Bylaws!

[guspasho]

Because late is better than never:

Altonimbus Entertainment Bylaws!

This is the governing document of Altonimbus Entertainment, which Kumoricon functions under. Anyone who has registered as staff this year, paid staff dues, and remain in good standing per the staff policies, are members of Altonimbus Entertainment.





[Edit by JeffT: The document linked above reflects the bylaws at the time of this post. Since then, they have been amended (as described below in this thread). The most up-to-date bylaws will always be on this page:

http://www.kumoricon.org/?page_id=128

I've left the link in this post as a record of the bylaws at the time it was posted.]

[JeffT]

This is the governing document of Altonimbus Entertainment, which Kumoricon functions under. Anyone who has registered as staff this year, paid staff dues, and remain in good standing per the staff policies, are members of Altonimbus Entertainment.

Attendees are also members, although they are a different class of members, as defined in the bylaws, which does not have voting rights.

[guspasho]

This is the governing document of Altonimbus Entertainment, which Kumoricon functions under. Anyone who has registered as staff this year, paid staff dues, and remain in good standing per the staff policies, are members of Altonimbus Entertainment.

Attendees are also members, although they are a different class of members, as defined in the bylaws, which does not have voting rights.

Really though, we don't exclude anyone from attending or participating in our general meetings, they are open to the public. Only staff members have the right to vote.

[guspasho]

Man, this is hilarious.

Why is that?

[TomtheFanboy]

Aren't the bylaws going to be updated and voted on right after the election next month?

Is this for the nominees to review?

(also, smaller rocks, less often)

[guspasho]

These are the same bylaws that we have had since elections last year. They have not changed.

The bylaws committee is working on developing a draft of the bylaws to replace the current ones but they still have not been approved.

The drafting process has taken so long and it's become obvious that the current bylaws posted will still be in effect through elections so I put them up. I do not know how much longer it will take to approve the draft bylaws because the bylaws committee still has not approved a draft, and after that a non-profit lawyer has to review them, the board has to approve them, and the membership has to approve them. Until all those things happen the current, effective bylaws will remain ones that were approved last year and posted above.

Because we now have a full year I will attempt to provide a public input period on the draft before they are approved, which may cause further delay in approving the draft bylaws.

[TomtheFanboy]

These are the same bylaws that we have had since elections last year. They have not changed.

The bylaws committee is working on developing a draft of the bylaws to replace the current ones but they still have not been approved.

Thanks, that's the exact clarification I was looking for.

[gemineye42]

My question:

Does this mean that in the elections, are new board members voted on by the current board members, or by all voting members?

[guspasho]

Aren't the bylaws going to be updated and voted on right after the election next month?

Is this for the nominees to review?

(also, smaller rocks, less often)

Ooh, a ninja post. I somehow missed this before.

The bylaws are still being drafted by the bylaws committee (funny how a convention can slow stuff down ) but they need to be approved by the committee, the board, and a non-profit lawyer. Since it is impossible to have them done by elections and we have a full year until the next elections, I would also like to provide time for a public input period in case the public has thought of something the bylaws committee or board has not - not that I intend to deprioritize the bylaws.

This is for everyone to review, since this is our chief governing document and everyone has a right to it.

Smaller rocks? 

[guspasho]

My question:

Does this mean that in the elections, are new board members voted on by the current board members, or by all voting members?

At the annual meeting the membership (the staff) will elect the President/Chair and the department directors, (Operations, Programming, Publicity, and Relations.) These incoming five directors, along with the five founding directors named in the bylaws, will elect the Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, and Facilities Liaison. Founding members may run for any elected position so it's possible for someone to have a board position for more than one reason, but that does not accord additional votes. Votes and quorum are determined by the number of individuals on the board, not the number of board positions. So if I were a founder, Vice President, and Facilities Liaison, I would only have one vote, not three.

[TomtheFanboy]

These incoming five directors, along with the five founding directors named in the bylaws, will elect the Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, and Facilities Liaison.

Nice to see the Facilities Liaison listed separately. I forgot about that.
Is there going to be a new Founding member of the convention to replace Sean?
Do we have to remove his place in the bylaws after the election or has there been policy put in place to nullify all status until the new bylaws are ratified?

[guspasho]

Sean would have to be removed by amendment to the bylaws, unless he dies or resigns the position. All that an amendment has to do is say "in such a such section strike the words "Sean Larson".

Policies cannot override the bylaws, only federal/state/local law. So Sean would have to be removed from the bylaws by amendment (or possibly by asking him to resign his founder position, which he will not, or by killing him  )

[rictheron]

To clarify, the new bylaws being drafted will be taking effect immediately after the member vote and shall be used to govern Altonimbus and subsequently Kumoricon?  How far along are these revisions and is there a projected time at which the changes will be made available for full staff review?

