Update To Townhall Elections | What Exactly Is A "Working Group" And How Do We Nominate?
UPDATE to Sunday Townhall for @steemalliance
The ad-hoc working group which formed yesterday in the Steem Alliance discord has been charged with the task to organize an election of an official working group. This Working Group will be unpaid and TEMPORARY.
Mission for the Official Working Group
The future foundation, for which the Steem Alliance, has been proposed, is not yet structured. At this point the general concept is to be a community driven entity. There may be seed funding from Steemit Inc, who will NOT be involved in the operations of the Foundation.
It is NOT to be a governance structure for the platform.
In the future, Proposals will be called for. These proposals will serve as ideas for the future structure of the Foundation. The Working Group's main purpose is to organize the VOTE for the Proposals for Governance and Structure of the Foundation.
Once the Votes for Structure and Organization for the Foundation are complete, the WORKING GROUP's function and job is complete, and will be disbanded.
Think of the job of Working Group to be that of the Election Committee. NOT running for office. Not a position of leadership, but a facilitator.
So, The Groups Get Paid Right?
The working groups do NOT receive any payment for their volunteer hard work.
How Many Will Be In the Working Group?
The top Eleven vote recipients will be elected.
When Will This Take Place?
This TOWNHALL Meeting will take place on Sunday, January 27th at 1pm EST or 6pm UTC. The location is voice-chat in the Steem Alliancediscord.
How is This Going to Work?
The meeting will take place in voice chat. The nominations will be received and recorded in a separate chat that will not be opened to the public until voting is ready to take place.
The purpose of keeping the list closed until voting is about to start is so everyone votes starting at the same time. Voting will remain open for 12 hours from the time it started. The voting time is to allow people in different time zones to participate.
How Are Nominations Going to Happen?
Nominations will happen two ways. All nominations must have a seconder and a statement of acceptance or decline from the nominee. If the nominee doesn't respond to the nomination then they will not be considered to be eligible.
- On Chain Nominations
Nominations will open in a post on Saturday and not before. To Nominate, add a comment for EACH nomination. Each nominator must place a NAME into Nomination. A Seconder must REPLY on the Nomination Comment. The Nomination Comment MUST be accepted or declined in Reply, by the Nominee, ON the COMMENT.
* Any onchain nominations not done in this form will not be considered valid and NOT eligible to be voted upon.
* A reasonable amount of nominations is expected. More than 11 nominations from an individual will be discounted.
- During Townhall Nominations
Nominations will be called for during the Townhall. All nominations must be in the form of Nominator, Seconder. The Nominee must be present to accept or decline if nominated during the Townhall. If the nominee does not accept during the townhall, the nomination is NOT valid and cannot be voted upon
How Is The VOTE Going To Happen?
Once nominations have closed, the channel with the list of confirmed valid nominees will be opened for voting. Votes will be placed by clicking a supplied emoji. The eleven with the highest number of votes will form the Working Group.
How Long Do We Have to Vote?
Twelve hours from the time the voting channel is opened. The closing time will be announced for clarity both in this post and an update post.
I Need to Be On Discord to Vote?
For the vote for this Working Group, yes. Future votes, like selecting the structural proposal and associated members are likely to take place on the chain, and are subject to being overseen by the newly elected Working Group.
There is no correlation between Working Group members and any future foundation role: if they choose to propose or apply in the future, they will have no special consideration, but will not be excluded from participation alongside the rest of the community.
IMHO the voting should be open for 24 hours.
I have stated several times, on these posts and in the Discord chats, that voting needs to be open for at least 24 hours. This is a global community. Every user should have the same opportunity to cast a vote in a time frame that is equally convenient.
There’s no good reason why it needs to be capped at 12 hours. It just seems like a convenience decision by and for this working group. I would suggest to them to stop ignoring/dismissing this request by multiple users. This would not put any extra burden on anyone, especially since the votes will be cast by registered users via a bot and counting those votes will be done automatically as they are cast.
Expand the time to 24 hours and move on with the process. It’s really not that difficult. There are much bigger battles to fight and issues to resolve. This one is, by far, the easiest to figure out.
For as many who have said it should be 24hrs, just as many have said it should be less than 1hr to prevent voting manipulation.
Yes, this is a global community and that is why the current group decided to open up nominations 26hrs before the scheduled meeting while leaving voting open for 12hrs after the scheduled meeting. This is being very inclucsive to the global community in my opinion as well as the majority of individuals who have spoken up on the matter.
