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VOTING OVER: Presenting Mission Statement to Membership

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Please choose between the following options:
I think we should present to the membership a yes or no poll on the text that is approved in the interim Mission Statement vote
  
75% [ 9 ]
I think we should present to the membership an IRV vote done by PM with the choices described in the first post of this thread.
  
25% [ 3 ]
Total votes: 12
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Voronwë_the_Faithful
Post subject: VOTING OVER: Presenting Mission Statement to Membership
Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 3:30 pm
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Ballot No. 32

We are voting in this thread to determine how we will present the Mission Statement to the membership for ratification.

A. Choose the first poll option if you think we should just present to the membership a yes or no poll on the text that is approved in the interim Mission Statement vote here

Edit: the approved text:

Board77 is a democratically governed internet community where members gather from around the world to cultivate friendships and engage in discussion. Our conversations cover any topic of interest to our members, from current events and philosophy to fine arts and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. We aspire to maintain a culture of respect, equality and openness.

B. Chose the second poll option if you think we should present to the membership an IRV vote done by PM with the following choices:

1. The text approved in the interim Mission Statement vote. (edit: see above)

2. Just the first sentence of the text approved in the interim Mission Statement vote. (edit: "Board77 is a democratically governed internet community where members gather from around the world to cultivate friendships and engage in discussion.")

3. The following text: "We are a self-governing community drawn together in fellowship by a love of Tolkien and good conversation."

4. None of the above.

Last edited by Voronwë_the_Faithful on Tue 07 Jun , 2005 6:15 pm, edited 40 times in total.

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Cerin
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 4:00 pm
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I am taking the liberty of copying here the remarks Jnyusa posted in another thread Rotating Discussion Leadership regarding this issue, because they are so very enlightening and helpful.
Jnyusa wrote:
Mission Statement and Key Principles

A Mission Statement is short. One paragraph, two at the most. It answers the questions, “How did we get into this? Why are we here?”

We should not try to perfect the Mission Statement until we have written our Key Principles as well. They belong together.

In a charter for a non-profit or business organization, the Mission Statement would be the first thing to appear. It would be followed by sections entitled Objectives and Strategies. Technically we do not have Objectives and Strategies because members do not join B77 to achieve some goal beyond their own enjoyment of the site. We are not here, for example, to capture the market in Tolkien discussion sites, or to promote a particular software. There are many facets to our community and they all exist for their own sake. So I have translated Objectives and Strategies into Key Principles. These are the aspects of our community which must be preserved in order for the community to be what the Mission Statement says we want to be.

What follows a Mission Statement - whatever it is called - flows from considering the strengths and weaknesses that we possess. These are usually interrelated.

For example, one of our strengths (imo) is the fact that our posters are international. It is very much a part of our character that we live all over the world and contribute ideas and perspectives from many cultures and languages. This brings with it certain weaknesses as well: English is not the primary language for all posters, cultural differences can create misunderstandings, our administrators have to watch multiple time zones, etc.

A Key Principle should reflect this awareness of both the strength and weakness, e.g.:

“We pride ourselves on our international membership and we value our diversity. We are tolerant of cultural differences. We guarantee freedom of expression in other languages and encourage the use of proper English which all posters will be able to read and understand.”

At this point, having decided that internationalism is one of our strengths worthy of being a Key Principle, we go back to the Mission Statement and make sure that it says we are an international community and not just a community.

So, we work back and forth between these two sections of the charter until they express the core of our being. :)

(Internationalism is just an example - you don’t have to put that in the charter unless you want to.)

Why is it easier to do it this way? Because you want all the parts of the charter to be well-connected to one another. A charter that is full of disarticulated ideas will fall apart very, very fast.

Under ordinary circumstances, one would write Mission and Principles first, and then the by-laws as needed would flow from these. But we needed by-laws right away. So we’ll have to make this work to our advantage.

Because so many core ideas have been discussed in the context of by-laws, all of us by now can think of the things that are most important to us without much difficulty. Those are the things that become Principles, and are summarized in very concise form in the Mission Statement.