[guspasho]

A draft is supposed to be prepared for the annual meeting, by which time the bylaws committee will decide whether to approve it and present it to the board. There isn't a projected time because as the entire committee consists of staffers the project keeps getting interrupted with other concerns. My personal goal is currently the first meeting after the election, but I don't know how realistic that is because I'm more concerned with getting it right rather than getting it done right away.

[MichaelEvans]

Two questions for the moment:

1) Could we also get a look at whatever the current in revision version of the bylaws is (sort of like unstable CVS snapshots for software)?
2) Is there some specific reason the document is stored in a non-free, if generally well supported, format as opposed to something like html or xhtml or xml?  Especially one of those three as opposed to the other possible open formats given the organization's current method of public publication (a website).

- edited under here -

Not having access to the current draft, I made some changes based on cleaning up the most recent version I had access to.  I've sent them to you guspasho.

[guspasho]

1) Not until the Bylaws Review Committee has completed its draft and is ready for public input. The process has been bogged down long enough simply by limiting the work to this committee, and public input before a draft is ready to consume could only delay a final version's release.

2) No, there is no specific reason. At one point we decided not to post the bylaws publicly because the number of errors were embarrassing and we thought that the revised bylaws would get completed relatively shortly. But, well, back then we thought we might have had them done by March, and obviously that isn't the case now. Feel free to convert the document to Rich Text or PDF and post a link or something. Or upload. It's rarely used but you can attach small files to your forum post.

[JeffT]

2) Is there some specific reason the document is stored in a non-free, if generally well supported, format as opposed to something like html or xhtml or xml?  Especially one of those three as opposed to the other possible open formats given the organization's current method of public publication (a website).

To add to what Rian said, it's also because of Word's change tracking features that makes commenting and editing between us very easy. Yes, it could be done with all free software, but not as easily. Generally we try to post documents in the most accessible formats if not a web page itself, but sometimes we'll post a Word document.

[MichaelEvans]

Yes, I found out the same thing.  wdiff (word based diff... which is actually a hack that uses temp files with one word per line and GNU's diff) can do something that almost cuts it for text files... but it gets bogged down by some sections that just have a little bit of change, instead thinking that it's a massive charge.  The normal output of that, with four string replacement options can be encapsulated in to a webpage though, which makes it very usable.

[guspasho]

These amendments to the bylaws were approved by the Board of the Directors and the Membership on October 6th/7th, 2007.

Amendment 1 (This amendment will only be considered effective if it meets both a 2/3 entire board vote, and a 2/3 vote of the membership at a meeting with no less than 1/5 of eligible voting members (as defined in these bylaws) in attendance. To be held no more than 30 days after board approval):

Amendment to the bylaws of ALTONIMBUS ENTERTAINMENT:

STRIKE ARTICLE 3.B.4:

"The Board may amend the By-Laws of ALTONIMBUS ENTERTAINMENT as deemed necessary or desirable on approval of a 2/3 majority vote by the membership."

STRIKE TEXT FROM ARTICLE 5.E

"Those members attending a meeting shall constitute a quorum."

AND REPLACE WITH

"Quorum for meetings of the membership shall be one fifth of those eligible voting members."

RENAME ARTICLE 8: AMENDMENTS AND DISSOLUTION

INSERT ARTICLE 8.A

A: Amendments

A two thirds vote of the Board and a two thirds vote of the Membership at a meeting that meets quorum and notice requirements as defined in these bylaws shall be required to amend or replace the Articles of Incorporation or these Bylaws.

AND RENUMBER

Board of directors voting record:
Votes in favor: 8 (2/3 of the entire board is 8 )
Opposed: 0
Abstained: 2


Membership voting record:


Amendment 2 (This amendment will only be considered effective if it meets both a 2/3 entire board vote, and a 2/3 vote of the membership at a meeting with no less than 1/5 of eligible voting members (as defined in these bylaws) in attendance. To be held no more than 30 days after board approval):

STRIKE ARTICLE 3.A:

"The Board of Directors shall consist of the Founders of ALTONIMBUS ENTERTAINMENT ("Founding Directors") and such other Directors as from time to time be elected.  The number of Directors on the Board of Directors shall not be less than five or more than 15.   The number of directors shall be set by resolution of the Board.  Each Officer of the corporation shall be a Director, but regardless of how many offices an individual may hold, each person shall have only one vote on the Board of Directors."

