new one extremely moderated. I would like to see candidates who are declaring and candidates who might declare. I think anything else would be disruptive and questions to the candidate could be followed up in a in a congruent thread.

in a sense I want to hear pure signal and no noise on that thread. it is only fair to the candidates.
posted by clavdivs at 1:04 PM on June 12 [3 favorites]

it is only fair to the candidates

I think it's only fair to the candidates for Rhaomi and 1Adam12 to tell us all exactly which one of us they think is the brigade candidate before anyone invests even one more minute of good will on this farce.

They have implicated all of us in this make believe crime.
posted by phunniemee at 1:09 PM on June 12 [12 favorites]

Why are small men always so power hungry? Any opportunity to create a little fiefdom and wield their tiny scepters over it, they’re on it.
posted by donnagirl at 1:25 PM on June 12 [7 favorites]

a few comments here and elsewhere on the web

plague nest on Reddit

The majority of the plague nest residents disagree with how the IB is running things and don't intend to vote for them. That does not constitute brigading; it's active users who care enough to see the site survive. Attempting to discredit people as valid voters simply because they disagree with you is not democracy.

The vast majority of the buttoners or just no longer active members there have said they don't care enough to vote. I can literally barely remember what sites I was active on in 2005 let alone still nurse grudges over things that happened on them.

Clinging to the idea that on-site voting is the only solution to the problem is silly because if there is an evil cabal of disgruntled people kicked off a dozen or more years ago who have been stealthily biding their time to seize control, they could simply make their sock puppets and seize control during the next election. It has to be accepted that if an anonymous site is going to be run by voting, the community itself must be resilient enough to withstand whatever level of trolling will exist.

The site is actively suffering from not having a solid rudder and the IB is refusing to add one over what a substantial swath of the active users view as fantastical concerns. It's completely reasonable to want more than just more vague hand waving.
posted by Candleman at 2:00 PM on June 12 [14 favorites]

I'm not reading everything but it feels like we keep talking around this and it's starting to annoy me: the Board is worried specifically about phunniemee and snofoam being some sort of vanguard/stalking horse/Trojan Horse on behalf of those sneaky buggers over on the Reddit, yes?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 3:22 PM on June 12 [7 favorites]

Yep, that's exactly what they're worried about.
posted by Diskeater at 4:05 PM on June 12 [3 favorites]

One of our treats as children was that if we ever had to go into a dollar store with our parents, we were allowed to buy any single $1 item, no questions asked. (Very controlling parents, the freedom was the best part of the treat.) On one of these visits, I selected a 20 pack of multi-colored sponges. I saw those sponges and I had a vision. Went right home and cut those sponges into cubes, sorted them by color, stuck them in a shoe box, and took them to school the next day. Put a little sign on my desk that said "join the cheese club!" with little fanfare.

Over the course of the day, nearly every kid in my fifth grade class (less impressive when you know how small my school was, but still notable considering how unpopular I was) asked me how to join the cheese club. I asked if they were interested in cheese, and if they said yes (of course they said yes) I gave them a cube of yellow sponge. Thank you for joining the cheese club!

By the next day, everyone had joined. Everyone had a little yellow cube of cheese sponge sitting on the corner of their desk. So I put up a new sign: "get to the next level of cheese club!" Immediate response, everyone wanted to know how to rank up. I wrote a little cheese quiz (the only question I remember was "name a TV show on Nick at Night that sounds like a kind of cheese"). If you scored well on the quiz, you got an orange cube of sponge.

And so this continued up through all the rainbow colors of sponge that I had; ascension was achieved through all sorts of ways, including artistic pursuit. My favorites were when someone wrote a song about cheese and sang it to the class and another boy drew a truly beautiful, deftly shaded still life of a slice of cheese on a plate. (I'm pretty sure that drawing is still in my parents house somewhere.) Word of the cheese club quickly spread outside of our classroom, and I had to start bringing my shoebox to lunch with me so I could cheese up students in other classes. I had to appoint a purple cheese holder (the highest rank) as an apprentice to help me with intake. My mom had to take me back to the dollar store to get more sponges. It got to be overwhelming.