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Axordil
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 4:21 pm
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Goals in addition feel like overkill to me at least. I see no need to try to push us towards anything besides continuing to fulfill our mission statement. Whatever it ends up being. :D

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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 4:23 pm
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Thanks for posting that, Cerin. I had not seen that. I want back and added "international" to the Mission Statement text. I also added an additional key principle. But I think it is important to keep the key principles short and to the point. We don't need to go into the kind of detaill that we do in Member's Rights. This should be something that someone can come to board77 and quickly get a sense of what the place is about. And I'm not sure that I agree that everything that is in the key principles needs to be stated in the mission statement. To me that would get too repetitive. For instance, I think the fact that we are member-moderated (and hopefully will be member-owned) should be listed in the key principles. But I am really not sure that it also needs to be explicitly stated in the Mission Statement as well.


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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 4:25 pm
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I can see Ax's point—this is, after all, an organization that exists so we can all hang out together, rather unlike most businesses or schools—but I'm ready to be told why that isn't right. :)

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 4:43 pm
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Voronwe - beautiful start!!!!
:cheers

Cerin - thank you for brining that over. I bumped it once, but at a time that was not very auspicious from the committee's point of view.

Ax - I agree with you that goals are somewhat superfluous. They do not need to be completed before opening, in any event. It thought perhaps we could have a goals section in the Charter that gets periodically updated (and dated) with the obvious. For example: Goals for 2005 - finish our Charter, open the board to the public, move to our own site.

Voronwe: For instance, I think the fact that we are member-moderated (and hopefully will be member-owned) should be listed in the key principles. But I am really not sure that it also needs to be explicitly stated in the Mission Statement as well.

I beg to differ. It *is* part of our mission to create a messageboard that is owned, administered and moderated by the membership. This is central to our character, in my opinion. We've actually spent more time working on that than on anything else since I've been a member.

Jn

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Cerin
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 4:59 pm
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Note: THIS IS NOT SUGGESTION FOR ACTUAL TEXT. I want to respond to these guiding questions and principles contained in Jn's statement, and see if my perceptions match those of others.

Quote:
It answers the questions, “How did we get into this? Why are we here?”
We got into this because our desire to be ourselves in the context of the Tolkien-inspired community we belonged to was being thwarted and repressed by misuse of power within an authority structure that provided no opportunity for redress of grievances, and didn't allow transparency in the process of working out difficulties.

We are here because at some point in time, our mutual love of Tolkien and the coalescing of interest around the phenomenon of Peter Jackson's movies caused us to arrive, from all corners of the globe, at a certain internet website and make each other's acquaintance, and then because troubles there caused us to seek and make a better place to share the mutual interests and friendships that had developed.

For me, Tolkien will always be at the heart of my presence here, because to me that is the one thing we know to be the touchstone for all of us -- that at some time in our lives we responded in a certain way when we encountered Tolkien's Middle Earth.

Quote:
So I have translated Objectives and Strategies into Key Principles. These are the aspects of our community which must be preserved in order for the community to be what the Mission Statement says we want to be.
Things that must be preserved:

democratic governance structure

free flow of ideas

expression of self

transparency in dealing with difficulties

respect for diversity

acknowledgement that Tolkien brought us together

Quote:
What follows a Mission Statement - whatever it is called - flows from considering the strengths and weaknesses that we possess.
Strength: Respect for every individual voice
Weakness: Leads to alot of talking before things can be decided :D

Strength: Willingness to explore difficult and controversial issues
Weakness: Potential for bad feeling to arise because of fervently held positions (need to be aware of and take responsibility for one's own sensitivities)


I would be very interested in seeing other people's responses to these three guideline questions/principles.

1. How do you personally answer these two questions:

“How did we get into this? Why are we here?”


2. What would you list as things that must be preserved in order for our community to be what you want it to be?


3. What do you see as our strengths and corresponding weaknesses?


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Cerin
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 5:25 pm
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Will it be necessary to number the Key Principles? (I'm so tired of numbered items.)

Edit

For example, I really enjoy this paragraph Jn gave as an example of a Key Principle.

“We pride ourselves on our international membership and we value our diversity. We are tolerant of cultural differences. We guarantee freedom of expression in other languages and encourage the use of proper English which all posters will be able to read and understand.”


After all the concise listing of things, I think it would be nice to have some more developed thoughts in this article.