AND REPLACE WITH:

"The Board of Directors ("Board") shall consist of the Founders of ALTONIMBUS ENTERTAINMENT ("Founding Directors"), and the Officers defined in these Bylaws. An individual shall only have one vote on the Board as long as they are an Officer. Founding Directors who do not hold an office shall not have a vote on the Board but shall still enjoy the right to participate in meetings of the Board. All individuals on the Board shall be known as "Directors" but only Officers shall be considered "Directors in office".

Board of directors voting record:
Votes in favor: 9 (2/3 of the entire board is 8 )
Opposed: 0
Abstained: 1

Membership voting record:

[guspasho]

BTW, if anyone wants to save myself or Jeff or the secretary some work, feel free to convert the bylaws (with amendments implemented) into XML format and we can probably post it on the website.

[JeffT]

BTW, if anyone wants to save myself or Jeff or the secretary some work, feel free to convert the bylaws (with amendments implemented) into XML format and we can probably post it on the website.

Err...which XML format (schema)? XML is just a generic container type for data. We'd just take it as HTML at this point. (If anyone wants to do this, consult me first on the format guidelines. Otherwise I'll do it or ask somebody to do it shortly.)

[guspasho]

Whatever is easy to plug into the website format.

[MichaelEvans]

I should have time to do this.  I already did it once with the old version that I made my own modifications to.  Jeff, I believe I included you on that mail message too.  Yes, 'kumoricon bylaws proposed revisions mje 20070915' would be the subject.  Would formatting like that match your expectations?  (I'll refrain from posting the version I mailed out, as it might be referenced by mistake)

[guspasho]

My question:

Does this mean that in the elections, are new board members voted on by the current board members, or by all voting members?

At the annual meeting the membership (the staff) will elect the President/Chair and the department directors, (Operations, Programming, Publicity, and Relations.) These incoming five directors, along with the five founding directors named in the bylaws, will elect the Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, and Facilities Liaison. Founding members may run for any elected position so it's possible for someone to have a board position for more than one reason, but that does not accord additional votes. Votes and quorum are determined by the number of individuals on the board, not the number of board positions. So if I were a founder, Vice President, and Facilities Liaison, I would only have one vote, not three.

Here's a fun little experiment in interpreting the amended bylaws. Who gets to elect the Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, Facilities Liaison now?

[gemineye42]

I presumed that once new directors are elected by the membership, as they were yesterday, all board-appointed positions would be void until new people are selected, but the former holders of these positions may act in them until a new person is selected, should the board take a month or however long to elect new people. I wouldn't presume they'd get a vote on their own positions, that seems rather biased. None of the directors got to vote for themselves.

[guspasho]

The directors should have gotten to vote for themselves. But in my opinion board members should not have the same opportunity. The difference is in a general public-type election and a small group-type election.

[gemineye42]

I realize I may be in the wrong here - did any directors get to vote for themselves?

[TomtheFanboy]

Oooh, XML.
I'm taking Acrobat classes right now. Maybe that'll let me make a nice PDF and an XML version....

[MichaelEvans]

BTW, if anyone wants to save myself or Jeff or the secretary some work, feel free to convert the bylaws (with amendments implemented) into XML format and we can probably post it on the website.

Err...which XML format (schema)? XML is just a generic container type for data. We'd just take it as HTML at this point. (If anyone wants to do this, consult me first on the format guidelines. Otherwise I'll do it or ask somebody to do it shortly.)

Open office has an export for xhtml.  Here's what I currently have for the bylaws (source the file posted at the start of this thread) with the strike-throughs and insertions applied as noted in guspasho's post (which I'm trusting matches the meeting min and everyone else's notes, please inform me if something isn't technically correct.  I could have missed something, or quoted too far, etc.)

Also, with a few slight changes to the numbering scheme, it is possible to have everything automatically numbered.

[RemSaverem]

