Discourse does not send the e-mails in realtime, but in regular intervals, from what I remember.
If you look at the time of the posting (indeed, the small gray time on the right top corner of the message), I see:
my vote posting: “11. Nov. um 15:28”
your -1 reply: “14. Nov. um 15:37”
So that -1 arrived a few minutes after the voting deadline.
This is the stuff of conspiracy theory, it has been patiently explained here before.
IANAL but the name of any well defined term is not legally relevant in this context - so it should indeed be a trivial change. Also the defined term here is far from the normal meaning of Affiliation (as we now see from the far more normal Fraunhofer definition).
Why insist on an odd name & avoid a trivial change? Political reasons? Perhaps some - apparently eager to exclude even more ecosystem participants from TDF’s governance - might like to have a new, very expansive definition of Affiliate in the statutes.
Again - I think Italo’s approach of separating concerns to make progress & build consensus is a good one. Perhaps you share the view that pushing more of the ecosystem away is a good thing - but please don’t tangle that up, alongside other unnecessary & controversial statements on the foundation’s purpose by fighting simple helpful changes of these documents.
It seems for me, this is a technical problem, which was unforeseen for the previous board, when it’s decided to allow Discourse for board-discuss and voting. Discourse’s latency was the only reason, why my vote has been ignored the first time, but the validity of my vote is not affected, because the official e-mail (containing [VOTE] in its header) was about 15:38 starting time, see [VOTE] Approve procurement policy and development agreement, revoke previous technical budgeting procedure - #24 by nemeth
The previous board, including me didn’t know about any latency (it can be 10 minutes or more now?), and if I right remember, for a while, it was not possible to vote in e-mail, and if the time had been more visible in Discourse (it was only “3d”) I would have noticed, but I would have had to rely on the original e-mail notification, and voting based on that in Discourse.
The board decision was fortunately not affected by this mistake now, but in the future we should rule out any such technical problems, without creating uncertainty for voters. We can limit Discourse latency, considering also e-mail notifications about the starting time, allowing to vote in e-mail again, too (where all timestamps visible in the e-mail header and received by everyone).
I don’t know what the previous board had envisioned when the migration of the board-discuss mailing list to a Discourse forum has been decided.
What I know is that in the aftermath, during the previous board’s term, one elected board member’s postings to this forum has been edited by another board member and a posting has been hidden.
These actions confirm that, in any case, the board decided for a forum, not for a mailing list, because on a mailing list you cannot retroactively edit postings or remove an e-mail. A forum is technically different from a mailing list.
As you see from my screenshots, by a simple click on the message, the day and time is visible in our forum. This even works when you are not logged in, I just verified that.
The e-mail cannot be determining, as the vote started on a forum, not on a mailing list.
we receive periodical notifications via email that something has been posted on Discourse which contain in the subject, I presume is the same for everyone, the tags [TDF Community] [Board Discuss].
While with emails containing just [VOTE] it’s clear what the start date and time is as it’s a direct email, those that contain in the subject [TDF Community] [Board Discuss] [VOTE], and have the layout of messages coming from Discourse, are a delayed notification that a vote has been posted in the public forum so the effective date and time for the start of the vote is the post’s date and time which you can see as shown by Florian.
I don’t think we ever discussed this in the board but as you raised the issue I hope this clarifies the matter for you.
Furthermore, the e-mail is a setting every user can configure individually and also turn off, as by design of Discourse. This way, we have no influence if or when an e-mail is received, so it cannot be determining for the deadline.
Additionally, I sent a (non-mandatory) information to the BoD chat group on 15:28, the very minute the forum posting went out.
It appears the confusion comes from the fact that ”$N hours from now” is ill-defined. Does the clock start ticking when the keypresses are registered? When the sender presses the Send button (apparently what Florian meant)? When the post enters TDF infra? When the voters are notified (apparently what Laszlo thought)? Something in between?
