TWiki Association Membership Debate

I have been given the task in the Interim Governance Team to propose a set of regulations for the TWiki Association which will be the key democratic entity that owns the open source TWiki project.

The idea is that it is an open association that anyone can become a member of. The membership gives the right to vote for the Executive Committee that will take over the daily leadership of the project from the current Interim Governance Team.

I need input from any community member so I can draft this part of the proposal based on YOUR input.

The question I am asking is How do you become a member of the association?

There are many ways one can choose to define a member. And one cannot say that one is right and one is wrong?

First let me brainstorm a little with myself and let fire off a series of questions to the community.

There are millions of associations in this world. And there are probably 1000s of ways membership can be defined.

• In a sports club you normally apply for a membership and pay a yearly fee. No special requirement needed to be a member.
• In a typical house owners association you have no choice. Local regulations says that once you have purchased a house or apartment you must be a member of the local house owners association and pay the yearly fee.
• The local Linux user group defines a member a person that has subscribed to a simple mailing list. No yearly fee. Anyone can apply.
• A political party normally consists of small local associations that each elects their local candidate. Again you apply for membership and pay a yearly fee. The condition to be a member is normally that you agree with the party politics.
• I am a member of Experimenting Danish Radioamateurs. Again I apply to be a member and pay the yearly fee. I do not have to have a ham license to be a member.
• I am a member of the Engineering Association in Denmark. I have to be an Engineer with a diploma to become a member. Again I have to apply to be a member and it cost a yearly fee.

All associations have one thing in common. They gather at an annual meeting once per year and they elect an executive committee that runs the daily business. The anual meeting is the highest authority in an association.

This is all well know for most of you I am sure.

Now the questions and some possible answers

A) Should it cost an anual fee to become a member?

• NO!
• Yes, but only a small symbolic token to show you are serious
• Yes, and the fee should be so high that the association can actually do things with this funding

B) Should there be any requirement to become a member?

• No. Open to anyone at any time. All you have to do is apply.
• Yes. You must have been registered on TWiki.org for a period.
  • 1 week
  • 1 month
  • 3 months
  • 1 year
• Yes. You must have at least two other members that recommend you.
• Yes. Only developers with SVN checkin rights can be members

C) How should a person apply for membership?

• Subscribe to mailing list
• Create a .....WouldLikeToBeAMember topic on Codev
• Add himself to a simple membership list on Codev

D) How long should you have been a member to get the right to vote at the annual general meeting?

• No requirement
• 1 week
• 1 month
• 3 months
• 1 year

E) If there is no annual fee should member be required to renew their membership annually?

• Yes
• Yes, but only if you have not posted anything on Codev the past year. Ie the membership list is purged of inactive members yearly.
• No you are a member for life unless you ask to be deleted from the membership list

The debate is open. Be welcome to answer anywhere you like on this topic in any colour. This is a topic to collect inspiration. It will not become a definition topic ever so no need to refactor it to be nice.

-- Contributors: KennethLavrsen - 28 Sep 2008

Discussion

• A: either NO or the 3rd option
  • If you have no fees, you get more people into it and have therefore a bigger base for decissions. The higher the fee, the less the number of members, I guess. I tend to No fees.
• B: Yes, 1 month of activity
  • The potential member should be active in that period in any way (t.o., svn, irc whatever)
• C: add him/herself to a simple list
  • keep it simple
• D: no req (corresponds to B)
• E: Yes, renewable by activity on Codev

-- OliverKrueger - 28 Sep 2008

Here are my own views. Representing only myself and not the Governance team.

