Benjamin West wrote: > Joe, nicely said, and I agree with much of it. However, I > thought I would just point out that the the group of > administrators does no't consist of just Ryan and Tantek. The > administrators of the forum, wiki, and IRC channel are now a > wordwide group of volunteers. This is a recent, relatively > quiet change, and done to address some of the things you mentioned. > > > Ben > > PS: Kevin Marks has always been an administrator, but is > frequently overlooked.
Thanks, Ben. I'm glad to hear of the development. I've been through the growing pains of more than one community-based non-profit and it can be a delicate situation. And as someone who has his hands too full right now to do more than shout out a few (hopefully) helpful comments now and then, I particularly appreciate those of you who have stepped up to contribute on a more meaningful level. Thanks for the pick up on Kevin, also. I didn't mean to leave him out; rather, I was simply echoing Tantek's response to Andy: Tantek wrote: >Andy wrote: >> If there is an autocracy (or some other non-community based management >> system) here, then surely it should be openly and honestly documented? > >I am an admin on this list/site as is Ryan King. I've been in situations where the hand over from autocratic founders to community/democracy/mob rule happened way too soon. Given your comment Ben, I'd say perhaps microformats isn't as far behind the curve as I thought. One of Clay Shirky's [1] observations is that once a group grows beyond its consensus cultural norms, it needs a mechanism for the body politic to formally define and modify how it makes decisions, in part so that those norms can evolve with the community. Microformats has avoided formalizing such mechanisms, but I believe they will eventually become necessary to transfer from the autocracy through the cabal to a true community representative governance. I know a lot of folks don't want to think about that, but Shirky makes compelling arguments that well-crafted governance is better than the collapse of a dictatorship grown beyond its moral authority. To reach that well-crafted governance will take effort and time. I believe it would be effort invested wisely, especially if we take the time to openly evaluate and consider different alternatives, rather than rushing in to a solution in the face of a crisis or arbitrarily without community input. Not that there is a crisis, just that taking our time to figure out a fair, effective, and lightweight governance mechanism will, IMNSHO, pay long term dividends. And the work itself--figuring it out sooner rather than later--can provide balm for those who would like to see the end result of a more democratic system and are currently frustrated when our benevolent dictators seem more heavy handed than one might desire. Actually, we are seeing this happen as we speak in the Identity community, where at least two new non-profits are forming from previously ad-hoc collaboration: OpenID[1] and Identity Commons[2] are formalizing into non-profit corporate entities. It is a cool thing to see some concrete, legal bodies forming out of that wellspring of community effort. If I may be so bold to say so, perhaps something similar lies somewhere in microformats' future. A second pitch for Shirky[1]: It's an easy read and might provide productive food for thought. Cheers, -j [1] http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html [2] http://openid.net/ [3] http://www.identitycommons.net/ -- Joe Andrieu [EMAIL PROTECTED] +1 (805) 705-8651 _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