It may be worth including clarification here regarding some of the following:
(a) by when do you want/hope/need to have bylaw revision finished?
(b) by whom (specifically) will this be done?
(c) mention of john's stated commitment at the elections regarding on which types of issues he would abstain from voting
(d) whether and how the board might pursue the idea I proposed that Ryan said might hold merit, of creating some kind of probationary status into which the board could be empowered to place a director who either was neglecting, abusing, or practicing malfeasance in his or her position, accompanied by the idea of the board then being empowered to appoint a temporary director for the interim between when the accused director is informed they are on probation and the general meeting (or whatever) at which the membership (or whomever) has the opportunity to try to press for resignation or otherwise remove the accused director
(e) i would like to see some clarification in the bylaws (if there is not already) regarding how, when, by whom, and with how much detail, various subgroups of people get informed of any alleged neglect, abuse, or malfeasance of position by a director or board member (or by anyone else really). how much detail one receives and when might logically vary with whether one is just a member of the convention community at large, a regular staff/volunteer/panelist, a coordinator, a manager, another director, or a board member, but i think that the con as a whole can suffer when there is ambiguity around a situation and rumors fly, accusations fly, and no one knows what did or did not really happen with regards to an ousted individual. for example. tom asked in the relations nominees thread something like will you run off to spain with convention resources. i read this, i remember having heard that during one of our meetings that he didn't attend sean was in spain, i remember rumors i heard regarding x y and z that i won't reprint, i start wondering is tom privvy to some kind of info i'm not and making a pointed accusation of sean sideways through this question? if something like this happened that would actually be a legal matter and not just one of the board? this leads to another query, although we don't pay our staff/board/directors, we function as though they are employed (job descriptions, etc). does this mean that personnel law (such as not being able to disclose why someone was fired) applies or not? is it different for officers elected by the body of a non-profit, and if so, are we a non-profit, and if so, with what classification? (e.g., 501 (c) 3, (c) 4, etc.) sorry to ask so much, but.....if there really were anything illegal that went on, or a substantive degree of neglect, abuse, or malfeasance within a position, to what extent would it be incumbent upon us ethically, or prohibited of us legally, to provide detailed warning to any other con that could be employing the fired/asked to resign individual? we should probably tidy up policy on such things to prevent litigability......

[guspasho]

Ahh! Large blocks of unformatted text!

a) Right now I think Mike is expecting the bylaws committee to complete a draft by whenever he calls his board meeting for, which I expect will be in about a month. At this point I think it's fair to hold our feet to the fire on getting this moved along.

b) The work is being done by the bylaws committee which consists of myself, Ryan Stasel, Jeff Tyrrill, and Meg Uhde. I have sort of taken the lead role in the drafting process, and Ryan and Jeff and Meg offer input for me to implement. The bylaws revision isn't necessarily any of our first priorities, as we all have other official positions too, which is largely why it's taken so long.

c) That's not a bylaws thing. John's commitment is entirely optional on his part. I can only think that you may ask him to put his statement in writing on the forums somewhere, or something like that. What you may also want to do - if John is willing to accept the request - is ask him to ask that the minutes record how he votes each time he votes so his voting record can be clearly determined.

d) Probation would definitely have to be provided for in the bylaws in order for the board to have that kind of authority. I'm going to take a look at all the ideas recorded in the meeting minutes to see what will work best. I'm hesitant to grant any authority for the board to interfere with membership-elected directors' authority unless the membership appeared to be willing to accept it. My concern is the possible abuse and usurpation of membership power by a "bad board". We might revisit it at the next meeting, or in discussion on the forums.

e) The clarification you are asking for is what I was asking the membership at the meeting, because we don't know what is fair and appropriate. Our opinion is, mostly, that "what happens in the board meeting stays in the board meeting" and that anything else may end up being unnecessarily damaging, and tantamount to basically spreading rumors or letting them fester. We're not sure what to do, and how to appropriately divulge information when problems occur. If we knew the answer to that we would definitely look to implementing them in the bylaws.

Well, to explain the example you provided, Sean did skip a meeting to go to Spain. He didn't do it on convention resources as Tom implied. And he wasn't fired as a result or anything. He had stopped doing his job for several months and eventually he simply resigned. Unfortunately, some people like to create and spread rumors. Tom is definitely one of those. And I probably, intentionally or otherwise, passed that information to Tom, and based on what he did with that information, much to my regret. I try to be transparent and forthcoming when I'm asked questions but in the future I probably will not be as much with Tom or in his presence.

To attempt to answer your further questions, we are a registered Mutual Benefit Nonprofit with the state of Oregon. You can view our status by looking up "Altonimbus" on the Secretary of State's website. We do not have a nonprofit status with the federal government so we don't qualify for any 501(c) classification, or at least we haven't attempted to apply for one, and we pay taxes on our profits to the IRS, but not Oregon income tax. Oregon considers us nonprofit, the federal government does not.

I believe that we are bound to the same restrictions on a regular corporation regarding firing practices and such. I'm confident in saying what I do about Sean because it is beyond dispute. I don't think personnel law can apply to elected officials since their nature requires that any firing occur by a group vote of some kind, and although the board meetings that may discuss such matters may be kept private, membership meetings cannot be kept private. So I don't know the answer to that. But ultimately Sean did nothing illegal leading up to his resignation, he was merely negligent.