• A: I think we should start with no fee. We are so few and any membership fee that would be acceptable will still be so little funds that it is not worth it. A membership fee also means we need a treasurer and an auditor. Limiting funding and accountability to receiving donations in naturals (like borrowing meeting room and buying the paticipants lunch) requires no such administration and makes it more attractive to be a member of the executive council.
• B: I am not sure myself. Either none or a very short period required. It quickly becomes too much trouble to administrate
• C: I think membership should be open and not require any approvals or evaluation. I think setting up a mailing list for members - and subscribing to this mailinglist is the same as becomming a member. This adds one requirement that I find fair. You must have a valid email address. Otherwise the listserv software kicks you off the list after bounces. Using a simple mailing list for membership has the advantage that it is easy to send messages to members only such as a call-in for the annual general meeting. Mailing list should be open in the sense that archives are open.
• D: No requirement
• E: If mailing list is used then it will be difficult to enforce a requirement for renewal. If my local Linux user group does not need a renewal then why should we need it?

-- KennethLavrsen - 28 Sep 2008

Tomorrow I'm most likely to be in "lurking mode", if present at all, in the meeting. So I would express my opinion here:

• A: No, at least not now.
• B: I'm with Kenneth: As long as you're subscribed to the mailing list, you are a member. If so, there should be a safe mechanism for elections: You cannot vote via e-mail to elect the board.
• C: Following B, just subscribe to the "members" mailing list.
• D: No requirements
• E: You're a member as long as you are subscribed to the mailing list.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 29 Sep 2008

I am also for low barriers. But I am concerned about the possibility of hijacking the mechanism by some party. Just adding lots of fake voters on the mailing list would be enough.

-- ArthurClemens - 29 Sep 2008

• A: 2) paying $1 would identify you by your credit card / paypal and avoid fake users. We could just ask to donate to a charity. But I am OK with no fee if we have clear rules to kick people out.
• B: 3) would be nice (to avoid pain-in-the neck bozos like the one asking questions on irc now under many nicknames). Also, we need to have rules to kick off people from the association. This is very important, I have seen for instance religious people register as members of technical communities and then try to preach online. We need easy to apply rules to kick off the weirdos
• C: Having people prove they can actually use a wiki is nice :-), but no opinion
• D: no opinion.
• E: you are a member as long as you are not kicked out or quit, no need to renew.

-- ColasNahaboo - 29 Sep 2008

Colas, excellent input. In the rule set for the association I am working on I have a rule for kicking people out. The rule is taken from a Danish template for association rules. The executive committee can throw out a member but the decision must be confirmed at next annual general meeting. But if we use mailing list model then we need to be able to suspend posting on the mailing list when spammers or religious fanatics register to abuse the mailing list itself. Important for us to consider when we choose the model.

-- KennethLavrsen - 29 Sep 2008

I'm going to throw out a few thoughts which I suspect will not be popular, but so be it. We often talk about the TWiki "community" but a community without any boundaries really doesn't mean very much. For me, the real "community" of TWiki is the relatively smaller set of people who have contributed some of themselves into to the community either through check-ins of code or at least weighting in on discussions here on twiki.org. These are the folks that have some "skin in the game." Without that, people will likely not participate in organizational deliberations anyway, or as I have seen before, participate only for brief periods and for reasons that are not necessarily in line with he mission of the organization (i.e. to drive some ideological or personal agenda).

Therefore, I've proposed that the starting place for defining membership in a TWiki organization would be the current members of TWikiCommunityGroup, folks with check-in rights, etc. Future members would become so by becoming part of one or another TaskTeams.

Taking this approach largely eliminates questions about fake registrations or people trying to hijack the organization by joining up a bunch of members right before an election to push through some slate or agenda.

Does this exclude some people from our community? Not at all! People can still post there ideas, requests, and suggestions on twiki.org. However, in matters of organizational governance, it pays to have a higher standard for participation. In any case, as with all organizations of this kind, it will be a relatively small percentage of members who actually participate any way. Having a very low threshold for membership may increase the total number of members, but I doubt seriously it will increase the actual number who actively participate.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 29 Sep 2008

Interesting points, though it feels like you can't ask 'how do you become a member' until we answer 'who do we want our voting members to be'

I vote against any money being involved, until we're serious about it, we desperately do not want to store, manage or pretend we have the energy to secure that kind of info (even if its done via a third party, we thus gather responsibility over more info than its worth).

Do we want a large voting membership, with many lightly engaged people who will probably not have enough attention to the issues at hand, or do we want to have a tighter group, with strong localized bonds to the issues, and to each other.