Yes, it could be longer to let people vote more leisurely.. but saying this allotted timeframe is unfair and exclusive is a reach at best. Yes, it might mean individuals will have to actually set a reminder to do it, I don’t think that is an unacceptable request.
Also, no.. nothing about this voting process is automated as everything will have to be reviewed manually, everything.
Leaving it open for longer causes more issues than the benefit of extending for convenience sake. As has been stated many times, this method will only be used for this specific election and in the future will be more of an open timeframe.
As you are someone who has been observing the working group pretty closely I feel that
Is an extremely unfair representation of what this group has been doing in any decision they have made. We have welcomed feedback and tried to accommodate all reasonable requests. The goal is a fair and open election, if a request has the potential to negatively impact that goal, it will not be implemented.
I hope you see the work we are doing, the push for openness and transparency in every single aspect even though that makes our job harder. I hope you see we are trying to do what is best for this community and are working pretty hard to do so. And with that being known or seen, I hope you can come to understand or accept our decision in this matter.
I’m a little confused here. You keep saying things like, “This is just an election for the next working group,” but then you’re worried about “vote manipulation?” How do you reconcile the notion that it isn’t that important of an election with the fear that it could be manipulated, so a tighter voting window is needed?
Also - what can’t be manipulated inside of 12 hours that would more likely be manipulated over 24 hours? And considering the bot registration, how is this even a concern for what is currently only a couple of hundred potential voters?
Regarding that, my prior comment was...
Meaning - the bot is registering the users, not casting the votes. (I could have worded that better.)
And...
The votes will be recorded by emojis, which are numbered as they come in and are counted by the Discord server. You’re not hand-counting thousands of ballots. A group of 10+ should be able to handle the job adequately.
I keep seeing excuses about why the vote can’t be extended to better accommodate global users, but I’m not seeing any rationale for that, other than some vague references to potential “manipulation” and the attitude of “Because this group agreed on it!” You’ve been given plenty of examples of how your 12-hour window could/would be insufficient.
The statements continually being made about what people should be able to do in other time zones and other countries - with lower qualities of life and far less infrastructure - is quite presumptuous and does not at all accurately reflect their reality.
As your statements have not accurately reflected this situation or the work of the group. I didn’t say it was an “unimportant” role. I said it was for a non leadership, temporary position and therefore a week long on chain vote didn’t seem needed. Neither did a 24hr discord vote, as that method has known issues.
In fact, I would argue the initial election was sufficient enough and we could be moving on to actually getting some stuff done, but for the sake of the community and full transparency.. here we are.. arguing about whether every single person in every single region can make this specific vote time.
I appreciate the concern and understand it, but the reasons given as in someone has to go to work so they can’t vote seem a bit of a reach. In official elections to elect the president of the country, 24hrs aren’t given to vote. I feel you are making a big deal out of something quite small. I’ve heard no one actually say they can’t make it.. actually wait.. they did (stoodkev), so we took his suggestion and did the absentee nominations before. It seems everyone is concerned about hypothetical situations that could occur and as it’s coming from only a few, speaking loudly.. I’m not actually convinced it’s an actual issue.
Yes sure, the 11 of us should be able to take care of it, and we are. While many are just trying to find issues with everything that is done. I don’t have much more to say, other than we have been extremely inclusive and accommodating and those facts won’t change no matter how much you try to twist the narrative.. it’s all on chain.. and in an open discord, it’s irrefutable.
We voted on the timeframe with lots of input from the community and I personally feel it was the right choice. With that being said, Im only one person of the group and with the very loud concern from you, I’ll bring it up for another discussion. That’s all I can do and can’t promise anything will change.
I would ask as one human being to another, that you stop making unfactual statements about the integrity of this volunteer group though, because they couldn’t be farther from the actual things that are occurring. It’s insulting and unwarranted. Stick to the facts.
yes 24 hours would be more reasonable
I second this thought.
we discussed everything from 15mins to 24hrs, 12hrs was agreed upon as a reasonable time frame. This allows all time zones to participate, with plenty of time to do so. This is only for the working group and all other elections (for the more important decisions), will be for much longer periods of voting time.
In India the scheduled timing translates to 11:30 PM(Sunday night) to 11:30 AM(Monday morning). Many from India(and surrounding countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka) would be missing it.