Fortunately this doesn’t affect the outcome of this particular vote, but I would suggest spelling out the voting deadline in the future to avoid confusion. IIRC I showed the previous the board that Discourse has support for polls which can configured to close at a certain time and where only a given group can vote. That could be a technical solution to the issue.
FWIW email is and always has been a high latency protocol. As a sender one cannot control when precisely a mail will show up in the recipient’s inbox. There are various technical reasons which can delay that (grey listing, DNS glitch, temporary delay by the recipient’s MTA due to overload, etc). I recall this causing issues in the past when someone sent a nomination literally seconds before the deadline.
Discourse delays mail sending by 10 min to give the sender a chance to edit their post, and that’s been like that since day one. It’s arguably a bug that the email’s Date field doesn’t reflect the timestamp shown in the web interface, but anyway Discourse’s email notifications cannot be authoritative. The header also suggest you are the only recipient which is obviously not the case, and for various reasons (recent activity in the web interface, personal settings, etc.) you might not a receive a mail at all. I believe these shortcomings were spelled out when the previous board decided to migrate board-discuss here.
Members of the board can still see in Discord’s moderation logs that mostly a couple of former directors censored, edited and deleted posts of many members of the board of trustees.
That’s the most sensible proposal - and it plays to the strength of the new tool, instead of trying to adjust an old process, designed for a different tool (email).
It appears the confusion comes from the fact that ”$N hours from now” is ill-defined. Does the clock start ticking when the keypresses are registered? When the sender presses the Send button (apparently what Florian meant)? When the post enters TDF infra? When the voters are notified (apparently what Laszlo thought)? Something in between?
For e-mail we rely on the date information in the header and for the forum we rely on the time listed next to the posting. Both can diverge in theory - the e-mail client can be misconfigured (headers can help though), and due to slow internet connectivity the posting can take one minute to be sent. Last minute actions are always risky, like in the example you used regarding the candidacy that arrived seconds before the deadline.
Fortunately this doesn’t affect the outcome of this particular vote, but I would suggest spelling out the voting deadline in the future to avoid confusion. IIRC I showed the previous the board that Discourse has support for polls which can configured to close at a certain time and where only a given group can vote. That could be a technical solution to the issue.
If we spell out a concrete deadline, if someone wants to challenge that, they can say it was a bit shorter or a bit longer than 72h hours (e.g. drafting the message and then sending it five minutes later), so that doesn’t provide accuracy as well. We also had repeated discussions on what +1, 0, -1 means and what non participation in the vote means, if conditional votes exist etc., so I expect all sorts of challenges. Note that I speak in general, these are examples that happened over the years from various people, I am not refering to anyone individually.
That’s why the poll feature sounds interesting indeed. What worries me is that this forum has been in the past (ab)used to delete board member’s postings or even modify them. I don’t want to end up in a situation that a future board follows that pattern again. The e-mail notification provides some safety, as it is sort of immutable when the e-mail is out, if the modification happens after the mail was sent.
How is that via a poll? Are there e-mails sent when someone votes? Is the vote immutable from the Discourse UI, so such modifications are not possible unless someone has direct access to the box, or can people with moderator/admin rights modify a poll too?
Of course, also with a poll, someone can try to click five seconds to the deadline and then be too late - but, see above, last minute actions can be risky. That’s why e.g. tax offices have postbox with integrated clocks, and at midnight a layer is added automatically. What’s on the other side of the layer has not been received in time.
That seems to be something only you (or the other moderators) can test? I still believe a poll is the appropriate tool for a public vote (and certainly there’s technical means to expose any attempted manipulation).
Florian pointed to one of the messages where the then chairperson unilaterally decided to edit one of my messages removing 2 paragraphs as I reported here:
Then several posts have been deleted including the following 2:
The rationale for deleting my post was incorrect as no legal advice from our legal counsel was asked or received.
Other messages and even votes have been deleted or censored sometimes with incorrect motivations other times with no motivation at all by the same 2 individuals.
