[VOTE] Creating a venue for Trustees

Hi Simon,

-1
I am not in favor of this motion.
The existing systems are efficient and sufficient.

Best,

Eliane Domingos, Chair of the Board of Directors
The Document Foundation, Winterfeldtstraße 52, 10781 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: Imprint | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

Forcibly opting in people in a mailing list/service they have shown no interest in feels like is coming out of the playbook of corporations that don’t always have their users’ interests in mind.

Trustees that are interested in talking with other trustees have a venue already or even several venues as they have other lists for those that are not comfortable in exchanging messages in English.

The most vocal trustees on this matter include a few former directors that weren’t keen in sharing with the trustees what was actually going on in the board during previous terms, it is odd to see they now demand a change that the vast majority of trustees hasn’t asked for.

You are one of those privileged individuals but I think tdf-members@ should only be used for announcements from the board and MC, not to be abused by single members.

Migrating to Discourse is another big issue. During the last term I was certain that the moderation rights would have been abused by a couple of fellow members of the board so I asked to have these rights to be removed from board members. That didn’t happen and as expected messages, including votes, have been deleted or edited by those 2 board members depriving the community of a mean to understand what was going on.

Before even thinking about migrating tdf-internal we have to put in place measures that stops abuses and processes to deal with posts that are misleading or, as it happened, outright lies.

Then once the “politics” and toxicity have been removed from the list I’m sure that more trustees will feel like joining in constructive discussions without the need of imposing the will of a handful of people on them.

Having said all that, my vote is -1

Ciao

Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors
The Document Foundation, Winterfeldtstraße 52, 10781 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: Imprint | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

Hi,

My big concern is also the forced moderation here, that happened in the previous Board term when posts from some Board members were being hidden in their default state and it wasn’t clear who was doing what, or why they were being moderated. It was pretty shocking to see TBH.

So until there are some very clear rules about that to stop some people hiding others’ posts, -1 from me…

I observe that all the people involved were directors, so this is entirely under our own control and not a good reason to block.

Meanwhile the only way for Trustees to communicate with all Trustees is via tdf-members@… which is rigorously controlled to the extent that even I as deputy chair have to ask for posts to be moderated through by staff. So I am unclear why censorship by directors is a problem to stop us opening up to allow Trustees to perform the role the Statutes envisage, but not a problem elsewhere.

You can see their names and how they selectively censored or approved messages in the moderation panel.

You might want to scroll down a bit more to find out that those 2 directors did the bulk of the censoring but 1 trustee stands out for trying to censor posts that had nothing wrong apart from not being aligned with the narrative that some wanted to push.

I observe that all the people involved were directors, so this is entirely under our own control and not a good reason to block.

Also in the last board, when these things happened, all the people involved were directors, so that does not grow my trust. If you have spoken out in support of e.g. Paolo, whose messages have been hidden and at least in one occasion manipulated, please share the link - I would be very interested how that discussion turned out, so maybe I will be more optimistic then.

For the moment I’m concerned about Discourse as a tool after what we have seen.

Meanwhile the only way for Trustees to communicate with all Trustees is via tdf-members@…

We do have many channels, including a private tdf-internal mailing list, a public board-discuss forum, Telegram, Matrix and many others. There’s a wide variety of choice for trustees to engage in conversation! Even more so, each quarter, every three months, we announce the tdf-internal list to each and every member again.

which is rigorously controlled to the extent that even I as deputy chair have to ask for posts to be moderated through by staff. So I am unclear why censorship by directors is a problem to stop us opening up to allow Trustees to perform the role the Statutes envisage, but not a problem elsewhere.

I am not sure if that now helps the discussion. Staff supports, amongst other things, with moderation of lists. As we have seen, they do so even during nighttimes, holidays and with usually a very quick reaction time. As one example, the moderation of your mail on the list took only few minutes yesterday evening, even if it was way past 8pm already.

