Forum Council Forum-Based Meetings

Summary

In order to allow a broader range of the Ubuntu community to engage in ForumCouncil discussions, conduct monthly forum council meetings in a special area of the forums rather than in IRC.

Rationale

Scheduling a good meeting time has been a constant challenge for the ForumCouncil. We are busy people who all live in different timezones with different blocks of free time that vary month by month. As a result, successfully scheduled FC meetings tend to be at unpredictable times every month and only solidified a few weeks before the meeting at best. Even after scheduling, sometimes various last-minute personal events pop up which reduces the Council attendance at the meetings. Some meetings are canceled due to lack of attendance. This is a further scheduling challenge when the community wants to show up at a forum meeting to discuss an agenda topic. By moving the FC meetings into the forums, we can allow a predictable timeframe for everyone to find time to contribute to the discussions, and make the FC meeting process a lot smoother.

Furthermore, since this makes the FC meeting an integral part of the forum, it will make the meeting and its logs more accessible to the community.

Implementation

Forum Council Conference Center

A special forum section will be created for FC Meetings. A subforum ("meeting room") will be created for each month's FC Meeting. After the meeting period is closed, the forum will be converted to read-only archival form.

There will also be a master "FC Administration" subforum for organizational matter, such as agenda proposals, FC announcements, etc.

Monthly Meeting Cycle

A predictable meeting cycle will be used. Every month:

• First Monday - First Sunday: Meeting period commences. FC Meeting

  • subforum will be open for the community to post.

• Following Friday: Deadline for Forum Council votes to be cast.

• After this point, agenda items may be proposed for following month.

• 5 days from end of the month: Official Agenda posted, next month's meeting room created read-only with agenda-item threads created.

Agenda Proposal / Announcement

• The "FC Administration" subforum will have a thread created at the end of
  • the 2nd week per month for the community to propose meeting items.
• The FC will decide on items to be discussed by end of the month and create
  • the meeting forum with a thread per topic.
• The above threads will be stuck while they are active, then closed and
  • unstuck after they expire.
• Only the FC may start new threads; once a thread is started the community is
  • welcome to post, like the Resolution Center

Meeting Proposal Format

A Meeting Proposal should be made in the agenda proposal thread for the month and contain a title and a concise, quotable description of the item. The person posting the item will need be responsible for giving the reason why the item should be discussed. When the time for the meeting begins, the title of the proposal will become the subject of the discussion thread, and the description will be quoted in the first post. A template is provided below:

Actually I lied. Someone write this.

Okay, this is what I came up with on the spur of the moment. It is more of a wiki format, so it needs adjustment, but the content is funny and suitable for an example.

Monthly Meeting Room

As mentioned before, the FC at the end of a month will prepare a subforum for the following month's meeting:

• A thread is created for approved meeting topic. The title will be taken from
  • the agenda proposal, the description is also quoted from the same source.
• At the beginning of the open-discussion period in the outlined schedule,
  • this forum will be unlocked for public posting.
• At the end of the open discussion period, the forum will once again be
  • marked read-only.
• FC will cast their official votes in each thread.
• A sticky will be created to summarize the results and (if needed) announce
  • the roadmap for what needs to be done from here on to effect the decision.

Implementation Details / Unresolved Issues

Moderation

There will probably be a delicate balancing act between moderation and infringing on the spirit of openness in the meeting. Some level of moderation will likely be necessary to keep the meeting in working order.

Handling of Banned Users

Can banned users post here? If not how to handle ban appeals?

Realtime Discussion?

I put this on in case we want to justify it to those who may feel the forums don't work for realtime discussion. Based on forum topics at UF, this is a non-issue.

Forum Downtime

What if the forums go down during a meeting period?