As such, I don’t see how asking people to tone down their attacks, plus moving delicate topics to a trustee-internal list, can possibly constitute ‘censorship’. For the excerpts posted here, there was more than a year of repeated reminders, and time for everyone to adapt habits.
It would be interesting to see evidence of ‘deleted votes’ though - that was alleged before in this thread. I’m rather certain that didn’t happen.
As you rejected it and I’ve been removed the right to post on board discuss or to moderate my own messages at the time, it might be censoring more than deletion but the end result is the same.
Following that also my attempt to publish the decision failed as the 2 individuals moderating board messages left there message there pending:
I guess that the community would have started thinking why the RoP was changed and working groups eliminated despite legal advice against doing so to then immediately after appoint 2 other person, 1 in CoI on the matter, to conduct a self-review.
The vote included some opinions and advice from some members of the legal team but no privileged information or nothing that wouldn’t have been seen as common sense by most.
Here’s the vote in full:
Dear all,
Rationale:
the 06/04/2023 Thorsten Behrens published “[DECISION] Rules of procedure change” on our public forum:
Concerns expressed by Emiliano and myself in private and Gustavo, Marina, Andreas, Emiliano and myself in public were, again, ignored.
The 09/05/2023, the Board received a legal statement in relation to the evaluation of these Rules of Procedure changes.
The lawyer confirmed that while procedurally the board has the power to make changes to the RoP and the changes proposed are not contrary to Statutory principles, they raise major concerns:
(all quotes are from the legal statement)
The Board did not seek legal advice before voting on the Rules of Procedure changes and my request to do this was ignored. The lawyer confirmed that ignoring this request is surprising and seeking legal advice from TDF‘s legal counsel is not just common practice but actually advised.
Conflicts of Interest have not been factored in and once again we received recommendation to have an explicit mention to avoid CoI also in subcommittees and choose the members accordingly.
The only vote proposed immediately after changing the Rules of Procedure shows that previous recommendation to avoid CoIs have not been taken in consideration. That vote that was taken is “to form a special committee to oversee the performance of the member of the staff who is tasked with contracts and tenders”. The lawyer further states “What I mostly see troubling is that a member of the Board who has been found in a state of CoI for more than one month has been charged with co-preparing the review of the member of the staff who has the task to run the procurement”.
The lawyer reminded us again that staff must be free from pressure and shielded from potential interferences and “this includes first and foremost members who are also affiliates with successful bidders”. This is a major concern for Emiliano and myself as we are aware that attempts to interfere and pressure haves been already exerted by members of the board affiliated with bidders in the past through the appraisal process in which they had a majority control.
The lawyer confirmed once again that a non profit organisation dealing almost exclusively with affiliates of board members is a “quite unusual situation” and “this is a considerably strong understatement”.
The lawyer concludes his statement as follows:
“The only way I see this line of decision can be considered neutral is that the committees impacting the matter I am trying to fix are kept as they were prior the change in the RoP. In other words, considering the turning point at which we are, a standstill principle should be adopted on anything that could impact the procurement rules. I strongly advise to revert the decisions following the same principle, at least for the time being and as far as practical.”
Vote:
This matter directly concerns procurement and other processes so it is to be considered urgent.
Emiliano and myself are therefore calling for a VOTE to:
remove former board members Kendy and Caolan from the internal delegation of responsibilites in Section 3, as already requested by Membership Committee back in December 2022
Having applied point 3. on the restored Section 3 of the Rules of Procedure would read as such:
Section 3. Internal delegation of responsibilities - Internally, the board has decided on the following split of responsibilities:
Employees & hiring: Thorsten, Paolo, Emiliano
infrastructure & community: Emiliano
QA & community - Gabor, Gabriel
documentation & community: Gabor, Ayhan
native language projects, translation, localisation & community: Laszlo, Gabor, Ayhan
certifications and other business development activities: Cor, Laszlo
licenses and development & releases including schedules & community: Gabriel
affiliations, e.g. advisory board, peer foundations, politics: Paolo
contracts, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks: Thorsten, Paolo
The vote runs for 72h.