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Jnyusa
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 5:32 pm
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Cerin - very good. That is exactly how I imagined us proceeding through these items.

I'm so tired of numbered items.

The numbers inside each paragraph are only for the sake of the ballot. I take them all out before I move the text into the charter. Finally only the paragraphs have numbers.

And that leads to Voronwe's first question which I overlooked while first reading ...

Mission Statement and Key Principles are not Articles. They are titled as they stand and are given Roman numerals. Articles are only inside the Roman numeral item called "Administrative and Governance Procedures," what would typically be called By-Laws.

If you look at the Outline of the Charter, the final document will look like that, only without the word "Part" appearing everywhere.

Jn

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Axordil
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 5:35 pm
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jnyusa--

I'm happy for there to be specific goals for specific time frames. You know, like getting the Charter done in April. :D ;)

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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 5:57 pm
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Cerin wrote:
Note: THIS IS NOT SUGGESTION FOR ACTUAL TEXT.
Cerin, please make suggestions for actual text. ;) (Following Jn's guiding principles, of course).

As for numbering the key principles, I am assuming that the Mission Statement and Key principles will be placed on our front page, so they need to be considered separately from the rest of the charter, as well as together with it. As I said before, I think they should be written with an eye towards someone coming to the site being able to QUICKLY get a sense of what the board is about. If they are not numbered, they should at least be bulleted. And they should be short, short, short. :)


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Cerin
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 5:59 pm
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Jnyusa wrote:
The numbers inside each paragraph are only for the sake of the ballot. I take them all out before I move the text into the charter. Finally only the paragraphs have numbers.
Hmm. So will the Member Rights and Responsibilities retain their numbers?

Looking at 'Convention: Actual Document so far', that bring's up an interesting point. Would it be advisable, for the purpose of easier reference, to turn all those bullets into letters (a, b, etc.)? So that one could refer to Article 3, P4, e, rather than saying, Article 3, P4, fifth bulleted item?


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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 6:31 pm
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Axordil wrote:
jnyusa--

I'm happy for there to be specific goals for specific time frames. You know, like getting the Charter done in April. :D ;)
:salmon:

:D

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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 6:33 pm
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Ax, that was "by April 1." :devil:


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Holbytla
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 6:34 pm
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Of what year? :P

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Primula_Baggins
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Voronwe_the_Faithful wrote:
Ax, that was "by April 1." :devil:
:salmon:
Holbytla wrote:
Of what year? :P
:salmon:

Here I've hardly had this thing out all spring, and today you people are giving it quite a workout.

Cerin, I have copied over your interesting set of questions and will post my own response later today (I hope).

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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 6:37 pm
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Hopefully, along with some suggestions about ACTUAL TEXT. :P


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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 6:41 pm
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Do I need to trout you again? :devil:

All right, boss—I'll do what I can. However, keep in mind that if all thirteen (?) of us supply complete actual text for the mission statement, we'll be wrangling until Michaelmas over whose darlings get included.

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Cerin
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 6:44 pm
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I was thinking we could wait for people to answer the guiding questions, and then we'd have a broader basis from which to formulate 'actual text'. :P


Could you (bwahahaha) put up a board-wide announcement, to the effect that this discussion has commenced, along with a link to the Convention thread in business?

Edit
Primula_Baggins wrote:
Cerin, I have copied over your interesting set of questions and will post my own response later today (I hope).
Those were questions taken from Jn's tutorial. I would not have had a clue myself, as to how to approach the formulation of a Mission Statement. :D


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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Posted: Tue 24 May , 2005 7:11 pm
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Quote:
Could you (bwahahaha) put up a board-wide announcement, to the effect that this discussion has commenced, along with a link to the Convention thread in business?
I had planned to make a statement in the business room thread that this discussion had begun. I hadn't thought of a global announcement. I know some people think such things clutter the board up. Any objections to doing that from the committee members?
Quote:
All right, boss—I'll do what I can. However, keep in mind that if all thirteen (?) of us supply complete actual text for the mission statement, we'll be wrangling until Michaelmas over whose darlings get included.
How about specific comments about what works and what doesn't work about the text that I HAVE proposed. What is good as is. What is okay but needs to be tweaked. What should go altogether. And what should be added.

:)


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