Yes, it's that time again: the month of August, when the Community Council elections take place. Because the Council is so important to us, we've made a number of changes to the process for this year in an attempt (hopefully) to increase interest, streamline the process, and generally make the Council more relevant and more involved with SV and you, our members, with it.
The History of the Community Council
Without getting into all of the boring details, let's just say that the Council is important to us. When Sufficient Velocity began more than five years ago, it was one of our core institutions. We envisioned it as an oversight and policy development body: something that would provide not only transparency, but also encourage users to participate in forum governance. Its members were the representatives of the userbase at large: a sanity check on the forum's staff.
The specific details have changed over the years. Surely, they'll continue to change in the future. Nothing on the internet is static and we are always looking to improve how we deliver our goals: to improve oversight, to increase participation in governance, and generally to increase engagement with the forum. In fact, when
@Cetashwayo left the Staff last August, we asked him - now a free and independent poster - to review the whole system and to provide his thoughts on the democracy, representation, and oversight roles of the Council.
It's that report that serves as the basis for the changes you'll see here, but particularly in light of recent events, it feels like the Council's oversight and governance roles are more important than ever. User interest in the Council has waned, but the importance of
having the Council, not to mention having an
active Council, remains vital to our community.
The Council's Role
In light of that, I wanted to briefly explain to those of us who might not be forum politics junkies just precisely what the Council can do and what it is.
The Council is an elected body. Councillors are drawn from, nominated by, and ultimately elected by, you, the users, to one-year terms. During their terms in office, Councillors represent you, the users. They participate in policy discussions, bring concerns to the staff, and have the power to 'peek behind the curtains and see what it is the staff do.
Oversight
- The Council have access to the report queues. They can see reports, the staff's comments on reports, and the details of infractions and threadbans that the staff have issued in response, as well as any reasoning as to why a report has been closed.
- The Council have access to the appeals forum. They can not only view appeals that are being decided by the Arbitrators, but they also participate and provide their input on appeals if an Arbitrator's decision has been appealed.
- The Council participate in the permanent ban process. Most permanent bans go before the Council to provide their thoughts before the ban is carried into effect. Even when a ban does not go before the Council, the Council is provided with details not available to regular users about why the ban was put in place.
Representation
- The Council have immediate access to the staff. Council members have access to the Administration Discord, with nearly all of the Staff and where policy and staff discussions take place.
- The Council are invited to participate in, and speak at, the Staff's weekly status calls in the Administration Discord, where they are invited to ask questions about Staff activities over the past week, discuss policies, and offer suggestions about issues they've raised.
- The Council is invited to participate in draft policy reviews and to comment on those proposals - as they have on this one, in fact.
- The Council will have access to forum management tools - what we call 'housekeeping' tools - so that they can better assist other forumgoers with non-controversial and non-rules-based issues, like stickying posts in threads, adjusting tags, renaming threads, and so on.
Even those of you who are familiar with the Council might not recognize some of these things. That's because we are making some changes to the Council's powers to encourage further participation by the Council. Here's a handy before-and-after chart:
| Before | After |
| Appeals | - Councillors voted on whether to send a matter to Tribunal. Many appellants felt that the Tribunal would never discuss their appeals.
- Tribunals involved often roping up Councillors who were busy or otherwise not involved to try to get a vote together.
- Staff decide whether there is an issue with releasing the Tribunal publicly and make a decision. | - Councillors offer their opinions on all appeals to Tribunal. All appellants should receive a response from Councillors, even if that response is merely that the Councillors do not feel the matter is worth considering at length.
- All Councillors are encouraged to participate and represent the views of their constituents, but it's not expected that all Councillors will participate in all Tribunals, and there is no voting.
- Councillors and appellants will be asked up front to consider and discuss whether the appeal is sufficiently important to the community as a whole to make and discuss publicly, and these discussions will form part of the record of the case. |
| Forum Management | - Councillors had no specific powers to assist constituents, though they could (and did) speak to Staff directly about doing things in specific threads. | - Councillors will have specific powers to get things done for their constituents.
- Powers include editing/adding tags, adjusting prefixes, renaming threads, stickying posts, and deleting polls.
- Councillors will not have the power to deal with infractions, locking threads, or anything else that the Staff deal with in respect to user discipline. |
| Communication | - Senior staff meetings took place semi-regularly, with fixed agendas, and often encouraging the participation of staff. Councillors did not attend. | - Senior staff host a text/voice chat three times a month - on the second, third, and fourth weekends of the month, at a variety of times to attempt to accommodate time zones - where both Staff and Council are encouraged to participate.
- Topics of discussion include moderation actions, threads or other issues of concern, future policy choices, and so on. |
Electoral Changes
In addition, we're making some electoral changes for this year's cycle. These are designed to meet twin goals that
@Cetashwayo (along with members of the current Council and the Staff) have identified as key to the Council's effectiveness: an institutional memory (i.e., the Council has people on it who know how things are done and how to do them) and regular injections of fresh Councillors, people who bring new and fresh (and Staff-free) perspectives to the Council.
- 18 Councillors, up from 12.
- No term limits.
- A turnover restriction of 50%.
- New rules about campaigning.
Once again, let's use a handy chart!
| Before | After |
| Council Size | - 12 Councillors (with the possibility for the Staff to appoint more) | - 18 Councillors |
| Term Limits | - Two one-year terms with a two-year cooldown period. | - No term limits |
| Council Turnover | - Provided for by term limits | - Only the 9 members of the previous Council who receive the most votes may be elected, ensuring at least 50% turnover every session. |
| Campaigning Rules | - We were against it, honestly. | - Specific rules:
-> Slating remains prohibited.
-> Vote stuffing, lying, and other obvious attempts to distort the election are prohibited.
-> Anything that might reasonably considered to be 'bribery' is also prohibited.
-> We encourage all members to recruit candidates, and to drop into communities and threads they visit and encourage them to both nominate candidates and vote in the upcoming elections! |
Getting The Ball Rolling
Finally - and I know we've been here a while - I want to set out the schedule. This year, we're also creating an official Council Elections discord server, in the hopes of encouraging participation and more back-and-forth between the Council and the userbase during the election period.
Much as last year, we will run the election in two phases: the nomination phase, and the election phase. During the nomination phase, we will have open nominations: each user will be able to nominate up to
five users (including themselves, if they would like!), and the
36 users with the most nominations will receive a flashy temporary banner, a discord role, and go on to the actual elections phase, which will be held using approval voting.
Here's how it's going to go:
Sunday, July 28. The Council Elections discord was opened to the public!
Monday, July 29. Nominations for Councillors opened!
Saturday, August 3. Q&A session about Council nominations begins at 2000 EST!
Thursday, August 8. Nominations for Councillors close.
Saturday, August 10. Q&A session for nominated candidates.
Wednesday, August 14. Official Q&A Session with Candidates
Saturday, August 24. Official Q&A Session with Candidates
Sunday, August 25. Voting opens.
Saturday, August 31. Voting closes.
Best of luck to all,
-Squishy