When I realized that the range of sponge colors put a hard limit on how far kids could rank up in cheese, and that kids were actually doing this, a completly unanticipated response to my stupid little game, I went on a hunt through the junk drawers of our house. I found an old piece of black insulation foam in the garage and cubed that, too. And the next day at school? Cheese club turned dark. Kids could get punished for bad and uncheeselike behavior. You don't pay proper fealty to your overcheesers? You go to a tribunal of purple cheeses and get judged your fate. Guilty kids got de-cheesed of all their sponges and assigned a piece of black sponge (moldy cheese). If you held a moldy cheese, you were shunned until you re-ranked.

That system made my classmates lose their absolute minds. It also marked the end of the cheese club. Evidently someone's parents complained to the principal because they couldn't understand why their kid was crying over a small piece of insulation foam and my teacher (my wonderful, incredible teacher Mrs Weeks rest in peace) had to explain that one of her students had inadvertently started a cult. (She confessed to me privately that she had made a mistake not shutting it down sooner, but she thought it was "a hoot" ...and since she was a certified blue cheese holder I think she was just as invested as the kids.)

Anyway, this is one of the Foundational Anecdotes of my life and ever since then I've always joked that if I had more moral flexibility I'd make a really excellent cult leader. But fifth grade and the cheese club was my first and last step into that world.

So. As much as I would love to take credit for some kind of deep state Dark Metafilter conspiracy, it ain't me babe.
posted by phunniemee at 4:16 PM on June 12 [51 favorites]

This story made my day, phunniemee.
posted by raena at 4:33 PM on June 12 [6 favorites]

So you’re saying when you’re Board President favorites will be paid out in cheese??
posted by donnagirl at 4:40 PM on June 12 [2 favorites]

I'll go put it on Kybard's list for Kirk.
posted by phunniemee at 4:41 PM on June 12 [3 favorites]

My day? This story made my _week_
posted by coriolisdave at 4:43 PM on June 12 [5 favorites]

that's why she's the plaguemaster
posted by glonous keming at 5:04 PM on June 12 [5 favorites]

that story convinced me that phunnimee needs to be the new board president, and that I really really want to join Cheese Club
posted by rikschell at 5:10 PM on June 12 [4 favorites]

I think we have a solution for Metafilter's merch problem
posted by trig at 5:33 PM on June 12 [4 favorites]

Seven comments and none include a Cheese Board joke you people make me sick
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:19 PM on June 12 [18 favorites]

Little cubes of foam are croutons. It was a crouton club, they were ranking up in croutons, they each had their own little crouton garden, and I'm upset with all of you for denying it. Even Mrs. Weeks, bless her heart, must have known. You cannot stick a toothpick in a crouton and call it cheese. Thank you for your attention in this matter.
posted by nobody at 8:28 PM on June 12 [2 favorites]

Why are phunniemee and snofoam the supposed nefarious actors?
posted by NotLost at 9:15 PM on June 12 [1 favorite]

If they are they are merely inhabiting a role that gets passed on. Users come and go, but there will always be Nefarious Actor.
posted by Ashenmote at 9:43 PM on June 12 [5 favorites]

Why are phunniemee and snofoam the supposed nefarious actors?

They are trollish on MetaTalk, the most nefarious thing a person can be.
posted by atoxyl at 10:10 PM on June 12 [3 favorites]

Why are phunniemee and snofoam the supposed nefarious actors?

I think they're the most prominent of the several easily-identified candidates active in site governance discussions both here and elsewhere.The silliest thing about the brigading concerns is if anyone on Reddit is trying to pull a sneaky-deaky they are doing an absolutely shit job of it, opsec-wise. Also wacky is how Board & Admin are concerned about skullduggery and possibly feel potential bad actors should be disqualified from elections, but potential bad actors have exhibited a lot more honesty and transparency than the Board & Admin who are trying to undermine their credibility without identifying them.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:31 PM on June 12 [15 favorites]

One possible solution to the Interim Board's dilemma would be to hurry up and spend the remaining money. Put it in a trust fund for the mods or whatever. Then Metafilter could have elections and it wouldn't expose any guarded treasure to democratic foibles.
posted by Ashenmote at 1:48 AM on June 13 [2 favorites]

Oh it’s not the money they want, it’s the control.
posted by donnagirl at 3:19 AM on June 13 [2 favorites]

1. i would also like to see the evidence being used to suggest “brigading.” If no evidence can be presented, then we can firmly conclude it does not exist and proceed accordingly with our business.

