Loomio

Standing "Jury"/"Referee" Group

Matthew Cropp PublicSeen by 56

The community working group recently approved the formation of a body of members to which instance moderators can receive guidance for reports that they feel are ambiguous or that they otherwise can't act. We'll use this thread for discussions of this group, and the language that was approved by the Community Working Group may be read below:

"I propose the creation of a “Standing Jury” that will be empowered to decide moderation situations and reports brought forward to it by the Community Operations Team that monitors social.coop spaces, so that situations can be processed by a trusted and formally empowered group without needing to involve the wider membership in every case.

>The jury shall consist of seven (7) members who will serve a six (6) month term from the date of their election. The members will be volunteers drawn from the general membership Loomio group via a check poll, and will be elected via approval voting (vote for as many or few candidates as you like) with secret ballot.

>The Jury will do its work in a Loomio sub-group with privacy setting at secret to preserve the privacy of its deliberations, and if a member of the Jury is the subject of the deliberations, that individual shall recuse themselves from the group for the duration of that case."

Call for Volunteers for the Social.coop "Standing Jury" (or "Referee Group")

opt-in by Matthew Cropp Closed Sat 4 Aug 2018 9:01PM

Outcome
by Matthew Cropp

Thanks to everyone who responded! We have 11 volunteers for the 7 seats, so I will post the ballot tonight, which will be open for voting for 6 days... :)

The Community Working group recently approved the formation of a 7-member body for a 6-month term with the task of providing guidance to the folks doing the moderation work for social.coop. If you are interested in being a candidate for that role, please vote 'yes' in this poll and include your social.coop instance handle in your vote comment.

This poll will be open for 6 days, and will be followed by an election. The language approved by the Community Working Group is as follows:

>I propose the creation of a “Standing Jury” that will be empowered to decide moderation situations and reports brought forward to it by the Community Operations Team that monitors social.coop spaces, so that situations can be processed by a trusted and formally empowered group without needing to involve the wider membership in every case.
>
> The jury shall consist of seven (7) members who will serve a six (6) month term from the date of their election. The members will be volunteers drawn from the general membership Loomio group via a check poll, and will be elected via approval voting (vote for as many or few candidates as you like) with secret ballot.
>
> The Jury will do its work in a Loomio sub-group with privacy setting at secret to preserve the privacy of its deliberations, and if a member of the Jury is the subject of the deliberations, that individual shall recuse themselves from the group for the duration of that case.

Results

Matthew Cropp
No

I am the ops team person with this role right now, so this body is who I'll be consulting when I hit a situation where additional guidance is needed. :)

G I McGrew
Yes

I would like to be of help. @thesciencerobot

Vote removed

mike_hales
No

Good move, strength to your arm/s

Vote removed
Vote removed

Neville Park
Yes

Yes, I would like this to be a thing, but I do not have the time to serve on the jury myself

Simon Grant
Yes

@asimong@social.coop aiming to help agree language and terms of reference that are positive, inclusive, restorative and non-judgemental

Vote removed

Simon Grant

What I completely agree with is that we don't want to involve a whole user membership in resolving reports of upset caused by acting outside the code of conduct. I also agree that the word "jury" strongly invokes systems of judgement and blame, which is not where I believe is best to start. "Panel" would be OK; also "referee team", as referring to them is what will happen. Could the substantive wording be changed along those lines? Then I would be happy to vote.

Matthew Cropp

I'm moving the process through this iteration with the passed language, then, if we want to modify it, that may be done as a proposal at the working group level.

Elect the first social.coop moderation "Standing Jury"!

poll by Matthew Cropp Closed Mon 13 Aug 2018 12:02AM

Outcome
by Matthew Cropp

The highest vote-getters for the "standing jury" group are as follows:
1. 24 - Michele Kipiel
2. 22 - Megen
3. 20 - Fabian Hereidia Montiel
4. 18 - Thomas Beckett
5. 14 - Simon Grant
8. 13 - GI McGrew
8. 13 - Dave V. ND3JR
8. 13 - Gil Scott Fitzgerald

There is 3-way tie for the bottom two slots, which was not provided for in the process. As such, I will form the group with all eight for the moment, unless someone proposes a run-off election in this thread within seven days. In the meantime, I will constitute the group on Loomio and add the chosen eight!

Their term will start today and thereby expire on February 15, 2019.

We have 11 candidates for 7 seats; we are using approval voting, so please vote for as many or as few candidates as you like, and votes will be kept anonymous. Candidates Mastodon handles are included with their names below, and they are encouraged to post about their candidacies and answer questions both on the instance and in this thread.

The elected "jurors" will serve for a six month period from the date of their election, and will serve as a body that the Community Working Group Ops Team can consult with relative to moderation issues.

Results