For example, if we require active participation on twiki.org, svn, or the mailing list, with short term expiry, we exclude Will Thomas, Adam Hyde, and anyone that goes on a long sabbatical. tbh, i feel this may be a good thing, as voting without a full knowledge of the issues is not as good for the group. Such an activity based fluid member ship would limit the voting set to less than 100, and would be best managed using a scripted 'score' which can then be used to dynamically update the TWikiCommunityGroup. Coupling this with the Checkin rights like 'get others to support your application' sounds to me like enough safety to counter fears.

Although right now our WebStatistics topic is quite indiscriminate, we've always wanted a better way to highlight participation. Perhaps this is the trigger for someone to work out a basic trust/authorship metric plugin?

Simplistic eg would be to count topic edits (both t.o and d.t.o), mail list replies, svn commits in the last 3 months (one point each), Plugin/release uploads 5p (new plugin 10p), task team membership 5p.

We run this scoring scheme for a few weeks/months, and then set a threshold that we use to dynamically update the community group.

Then we can discuss all sorts of fancy pants score trading schemes - like using your points to award some to someone else that helped you out in some not yet measured way, to vote up the relevance score of someone's topic post etc

What I'm trying to show though, is that we can start with a computer algorithm, which by its nature is somewhat obvious, and won't require a membership policeman, rather a discussion.

-- SvenDowideit - 30 Sep 2008

• I believe that peer support should be a requirement for membership. I do not believe that a large voting group with lightly engaged membership is a good thing, for the reasons Sven describes.
• A possibility is to leverage an existing community-building mechanism such as LinkedIn or FaceBook. If you would accept this person into your LinkedIn contacts, then you will probably also accept them voting for TWiki stuff.
• There is other work going on in the world on trust networks. We should leverage it.
• A:NO
• B: At least 5 other members
• C: Create a topic, join a LinkedIn group, connect to at least 5 other existing association members, something like that
• D: No requirement
• E: no renewal

-- CrawfordCurrie - 30 Sep 2008

Here are my two cents:

• A: No
• B: Being a twiki member since a few month and being somewhat active (no other members recommendations or it will limit the group to less than 10 people?)
• C: Being a XING member and apply for the twiki forum (accredited member) - look below
• D: 6 months
• E: no renewal

I like Crawfords idea using a community-building mechanism. We are Web2.0 enthusiasts, aren't we? But I would suggest neither to use LinkedIn (it is too limited) nor Facebook (not professional enough).

As I know that some twiki core members are already represented at the open network platform XING, that would be ideal as you can set up your own forums within that network and able to just allow approved members to participate. There are lots of business people from the big corporations and setting up one open forum to discuss twiki and one closed for members you would have it all in one.

-- WolfMarbach - 30 Sep 2008

Why wouldn't TWiki use TWiki for something as simple as recommending a new member? The existing members (2 or 5 or whatever) can just write "I recommend this fine young gentlemen" on the application topic. Why does something that can be simple have to be made complex? The association secretary can quickly see if the recommendations are from existing members and add the new guy to a membership list. All manually. If we can give people access to our Subversion like this why isn't that good enough for a membership?

-- KennethLavrsen - 01 Oct 2008

The grant of subversion checkin rights is based on a veto mechanism, which requires community members to speak up if they think someone (who is highly likely to be an existing and visible community member) should not be given access. This puts the burden on objectors to monitor and react to requests for access. This works fine for the relatively small number of requests for checkin rights, but IMHO is unworkable for larger numbers involved in an association. Also, membership of the association will probably attract a lot more interested lurkers, who may not be visible in the community. A network approach, such as XING, provides a simple way to differentiate between spammers and genuine interested lurkers.

TWiki is not a magic bullet. It should be used for what it is good at, and if something else already does the job better it should be used instead. Who is going to check when a malevolent demon creates their association membership page and edits it five times to add five randomly selected supporters? An existing trust network has already faced, and I hope gone some way to solve, such issues.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 01 Oct 2008

BTW: Crawford doesn't have a XING Account yet.