In a subsequent discussion, that should be put on the next board call agenda, we need to discuss the removal of board members in CoI from specific areas of oversight (Employees & hiring - infrastructure & community - assets, finance, taxes - contracts, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks) and allow board members to join areas of oversight, in which they have no CoIs, where their skills and experience allows them to bring value to TDF by completing the current assignments.
I remind to all board members that it is their duty to participate in votes, that include those in conflict which should explicitly state their abstention.
I’m sure that many, after having read other statements and audit results, would understand that it was necessary to inform the community about processes and decisions that were in need of more scrutiny but that right has been denied to a member of the board.
It is good to have that established - thanks for admitting that indeed no votes were ever deleted.
Beyond that, the factual basis of your above statement again appears to be rather weak:
you’ve never been removed the right to post on board-discuss. There was a temporary limit on your account, for posting new topics (the details and rationale for that was outlined at length, at the time)
your vote was cast on the internal board list, and therefore not censored, either
no other area (neither on Discourse, nor on the remaining TDF infrastructure, such as mailing lists) was limited
you could have posted new topics even on board-discuss, after review by any other board member
It is rather curious to read the outrage here, over what appears to be a minor inconvenience - compared to the fact that other former directors have been outright banned from internal communication channels, apparently while their actions and votes were being debated at length, judgements were passed & further actions against them contemplated. So we couldn’t even passively watch, let alone share our point of view (or set the record straight).
It is rather curious to read the outrage here, over what appears to be a minor inconvenience
I am sorry, but I do not second that this is a “minor inconvenience”. As a community member I do not agree what has happened and I am sure many other share this sentiment. Many things escalated in the past, what I memorize quickly is this:
There was a board meeting when, for a controversial proposal, “then over the weeks all BoD members apart from” two board members “have been contacted”, as confirmed by a former board member
The back-then person warned the board about “willfully and actively excluding just one single legally elected director without any whatsoever valid reason for this exclusion”
We have reports from several community members (I count at least six) about intimidating private e-mails
We have reports by a former board member that “a board member claimed all 7 members voted for agreeing on the vote he proposed, by his own interpretation of the TDF rules, while only 3 of the members voted”
Also quite interesting is a board call where in public some board members complained one board member “failed to establish a business relation with” two ecosystem companies and that “the board should look into this issue first”
The most obvious example is the silent editing of a board member’s message to board-discuss. From what I remember, that happened without informing either the board member, nor board-discuss. What the affected board member reported on this is that “some members of the board voted to delete my vote” but then “the deputy chairperson […] was not informed and involved in the vote”. Should that be true, that raises an additional eyebrow.
All this is very grave. It is NOT just a “minor inconvenience”. For the sake of a healthy, happy and prosperous community, it shall never happen again.
At the time you stated to the board: “Problematic post is removed, and I’ve temporarily changed the board-discuss settings to require new topics to be approved.”
I had no way to know otherwise as my rights to check what happened to the post were removed so for me and anyone else out there the vote I sent out has been deleted as you stated.
Only 3 weeks later I discovered that you rejected it and that you mislead the board stating that it has been removed. The end result is exactly the same and the vote that I published as it was confirms the intent of censoring a director and to mislead the community by hiding the real reasons for that vote.
It turns out that the rationale did not have any link with reality and it has been used other times to delete other messages that were inconvenient to some.
Internal communications channels are reserved for current members of the board of trustees so it is normal that non members cannot post messages there.
Unlike what you did as chairperson, this board is not censoring, rejecting or deleting your messages in this forum.
Former directors’ point of view, actions and votes are on written records, have been taken in consideration by auditors and in evaluating the suitability of membership renewal for the former directors.
You are free to post your opinions here but it would be great if you started validating your statements with the evidence you might still have before posting them.