Question: Why are Talkboard deliberations private?
 

This was a thread in which in the last day or two a post was made by a member of the TalkBoard which might have been unfairly interpreted by me in a subsequent post. I'd like to take the thread off-line to review if there was a misinterpretation of intent.

You're not really missing anything, but fair is fair.

I think the short answer for the original question is that you really aren't missing much and much like the Supreme Court, the Senate and much if not all of "public" companies, there are times when the leadership needs just a little time away from the glaring lights to arm wrestle each other over an opinion or vote and of course in Town Hall you get to see who really came out on each side anyway.

I'll try and return the thread as soon as i've had a clear chance to review it. Thanks.

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While I know that you are extrememly busy, Randy, since it is now nearly four months, may I please politely ask if there has been any progress to report concerning this matter? Will we ever likely see the "lost" thread returned?

As you well know, it's no secret that I'm a huge proponent of shredding the "shroud of secrecy" that has increasingly enveloped FT.

Also, as you know, the motion I'd made to open the TB to everyone on a "read only" basis was soundly defeated, so I wondered again about this.

We are all elected to the TB serve the entire membership at large, and yet I often find it difficult to communicate openly to our constituency. I do not wish to violate any confidentiality, yet it is very often unclear what is permitted to say, or not say, IMHO.

Naturally, by simply opening all the TB threads to all to see, it would surely alleviate this problem. But until the FT members at large vote for members that share my penchant for transparency, we are left to wonder I'm afraid.

Any further guidance would be extremely helpful for me, thanks.

Mark

I'm confused as to why Randy's statement and the failed motion voted on by the talkboard itself are somehow coming across as unclear.....

Ditto. It was voted on and rejected. End of story.

Not only was it voted on, but the motion was IMHO worded specifically to fail.

For the record, and since there seemed to be some confusion on the matter in another thread, I simply copied and pasted the motion as it was made.

And speaking only for myself, I did vote against the specific wording of the resolution -- that it was suggesting a pretty cumbersome thing that was either technically impossible or that would require the creation of separate TalkBoard Archive (closed) forums and TalkBoard (open) forums and splitting threads out into each.

But I couldn't support making the TalkBoard forum public or read-only to non-elected members, either. I'm happy to have discussions in public, and I try to do so here in the TalkBoard Issues forum. I believe I have also replied to every PM I've gotten asking my take on something as a TalkBoard member or as TalkBoard President. (If I haven't, I apologize - I'm sure I meant to, got busy, and assumed I did.)

I'm not a proponent of any kind of Star Chamber and there really isn't much skull & bones stuff going on. I wouldn't be in favor of that, either. But:

* There are some matters which are private, they don't come up often but occasionally they do. Sometimes Randy asks for specific feedback on something, or he might look for input on a feature or initiative that's just not ready for prime time.

* I give 100%, and I give my candid opinions. I like being able to do that without being 'on stage'. It takes far less time than when I have to worry about how I'm phrasing something or whether one of 80,000+ members will misinterpret.

* It's also distracting. I'm not a big fan of additional forums dealing with meta-issues. More time spent reading those threads is less time spent on Flyertalk's core mission of miles and points.

All of these I can come up with counter arguments to. And reasonable people can certainly find them unpersuasive. But I'm not inclined to support opening TalkBoard deliberations to the public to view post-by-post in real-time.

That said, I think we're doing a better job at (1) communicating all decisions and (2) individually communicating our reasons for those decisions. I was a strong proponent of getting to the greater level of openness that we have now (along with missydarlin at the time). There used to be a pretty strong gag order that forbid us from talking about current issues under discussion. Fortunately we got rid of that.

And we can all do better here too.

But I'm not comfortable opening up the the forum. FWIW.

I haven't been around for a lot of what has apparently been posted in the past day or so, but I can certainly confirm that what gleff posts above is correct.

What we voted on was precisely what the motion was.

As outlined elsewhere I suggested it was doomed to fail due to a small change in the wording, which I do believe would have made it technically impossible to implement.

But gleff as TB President simply posts motions to a vote after they are proposed and seconded, and that is indeed what was done here.

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Thank you Gary. Your position is quite clear. And I certainly respect that. There is nothing wrong with being on different sides of this issue.

Yet what is this all this obfuscatory 'mumbo jumbo' that the motion was somehow "technically impossible" to implement?