Please accept my resignation. I don’t care (want) to belong to any club that will have (accept people like) me as a member. -- Groucho Marx

-- FranzJosefGigler - 01 Oct 2008

A: Yes, but small fee. B: No requirements at all. C: 1 month D: Yes, include annual fees also. Membership renews if not cancelled.

-- MartinSeibert - 01 Oct 2008

As I understand some people like the XING idea? If so, please suggest a suitable name for the Group like "TWiki". Then I could apply at Xing (or some of the other Xing members of course) for such a new group.

-- WolfMarbach - 01 Oct 2008

I think a few of you are setting the bar way too high for becoming a member. I think with the bar even at a minimum we will end up with 30-40 members. Even at a Summit where a we were in danger of a fork only around 20 people participated. We do not need a high bar. We need encouragement to join instead. I cannot see why the bar has to be set high and why we need to setup new communities at XING. XING is a network for IT professionels. I do not belong there. It is not a place I would by nature want a profile. Should the association really be a semi-closed small tight clique for professionel consultants only? I do not understand that we are going in this direction. I thought people wanted the community to grow and be open?

I am against setting the bar this high. The last proposals will set a psycological barrier that will stop many from even thinking about applying. I do not like the thought of an association where you have to be friends with a lot of people and go through rituals and proof of manhood to become a member. I wanted to go away from the old core team of special privileged people to open democratic form. I did not want to replace it by a new core team just with different members.

Wolf. The rules for membership will need to be defined as a set of proposals for which we will vote at the founding general assembly of the association. So don't start setting up things now. As you can read in this topic we have many opinions. The debate has only just begun. And most until now have voiced a much more gentle way of becoming a member.

-- KennethLavrsen - 01 Oct 2008

I'd much rather not use XING etc either - I've way too many 'memberships' (including my XING one, which I don't use, or care to use.

-- SvenDowideit - 02 Oct 2008

No worries Kenneth, that's why I asked. You are right, but sometimes it is better to push things a little bit to keep the momentum. I feel it is important to do some more marketing around TWiki. Sven: I still think that Crawfords idea of using a platform should be considered. Since many clients or potential clients and TWiki members are in Germany and Western Europe XING would be a good choice (perhaps not for Australia). Or you set up a forum on a TWiki eV page. But I feel it important to have a tool like that instead the widespread information here on twiki.org.

-- WolfMarbach - 02 Oct 2008

Many of you said that you wanted no renewal of membership (given no membership fee).

This creates a long term problem. The TWikiAssociationBylawsTaskTeam is currently working on a set of association articles based on the KDE rule set. Like most associations changing the Articles in the regulations of the association should require a qualified majority and not just simple majority. For this you need to be able to get 50% of the members present at the annual general assembly (or have them vote via proxy). If we end up with many members that once got membership and then silently disappeared we will have a problem.

One simple way to solve this is to require that the members "renew" their membership once per year by signing their name to a MemberShipRenewal2XXX topic. This would be a simple way to define the active member base.

Any comments on this or better proposals?

Note that if an association has a membership fee, it is the payment of your fee that triggers you as active. In fact if you do not pay you are deleted from the membership list in most associations. It is because we most likely start the association with no fee that we need some token of activity. And the simplest way is to ping on a TWiki topic once per year.

-- KennethLavrsen - 05 Oct 2008

I agree that membership needs to lapse. Otherwise, the value of membership, and this the incentive to join dilutes endlessly over time.

I think we should not require 'registering membership' at all. instead, we use a twikiplugin that dynamically adds and removes users from the TWikiCommunityGroup - and that list is the 'active' membership.

If we use simple rules, like having 3 months above '5 points' (and group member recommendation?) gets you into the TWikiCommunityGroup, and 12 months below '5 points' takes you out of it, with emails informing the members or status and of users that would be up for recommendation etc..

basically - we use twiki.org's and develop.twiki.org's stats to help us.

