governance-issues

Issue Summary 2007-02-28

Editor

Ernest Prabhakar

Contributors

• Please add yourself

Preamble

Over the last year, several people have expressed concern/frustration/confusion about how the Microformats wiki, mailing list, and community are governed.This page is here to discuss ideas for documenting, formalizing, and/or improving our collective governance.

Abstract

Governance has been defined as "the traditions, institutions and processes that determine how power is exercised, how citizens are given a voice, and how decisions are made on issues of public concern." In the context of Microformats, it covers:

• Rules (both written and unwritten) expected of community members
• Who the various Admins are
• What powers Admins have
• Rules for how/when Admins can/should use those powers
• How to questioning/appealing a decision by an Admin
• How to become an Admin
• How to question/change any of these

While not all of these need to be explicitly spelled out, a healthy community our size requires a broad shared understanding of these facts -- as well as acceptance of them as "legitimate."

Examples

Note: This is not to take a position on whether or not any of these decisions were appropriate or inappropriate. Rather, the existence of these events demonstrates the need to document why and how such decisions were -- or should be -- made and/or appealed.

• Labelling microformats schema discussions as off-topic
• Mailing list user's censure
• Issue rejection governance
• Negative, PoV and derogatory edit summary content such as "smelled of excessive political correctness worrying" and "removed non-productive comment".
• listing of items as "rejected" when requests for evidence of said rejection reveal none.
• Despite an assurance that "all of the admins will be apropriately (sic) listed on the wiki page [1]", the list given in FAQ is prefaced with the qualifier "including".

Proposal

1. Create a microformats-admin mailing list, for easily contacting all admins
2. Create a microformats-meta mailing list, moderated by a non-Admin, to capture discussions that do not fit into current lists, plus act as a "court of appeals" for Admin decisions.
3. Create and maintain a governance page that captures and describes

• the identity of current Admins
• how to contact them
• the kinds of behavior warranting Admin intervention
• how to appeal an Admin decision/action

Resources

• http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html