What evidence to you have, if any, that this is so? Oz? Wharv? As I've said before, ad nauseum, it just "ain't" so. Nearly anything is possible with vbulletin software, as I understand it.

Moreover, opening all new posts to read only format did/does not require that by any means. By simply archiving earlier TB threads and limiting access to old threads only to TB members, we get an extremely simple, quick, and clean way to implement such a policy, had it passed. What is so "cumbersome?" Does this not render such objections as meaningless?

Can we please, at last, kindly stop the chatter about how "impossible" and "cumbersome" this motion would be to implement?

The substantive question now, as always, is barring any technical issues, do we as a group wish to permit the FT membership at large to see our deliberations or do we, alternatively, prefer to continue to keep them out.

Again if you recall the last TB elections, only candidates were permitted to post in the "TB Election" forum. Yet anyone could freely read whatever they wished. This worked fine, no?

Again, as I'd said in the other TB thread concerning the results of the vote on my motion that was initiated by Koko,

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...6&page=1&pp=15

After the motion to open the TB failed and results were posted, I made, for the sake of complete clarity, yet another motion:

"I move that we open the TalkBoard Private Forum to all Flyertalk members on a 'read only' basis. This access will apply to all new threads posted after the date of this vote, should the motion pass."

Again, it sits now, without any additional comment, as you know, for over a week already.

Naturally, anyone in favor of it can always second it, correct?

In any case, as I'd also said, barring our eventually opening the forum, we really do need to do something about establishing and communicating a clear policy concerning our internal discussions/disagreements and specifically how we communicate them to the FT memberdhip at large - assuming that we do!

Have you any further ideas concerning how we might best accomplish this?

Mark

It is my OPINION that the original wording was intended to fail, thus giving the appearance that there was an attempt at "transparency". If, in my OPINION "transparency" was the ultimate goal, then the wording would have been crystal clear that only new threads would be "transparent".

Let me get this straight: You are saying that Doc, who made the original motion, wanted it to fail and thus applied it to new "posts" instead of "threads".

Immediately after the first motion failed, Doc made a new one applying it to threads.

What was his motivation for the second motion?

Do you suspect that he tried to get his original motion to fail in a Machiavellian plot to ensure that the second motion would, indeed, pass?

That is indeed a method that has been tried and true for centuries. So, that indeed could be one reason.

Or, as is my OPINION, it was designed to fail so that the transparency "advocates" could say they "tried".

But why then the second motion by the same person who made the first one?

He could have already said that he "tried". The second motion, which eliminated the objection that at least one TB member had, brought the issue back to life.

If that is the case, why have the other transparency "advocates" seconded the motion?

I think you are asking why they haven't, not why they have.

Obviously, I can't read their minds but I can take a guess: I don't think they feel that they will have the votes, no matter how it is worded.

Doc, Oz, and A28 voted in favor of it. WHarvey has given hints that he would vote in favor of a revised motion but he also said the wording was "one of the reasons I voted against this motion" which indicates to me that he had other reasons as well. I would have to count him as a "possible" only.

I have seen absolutely nothing from the other TB members which makes me believe that they would support the new motion.

Six "Yes" votes (assuming that at least 8 TB members vote) will be needed to pass the motion.

If I were in either Oz's or A28's shoes right now, I would not second the motion either -- at least not until I saw more support for it.

The motion I most favored when I was on TB was that establishing the Religious Travel Forum. I was hoping it would pass when I made the initial motion for it but it did not. I could have made motion after motion in a vain attempt to get it passed but that would have been a foolish waste of TB's time.

If someone else who had voted for it the first time had made a new motion, I would not have seconded it for the exact same reason.

However, ScottC, who opposed it the first time around, later announced that he had changed his mind. Knowing that with the original 5 votes in favor, and Scott's new opinion, the motion would pass I immediately seconded his motion.

(Interestingly, as it turned out one of the original 5 decided to vote against it, but two others who had originally opposed it also voted for it, thus passing it.)

Right now, I think that Doc's motion would be defeated with either another 3-6 vote or, at best, a 4-5 vote. Hopefully, somewhere along the line more TB members will be convinced that it is an advisable step and then, and only then, would it be sensible to hold a second vote.

Ooops- duplicate post.