2. it gets clearer and clearer that “brigading” means “I’m afraid some people might not vote for me.” We already have a term for when people might not vote for you despite your feelings of deservedness: we call it “ an election.” Since it will not be possible for people to vote fraudulently, they will just vote in their individual interest. If that doesn’t work out to the board’s pleasure sorry, it did not work out. But that’s not a “brigade,”‘it is the result of a free and fair vote. Even if I rallied 100, 300, 500 people to say they would vote for my favorite candidate, that is also just “an election.” In the end, everyone’s vote is private, personal, and equal. You can’t be a brigade of one.

Over the past 10 years, we’ve all had a master class on people seeking to delegitimize elections by making allegations of fraudulent voting without any evidence id same. We know what that looks like and why it’s done . It doesn’t belong here. Let’s see the evidence for concerns about improper voting, or let’s never give that idea the light of day again. Honestly.
posted by Miko at 10:11 PM on June 13 [24 favorites]

Once kirk finishes the new site, what's to keep anyone from downloading it from GitHub and spinning up their own metafilter? Maybe we can have one for Rhaomi and friends and then one for everyone else.
posted by rikschell at 5:35 AM on June 14 [2 favorites]

Let’s see the evidence for concerns about improper voting, or let’s never give that idea the light of day again.

Implementing some basic safeguards is fair enough, it’s just not that hard a problem to solve on the most basic level that should be adequate for these purposes, with the remaining edge cases probably impossible to eliminate given the thinness of underlying user identifiers here and therefore not worth trying to eliminate.

This is not the first time certain people in positions of authority here have taken the “I’ve seen concrete evidence/no you can’t see it” tack to support a position and, man, you gotta realize at some point that this does not work.
posted by atoxyl at 10:07 AM on June 14 [2 favorites]

I’m actually not sure that “waiting for the new site for election security” is a thing at this point, it kinda sounds like the board members have been swayed on that, but I am not sure why this is still a topic. We had a thread where a few people (including me) offered decent strategies. Let’s do the best we can, but let’s do it.
posted by atoxyl at 10:10 AM on June 14

atoxyl, it's still a thing because 1Adam12 and Brandon have both doubled down on the brigading "concern" in the last week, and that the people proposing the best-we-can strategies are making "a demand that we rush headlong into a brigading."
posted by phunniemee at 10:19 AM on June 14 [4 favorites]

Damn I had hoped to experience one last round of official statements about the brigadiers and/or the self-coup on my way out.

Please.
posted by Ashenmote at 10:24 AM on June 14

it kinda sounds like the board members have been swayed on that

Atoxyl, yes, it can look like that sometimes. But as the pressure falls off, they revert to a previous position. It's board physics.

They didn't go back to "we need to wait for the new site" precisely. They just went back to nothing in particular, which is harder to argue against.
posted by Ashenmote at 11:08 AM on June 14 [2 favorites]

atoxyl, it's still a thing because 1Adam12 and Brandon have both doubled down on the brigading "concern" in the last week, and that the people proposing the best-we-can strategies are making "a demand that we rush headlong into a brigading."

I read the thread, I was just a little generous in my recollection of the way the 1Adam12 email ended - I thought it said they were prepared to go ahead with an interim solution for voting but it’s ambiguous on that point, only concretely stating that there’s an interim solution for something, and that they plan to expand the board (?) to figure out how to do an election.
posted by atoxyl at 2:01 PM on June 14 [1 favorite]

If you read the email generously, it could sound very promising.

"We have an interim solution that will resolve some of your concerns, and I’m working on a pair of resolutions to put those changes into effect within days."

Great! They are listening to the concerns of the community! They are acting swiftly to resolve them! Within days, even! That sounds like it could be really good.

I hope they do take action "within days" and that their actions do resolve some of the community's concerns. I'm thinking of their past actions and past timelines, and I'm not holding my breath, but I would love for them to do the thing they said.
posted by umber vowel at 2:48 PM on June 14 [1 favorite]

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