Monday mornings are usually busy(not just in India but elsewhere too ;) ).
If we really want everyone to participate then this timing doesn't work for many in Indian subcontinent. Consider keeping the voting open for 24Hrs.
I am confused how having a vote time available from 11:30pm to 11:30am does not give individuals enough time to go into a discord server and click an emoji. I am confused how they would be missing it. The voting process will take seconds. If it is important, people can take a few seconds out of their morning to click an emoji to cast their vote. Having the voting time open for longer periods of time could increase the chance of fraudulent votes and more manual "checks" on the already stretched volunteers. This is a vote for a non leadership, unpaid, temporary position. All future votes that will actually be for deciding how this thing takes shape will be given much larger vote windows to ensure it is plenty of time. This one will be 12hrs, which I still believe is more than enough time.
@llfarms - let give you the real world examples. In India the general elections happens from 7 AM to evening 6 PM (5 or 6). Whatever is the case, most people appear to vote in the evening. Lets say around 4 PM.
Now let me give an example of what @lifesaver (Who organized the FIRST ever Steem Meet In India) will be doing on Monday Morning. He will be sitting either in his motorbike or some other form of transport in multiple traffic jams. I assume the case most of the users will be spending their time on the road from say, 8 AM to 10 AM (not the entire time.). Over the weekend, Sunday night, many will be traveling or obviously sleeping.
As for me, I can make it anytime & I have multiple internet connections and power backups due to the nature of my work.
I suggested to add the word "Diversity" not just for the gender equality, but its about the people from everywhere. Users from Korea, Nigeria and South Asian countries deserves to included even though their time zones are different.
I also want to add about the members from @travelfeed which is an active community & from what I understand (which may be wrong) many of them members from that community are traveling. I hope someone who knows more about @travelfeed clarifies their view.
Using your example, would it not be fair to say that they could then vote before 8am? I myself will be missing an event to attend, I will also have to take off work to ensure the votes are counted and all fraudulent votes are removed at the end of that 12hr window.
The concern here is that someone might be traveling though and wont have time to get on discord to vote? Do you see why I feel this has gone to a very weird place? They don't need to speak, or be present, they just have to click an emoji sometime in that 12hr window.
If this was for an election to pick a new CEO or to allocate funding somewhere, I would completely agree with you. This vote is for a group of secretaries who will spend their days fielding unrealistic needs and complaints while managing a discord and planning an election, then the group will be disbanded. I feel it is being seen as an opportunity to advance an individual or project and quite frankly, that disappoints me.
I disagree because the "Working Group" is very important. Its like the "Election Commission Of India" which is powerful and make important decisions. The election commission has any visibility only for say, 2 months before and after the elections - and they are single most powerful and IMPORTANT entity during that time.
This election is very important as this committee is which decides the "voting process", "creates the ballots", "creates the ballot boxes" & finally this is the committee counts the votes.
Needless to say, this committee will also have some say in the case the elections are rigged. Lets think of a voting scenario where certain Steem Blockchain members gets massive number of votes and no one notices the fact that accounts voted were actually belonging to a "botnet" ?
Another scenario is, there are lot of people claimed accounts after HF20. If I really have the intention to "win" this election, I will buy all those accounts, obviously anonymously and then use those to vote me or the "highest bidder".
These are scenarios I came up just now. There will be many such scenarios the working group has to consider and the working group is the single most important step and it will decide whether any democratic or decentralized foundation / alliance will be elected or not.
The election will be done on the chain, no ballets to make and all votes will be on the chain so will be easily checked against. New accounts wont have much of a vote so it wont matter much. All discussion of the WG is open to the public, and some of the original WG might stay on to help get them started. If there is an issue it will be seen by all. That is the beauty of complete transparency.
If you feel it is an important role and want to ensure your friends are there to vote you, I would ask them to take a few minutes time after they wake up and before 11am to cast their vote.. or maybe some are night owls and can do it then. You are suggesting the time frame is undoable.. if it was 3am-4am I would probably agree. 11:30pm to 11:30am is a very large window with times that are quite normal for people to be awake during.
This conversation and this request has become completely ridiculous at this point and I still have not heard a valid reason of why it does not work. I am sorry we can not please everyone in this, but 12hrs will be the voting window in this election. I hope people set their alarms to ensure they are available at some point during that time if it is important to them. Future votes will most likely be done differently.