Any announce-only list, like e.g. the announce@tdf list, is moderated for everyone, to prevent accidential posting of messages. This, by the way, was something required by every board ever since, and it makes a lot of sense.

It creates quite mixed feelings to read “rigorously controlled” and “censorship” in this context.

I would have continued now to explain that also the function of the list and how to get moderator rights has been explained during the onboarding, but as this discussion is taking a very unpleasant turn, I’d rather not.

I regard that as a bug not a feature as it dilutes the discussion, and observe that none of those reaches all Trustees. That means some may be excluded from important topics - for example many Trustees may still be unaware of the significant discussion on tdf-internal@… relating to “Complaint against a board decision, according to § 11 (3) of the TDF statutes”, which was not allowed through to tdf-members@…

Hi @floeff ,

It seems to match my experience though, @floeff - I’ve tried to send two emails to all trustees, one on October 17th, the other on November 14 - both were apparently silently discarded.

Still, we continue to use it for all public discussions - and @floeff in an earlier discussion, you mentioned that regular posts on Discourse trigger an email in the backend, which you considered safe enough for board voting.

I cannot help the impression that this is a very selective argument, and I’ve yet to see a convincing explanation why TDF should not improve communication amongst its trustees. At the very least, a counter-proposal would be appreciated, for what is a very obvious problem.

Best, Thorsten

1 Like

I wonder why you even tried to send emails through tdf-members@ when you know that it isn’t a list that anyone can use.

Now that the people deleting or editing posts and votes are not in the board anymore things are better but I wouldn’t trust it as a reliable archive of tdf-internal unless measures are implemented to make tampering impossible as many will then rely on the on-line version to make sense of current and past discussions.

Ciao

Paolo

Hi Simon,

My vote: -1

Why, because for me, no matter the tool, it’s not the purpose here. Members of the foundation are there because they care about the foundation and want to show their support by applying. But the most important to my eyes is that they are contributors, engaged in their contribution for the future of the project, they dedicate their time and their skills to the foundation.

Lot of them are not fluent with English (an no, automatic translation tools are not working in this context, that’s why we have real people translating when needed). Receiving mails in languages they don’t understand is not welcomed.

Lot of them do no want to read or participate to politics. They want the foundation to be correctly managed and they vote to elect a board of directors to represent them. That’s why we have the announce list, to give news and events at the foundation level.

I would be sad, if joining a community, I’m forced to subscribe to a discussion list or a forum and receive numerous mails that I don’t care about or I don’t understand. Sad because it’s exactly how I see the spam I receive, unsollicitate communication. And for me it’s a high risk of losing contributors.

The actual announce list has a reminder to subscribe to the internal list every 3 months. Those who need help, ask me to subscribe them and I’ve done it for numerous people when the bug for subscription appeared. No need to add more tools or communication channels when what exists works already.

Sophie

Hi @PaoloVecchi

the original statement was this:

So I appreciate you agreeing with Simon, that indeed only a few privileged members can broadcast to all trustees - and that this channel is “rigorously controlled” to the point that some might feel censored.

Currently, there’s no archive of tdf-internal. reliable or not. So you seem to agree that Simon’s proposal makes a bad setup incrementally better. Why are you voting -1 then?

Best, Thorsten

Hi @sophi ,

I believe the above doesn’t do justice to the intended role of a trustee. In a foundation, trustees should have at least a minimal interest in the foundation business and politics, to be able to fulfill their oversight role (which is what a board of trustees is meant to do!). As the statutes outline: “membership is not required for participation in the fulfillment of the foundation’s goals” - i.e. community members who simply want to contribute in their area of expertise, or where they have fun, can do so independently of the trustee status.

Since you’re currently drafting the community bylaws, perhaps some thoughts could be added around the intended role of trustees (the statutes are quite minimal in that regard, but German civil & case law has a rich supply of examples)?

