Randy Petersen

This question was submitted by christiansen:
Do you offer suggestions that the link between TalkBoard and moderators
get closer?

Do you offer suggestions that communication between general membership
and the elected TalkBoard get closer?

RichMSN

The roles of moderator and TalkBoard member, as of now, are completely separate (with the exception that many TalkBoard members are also moderators).

But as far as the second question is concerned, absolutely. The TalkBoard needs to go out of its way to communicate and encourage suggestions and feedback from FT members. Frequent announcements, better use of the TB Topics messageboard, and intelligent use of the polling capabilities built into the BB would accomplish a lot of that.

empedocles

As RichMSN stated, there are presently no linkages between TalkBoard and the Moderator corps (beside the TB member/Mods). Talkboard does not currently serve any oversight role of the Moderators.

As for communication between TalkBoard and the membership, I believe that this could be improved. Some of the other candidates will advocate that the TalkBoard deliberation forum needs to be open to all. I disagree with that; most board meetings provide for an "executive session" for a reason, as many elected or appointed officials/directors/etc. will not be fully forthcoming if they know they are "on camera". Plus, there are some items that simply are not for public consumption.

I do, however, believe that potential TalkBoard resolutions (unless they fall under the “not for public consumption” category) should be made public in a timely fashion so as to allow comments from the membership prior to the TalkBoard vote. There are several instances of the membership not being aware of a pending resolution until the decision notice is posted, examples include the lengthening of the edit period on posts and the recent election resolution. At this time, I cannot imagine these resolutions or any other possible TB topics falling into a “not for public dissemination” category.

Finally, TalkBoard members should be encouraged to discuss their reasons why they voted yea or nay on resolutions. All too often, we see the decision posted, and if it is even noticed and a query posted about it, only a fraction of the TalkBoard will chime in with their reasoning behind the vote.

Radioman

Hi

Well we could always hold a TalkBoard “Adopt a Moderator” evening.

On a serious note, there should be good communications from TalkBoard to the Moderators but I would say that already goes on.

I think that TalkBoard should make itself more known and folk should know who the members are so that they can take various ideas to them. How this is promoted well that’s always going to be a hard thing. Even with Stickys and notices on pages a lot of folk will just ignore it. How many of the community have bothered to read about the Elections? There will always be apathy amongst any community and this is something that should be targeted.

But how close is close? How far do you go? If an open forum for general questions to TalkBoard members was made then I would say that a very small percentage of the community would raise any issues and that it would be the same folk over and over again, its sad to say but I have seen this in other forums.


Regards

Dovster

Christiansen, I have answered all of your other questions -- and some of them were very good ones -- but could I ask you to please answer them yourself?

We have a very unusual situation in this campaign -- in fact, one that I have never seen before.

We have two candidates (yourself and Havannah) who have never posted on FlyerTalk. You gave a very little information about yourself in your application; Havannah gave none at all.

A third candidate, Sigprn, has 8 posts (5 of them in one thread) and also gave no information in his/her application.

Moreover, none of you have answered any of the questions -- even though you, yourself, have asked four of the ten questions put to the candidates so far.

Besides being a candidate, I am also a voter. It is true that I have already made up my mind as to two of my votes (one will go to Mary2E and the other to myself) but I intend to cast all five of my ballots.

How can I -- or any other voter -- possibly make an intelligent decision about a candidate I know nothing about?

Radioman

Hi
Well I have to say that I agree with Dovster on this one. Its rather a funny situation and as I have stated before the questions do seem to be loaded.

I have also answered all the 10 questions posted so far and I also have 5 votes to use (well if I vote for myself then actaully 4) and as a voter I read everyone elses answers because I know that I have to vote for at least 4 of these folks (Dovster do you want my address to send the 12 bottles of white wine to ) and so far I would only give my votes to the people who have answered some if not all of the questions.

I look forward to your answers as you must already have a view as you asked the questions.

regards

kokonutz

I just assumed they were fake handles of veteran posters with an axe to grind. But the questions are reasonable enough taken out of that context.

*shrug*

As to this one, I think the TB private forum, once it is made read-only available to all posters, should be required reading for mods so they can see the intent and scope of new forums.

I also think that the TB should do everything possible to maintain dialog with posters both by their interactions in their regular FTing but also using the Internets and, if necessary, The Google.

Mary2e

I'm with koko here.... considering that the person asking the question is running for Talk Board and not answering himself, I have to figure it's a duplicate handle and the questions are to stir the pot.

Spiff

Since the TalkBoard does not make policy for the moderators or review their decisions, there's no need for a closer link between the two.

I would like to see more interested FlyerTalkers interact with the TalkBoard in the TalkBoard forum. Hopefully this election + more announcements of votes and issues being discussed will increase the participation. Of course, the other possibility is that most of the 100,000+ FlyerTalkers are already very satisfied with FlyerTalk as it currently exists...

Radioman

OR

Just like any election a lot of folk dont bother to vote unless its a mandatory vote. The percentage of folk who actually take the time to vote compared to the amount of users must be very small indeed.

Most folk cant really be bothered just as long as things are working and they can get the information they want. I have seen this sort of thing in all sorts of clubs, forums, soceitys etc.

How can it be resolved? It never will....unfortunately

regards

Jenbel

I think it's disappointing that there is such little communication between Talkboard and Mods. TB do not have an oversight role on mods, but they do sometimes have discussions on existing fora, with existing mods. As a simple courtesy, I would have thought that in that situation, the mods would be approached off board for their views on the discussion, but I've seen no evidence this occurs, and I think TB is missing a great opportunity to gather ideas and insights from people who know the board very well as a result. If we can get to a situation where mods can actually draw to their board's attention that these discussions are occurring on the TB forum and expand them out so that those using the board join in en masse to give their opinions, then so much the better. They are separate bodies, but there should be no reason that there is such little communication between the two.

Between TB and members? Comms can nearly always be improved. I'm also disappointed, that as a simple matter of courtesy for those who TB represent, propositions before TB are not reported back into the TB forum so that we know what is actually being voted on.

But it is also getting better slowly. Spiff has been doing an excellent job at posting vote results in a timely fashion And the removal of the gag was good too... hopefully, it can and will continue to be improved.

hfly

I too find it odd that these candidates have come of of nowhere. My 2 cents on the subject are that there should be no linking of the two.

jason8612

I also agree that TB and Moderators are not close. Each have a separate job to fulfill.

For the general users and TB, I believe that there should be some better system also to allows users to make suggestions. Make it more public and allow voting from the users for new ideas.

ingy

The two positions are totally independent and should remain that way.

bhatnasx

Although not an original answer, I agree with everything that Spiff and Dovster said above...