-- SvenDowideit - 06 Oct 2008

Sounds like a lot of work, though perhaps that work is of general value to TWiki users (especially to other people looking for participation-based analysis)

-- CrawfordCurrie - 06 Oct 2008

mmm, it sounds like less work to me - than using a system that requires people to make decisions, and track things, or worse, to flip between here an another social network.

And, we can tune the algol as we learn. Think of it as an even more general version of the Bugs:HallOfFame app you wrote.

-- SvenDowideit - 06 Oct 2008

I don't think any machine based metric is appropriate here to decide on membership. Any participant on TWiki should be known to at least two members of the community anyway. Otherwise they are doing something wrong, e.g. not asking questions. Remember, becoming a member is coming along with quite some rights and responsibilities (voting, refunding, ...). I would not like to give that away based on automated decision processes.

-- MichaelDaum - 06 Oct 2008

I think that Sven proposal is a good one to decide if the membership should be "suspended due to inactivity". Once a member, always a member unless you stop contributing.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 06 Oct 2008

I agree with Michael, that only those sincerely interested should become a member. But everybody who is interested should be able to. I do not like any unneeded hurdles either.

-- MartinSeibert - 06 Oct 2008

I was not proposing to just use the automated metric - emails informing the members of status and of users that would be up for recommendation where the recommendation process is an incredibly trivial thing to code up too.

The thing is that the automated metric would give us a very simple and describable mechanism for becoming eligible, and dropping out of activeness.

-- SvenDowideit - 06 Oct 2008

When is the deadline for a decision and who is going to decide?

-- WolfMarbach - 07 Oct 2008

Based on the the debate the TWikiAssociationBylawsTaskTeam supervised by the Interim Governance Team will propose a rule set for the founding general assembly for the association.

Participants of the founding general assembly will be able to submit formal change proposals which I assume some of the debaters on this topic will do. And then the founding general assembly will vote appropriately.

This ensures a democratic decision process that represents the "middle ground" of the initial members.

Naturally the initial members will not and cannot be selected based on a non-existing rule set. The plan at the moment is to send the invitation to the existing well known community base.

Showing up at the founding general assembly then becomes the initial criteria for membership like in any other association that gets formed.

-- KennethLavrsen - 08 Oct 2008

Showing up at the founding general assembly then becomes the initial criteria for membership like in any other association that gets formed.

I understand that you may still be able to become a (non-initial) member if you don't (can't) go to the founding general assembly, but it seems strange for something built on the world wide web to require (even initially) something so geographically based.

Is there some reason the whole governance issue(s) can't be resolved with online proposals and voting?

- RandyKramer - 09 Oct 2008

A general assembly as well as online voting are the two most important elements of the association, leaving out the board of directors itself for a moment. We should plan to have a general assembly once a year as part of the TWiki summit. Online voting will obviously take place more often.

The problem founding an association is to do one initial assembly to actually "bootstrap" its legitimacy, including deciding on the actual procedure to do any further online voting. In that sense it is rather a hen and egg problem: you can't conduct a online procedure that you haven't ratified yet, i.e. not by voting online, something which has not been ratified yet.

Once all this is in place, we will have online votings for the preferred location of the next general assembly and stuff like that.

-- MichaelDaum - 09 Oct 2008

The initial founding general assembly will be conducted as a combination of physical AND virtual space.

This means that people can join the association sitting in front of their computer or by their telephone.

It is essential that the association starts as an open event and not as in a "secret back yard". TWiki is a project that happens everyday in virtual space so naturally we can also have general assemblies with participants using their computers to be present. We have had 3 Summits now and the last 2 were done as a combination of physical presense and remote presense. We even had a vote for the interim governance team this way. It all worked well. So this is how we plan do do the founding general assembly. My guess is that we will be around 20-25 founding members of which 10-15 will participate virtually.

We all assume that in future every 2nd TWiki Summit will have a general assembly as part of the event where the Summit will be open to anyone but the general assembly will be a 2 hour event for members only. The Summit will be a good place to become a member Good place to find the two that can recommend you.

-- KennethLavrsen - 11 Oct 2008