To add to @lifecruiser's points, India and South Asian visitors accounts for a large audience. This is not counting eSteem mobile app, Partico, APPICS, Steepshot & other interfaces like buys and steemspeak.
An approximate data is shared below.
https://www.similarweb.com/website/steemit.com#overview
@llfarms: I am not arguing or opening a can of worms to make it difficult for you and others. I know its very tiring no matter whoever is involved. To get the clear participation, its essential to ensure 100% participation from most of the users. To add to the number of users, the South Asian nations form the largest democratic group in the history of man kind and they do understand voting process really well.
Personally I have worked with teams in USA (California), Canada, Spain, UK & China along with Indian Counter parts for most of my professional life. We used to manage the calls by having them at 7:00 AM PST which made it possible for everyone to adjust and attend. Then we used to rotate it once in a while to accommodate Australian & Chineese Counter parts.
I understand this and its why future votes (for those very important decisions) will most likely have a week long voting process. This group does not need a "representation" of all dapps or communities as it isn't there to represent anything or make decisions on anything more than to ensure proposals are gathered and presented to the community. I don't believe 100% participation of every user on the blockchain is vital in this specific election, as it's for a temporary, unpaid, non leadership role. We aren't trying to ignore whole areas of the world, and I still don't understand how the cut off time does so.
In fact, I would argue if someone is nominating an individual to "represent" a community or project then they are doing it for the absolute wrong reasons. As the only concern here should be finding a group of organized, proficient, detail oriented individuals that are willing to spend their time ensuring this is done fair. What community, project or dapp they are from should not even be considered, as that is making it about something else entirely.
The group had voted for it to be a quick 15min voting window, I extended it to try to be as inclusive as possible. I do not feel that 12hrs is unfair and at this point I believe the requests are reaching a very odd place. In order to vote in this election we will be requiring individuals to put in a very small amount of effort, and we have made that effort as small as humanly possible without actually casting the vote for them.
If an individual is concerned about not being able to be at the actual "town hall meeting", they can use the absentee process listed above. If an individual is concerned that sometime in that 12hr time frame they will not have 2 mins to go vote in the server, I'm really not sure what else we can do to help.
(I am reading this. will respond. I slept at 4 AM yesterday too & not able to focus.)
Either ways we are putting hard work. 12 hrs window frame is sufficient but i feel that 24 hrs will give a little more edge to the participants and this will also clear the timezone problems that we are discussing. Again its a small task of just clicking an emoji but for a stronger future I feel its more than just a task as we are building a new future for this chain and platform. @llfarms is correct and @bobinson has a fair point to. I think we must extend it and make it more clear so no one can say that they didn't got a fair opportunity to cast a vote just because of timezone.
Very well written, I understand what is being proposed. Merely a working group that oversees the voting for the the future foundation that has not been structured yet. I assume we are going to vote on foundation board members. Is this assumption correct?
that will be decided by the work group who is in charge of structuring the process.
Ok great
Obviously I will be be nominated, and voted by the masses to taking a position, but I must regretfully decline, in advance...
😂😂
Thanks for that :P
Saves any awkward dialogue later, I thought....(I hate people begging me..lolol)
I only have one question; why?
To allow the community to be involved in the process of improving Steem as a whole. You know, coming together to better this place.. so we all benefit.
The foundation idea would be an opportunity to focus on things like marketing, events, possible worker proposals and all those other things people are always saying need improvement around here.
Best part is; the community gets a say.. so I guess the question is, why not?
There is a lot of clarity in that post. It's amazing how precisely clear you made it out of all the chaos of the last 24 hours. Kudos. BIG KUDOS.
Thanks for all your efforts.
Thanks Tom! We really appreciate that :)
i dont know how familiar you are with discord but creating multiple accounts is effortless and has zero cost
We are aware and have implemented a way to counter this, thanks for bring it up though! We are also hoping people wont feel the need to scam their way into a non paying position that has no leadership.. hope
Sounds like a great start :)
I nominate me for not it!
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Why use discord? Why don't use Steem?
The organization will be doing future votes on Steem. This is only for the working group and we need to ensure that these individuals will show up as all work will be done in the discord server. They need to be present or have a representative present to be voted, discord helps this issue.
To add to @llfarms points, its possible to map discord users and steemit users.