With the last MAB meeting in May and no new meeting scheduled yet despite some people’s attempts, it seems clear that the “get key people on a call to talk” model of governance isn’t working out so well because - surprise, surprise - it’s hard to find an open time slot that a dozen people spread around the world all have available.
While the first MAB was too heavily focused on process, is there room for a more slimmed down version of asychronously focused discussion? Or do people believe the benefits of live communication outweigh the downsides (need a secretary to take notes, hard to follow for non-English natives, scheduling)?
I’ve not yet done too much extensive thinking on figuring out the best path forward, so consider this nothing more than a draft/unfinished idea, but I think the primary things we want to come out of a MAB are in-depth discussions on the more complicated/long-term strategic topics, and a certain level of guidance.
While it should all be transparent (open), I don’t think it should be open-to-all. Some topics require deep technical knowledge of the core that maybe 10-20 people worldwide have, other topics may need an aptitude for design which is best coordinated in small groups as too many voices can severely water down a great concept. If a larger community view/consensus is needed, that can be achieved separately.
Why don’t we try to discuss in a more mailing-list style manner? We have this forum, which is open for the public to read but requires an invitation to post in.
For people who don’t visit the forum daily, or simply interested parties, enable the category watching to get a notification/email for each new topic/post.
The rules could be simple.
- One topic per thing that needs to be discussed.
- Anyone can request a vote if a formal MAB decision is considered necessary.
- 14 days for everyone with post access to respond.
- After 14 days, if at least 5 people voted, a simple majority wins the vote.
- The winning vote is summarised in a final post, and the topic is locked.
- Changes to a formal decision would need a new topic/vote.
- (The “solved” topic feature could possibly be enabled on this forum to enforce automatic closing and mark the solution.)
- New people to join requires a simple majority vote, initiated by an existing member. If rejected, they need to wait 6 months for another attempt.
- To kick people out of the MAB requires a 2/3rds majority vote. If someone’s behaviour breached the code of conduct, a simple majority vote is sufficient.
No boilerplates, complicated processes, secretaries, chairs or working groups. Just focused self-organised discussions. Because it’s primarily in written asynchronous form, non-English natives and people with busy schedules can still participate.
If a certain topic really needs real-time communication or collaboration, people can still self-organise calls (or a real-life meeting at MODX events), but those people are then responsible for communication anything important to the rest of the MAB in the forum and doesn’t count as a vote. Such calls likely would be about specific topics too, so people can more easily assess if they have something to add, focusing the call so we don’t have 3-hour monoliths.
How far off from something workable is this proposal?