I agree this is a problem. But it is already an issue for the very basic task of a trustee (electing board and MC), as the current setup provides opportunities for certain members to be the gateway to local communities (with the danger of creating choke points and carrying undue influence). Beyond that, all past emails to tdf-members have been in English, and equally so are the statutes & other documents governing TDF.

It is therefore a laudable and supportable long-term goal, to give equitable access to all community members, regardless of the language skills. There’s hope that machine translation technology is increasingly able to help with that. But today, I don’t think prohibiting members to talk to each other in English (with an opt-out mechanism) is furthering that goal, nor does it help the foundation to blindside its trustees.

Best, Thorsten

1 Like

Sorry, but It is not clear to me, in which position Florian does their comments.
I have not been able to find what his rights and duties are as Executive Director. My bad. If anyone can point me to the document in which they are contained, I would appreciate it.

By the way, for the sake of clarity, I think it would be nice and helpful, if we would add at the end of the comments our name and an indication of our position in relation to the TDF, with what we are making them.

Miguel Angel —TDF Member

Dear Simon, dear Board and all,

+1

Thanks,
László

P. S. This is clearly not an opt-in/opt-out dilemma. Application for TDF membership is still an opt-in process, which already contains some serious commitments. A more transparent version of tdf-internal would confirm our trustees that they are active participants in a community with equal rights. So I do not share the view that this would discourage our members, especially with the requested mitigation of the language barriers. Quite the opposite. I know very well, many people do need this kind of encouragement, at least I would have found this very useful, as I feel I have subscribed to tdf-internal too late.


László Németh, Member of the Board of Directors
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: Imprint | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

Hi,
as said during the BoD meeting last Monday I think the present organization is fine, so
-1 for me

–Osvaldo

Over the past years, I’ve counted at least 10 trustees that didn’t realize they were not subscribed to the list…

In general, I agree with the objective of having a venue for TDF Trustees to provide their constructive opinions and feedbacks to the Board of Directors. Although I prefer mailing lists, I could live with a forum like this one, provided that there is a specific Code of Conduct for posting by respecting other’s opinions in a civilized way. Given that I have been insulted at least twice during the last couple of months in this forum, with just a handful of people reacting to the insults (and with the majority being silent, or even supporting the author of the insults), I cannot vote in favour of the motion while that person is a TDF Trustee.

A public insult should, in my opinion, result in the immediate expulsion of the author from the project, regardless of contributions to the project itself, because it is uncivilised behaviour that should have no place in our project.

Instead, neither the Membership Committee nor those responsible for the Code of Conduct have raised any objections. I take note of this and continue to contribute to the project as a paid consultant and as a volunteer, but no one should think (or hope) that I will forget what happened.

When I have contributed to the foundation of this project, back in 2010, I would have never imagined to be forced to write such a message. Unfortunately, times are changing.

FWIW I’m one of the trustees who are not subscribed to tdf-internal. For me this is not because I’m unaware of it existing, it’s because being subscribed to Board Discuss already brings more than enough negativity, bad behaviour and unnecessary arguments delivered straight to my inbox. Given some people’s conduct in public, I doubt their behaviour on a private list or forum is any better.

I’ve felt there’s little I can do personally to solve the legal issues TDF is facing or to alleviate the tensions in the Board or more broadly in the community. Therefore, I’ve preferred to mostly keep distance and let the elected directors perform their duties. I suppose I had hoped that making progress on the concrete items on TDF’s agenda would eventually lead to improved interpersonal relations. This is not how it turned out, though, as the ongoing strife is clearly making it harder to solve the pressing legal issues.

I find it frankly surreal that in the face of TDF’s current legal predicament, certain people choose to keep on stirring controversy like there’s no tomorrow and simply ignore the dictates of German law as if it didn’t exist. I have to ask whether these people are acting in good faith.

Whatever the medium of discussion, I am definitely in favour of setting (and keeping) standards of behaviour and against letting bad actors drive away people working on solving the problems TDF is facing.

1 Like

FWIW, I don’t see anyone doing that.