As to informing other cons, in my opinion, that is the responsibility of the chair.

[staze]

As an additional note Ellen, some of the things you bring up are not specified in the bylaws, but by the convention charter (which is also being worked on).

Ultimately, the bylaws define Altonimbus Entertainment on a business level. The charter will then define Kumoricon. Basically, we don't want to have to amend the bylaws to create a new event, or amend them should Kumoricon die, or it's name be changed, etc.

As for the 1st two questions, Rian answered them pretty well, but I'm not confident that at our current rate, a draft could be ready be then. We certainly have most of the framework in place, but I don't know.

Lastly, the bylaws process is larger than just us writing them, and them being approved. I am fully intending to have this be a, draft presentation, board comments period, integration of comments, introduction to general staff, comment period, integration, final board approval, final staff approval. So basically, we're in step 1. Assuming we get a draft ready for this next meeting, or the meeting after, I would say the general staff will be seeing them first around Jan or Feb (hopefully sooner, but we'll see).

Personally, I would somewhat prefer this thread remain stagnant/locked until such time as we present something to the staff for them to actually comment on.

Just to close, here is our Oregon registration: http://egov.sos.state.or.us/br/pkg_web_name_srch_inq.show_detl?p_be_rsn=1019497&p_srce=BR_INQ&p_print=FALSE

And, lastly, I wouldn't say Sean skipped a meeting to go to Spain. That's like saying I skipped a meeting to get Married. It was unfortunate timing on both parts, and bad form on Sean's since he had previously missed meetings.

Thanks...

[gemineye42]

I had an idea in regards to staff and voting privileges that pertains to how they are written in the bylaws. Who should I speak to? Thanks!

[JeffT]

I presumed that once new directors are elected by the membership, as they were yesterday, all board-appointed positions would be void until new people are selected, but the former holders of these positions may act in them until a new person is selected, should the board take a month or however long to elect new people. I wouldn't presume they'd get a vote on their own positions, that seems rather biased. None of the directors got to vote for themselves.

The board-elected directors remain in office past the general elections until the annual board meeting, which must take place within 30 days of the general elections meeting. During this time, they have board votes. This could potentially matter if a board meeting other than the "annual meeting" is called in the interim, or if issues are voted on at the annual meeting before the election of board positions.

As to whether the existing board members get to vote on the new ones, and as for the exact moments in time the positions become filled by the new officers (one at a time, or at the end of all the votes), the bylaws do not specify, which is a problem with our bylaws.

[JeffT]

The complete bylaws, as fully amended, are now online as a web page and linked from the Documents page.

I've left the link in the original post to point to the document as it was at that point in time. That document has not been updated to reflect the amendments, but the web page linked above will be always kept up to date with the current bylaws.

[MichaelEvans]

As an additional note Ellen, some of the things you bring up are not specified in the bylaws, but by the convention charter (which is also being worked on).

Ultimately, the bylaws define Altonimbus Entertainment on a business level. The charter will then define Kumoricon. Basically, we don't want to have to amend the bylaws to create a new event, or amend them should Kumoricon die, or it's name be changed, etc.

As for the 1st two questions, Rian answered them pretty well, but I'm not confident that at our current rate, a draft could be ready be then. We certainly have most of the framework in place, but I don't know.

Lastly, the bylaws process is larger than just us writing them, and them being approved. I am fully intending to have this be a, draft presentation, board comments period, integration of comments, introduction to general staff, comment period, integration, final board approval, final staff approval. So basically, we're in step 1. Assuming we get a draft ready for this next meeting, or the meeting after, I would say the general staff will be seeing them first around Jan or Feb (hopefully sooner, but we'll see).

Personally, I would somewhat prefer this thread remain stagnant/locked until such time as we present something to the staff for them to actually comment on.

Just to close, here is our Oregon registration: http://egov.sos.state.or.us/br/pkg_web_name_srch_inq.show_detl?p_be_rsn=1019497&p_srce=BR_INQ&p_print=FALSE

And, lastly, I wouldn't say Sean skipped a meeting to go to Spain. That's like saying I skipped a meeting to get Married. It was unfortunate timing on both parts, and bad form on Sean's since he had previously missed meetings.

Thanks...

I had an idea in regards to staff and voting privileges that pertains to how they are written in the bylaws. Who should I speak to? Thanks!

It's nearing the second general meeting, and almost 3 months since anything like the last status update.
I too have ideas that I simply cannot sit on any longer.

When are we going to get something we can start commenting on so the bylaws can start receiving the benefit of community involvement and evolutionary adaptation to overcome potential pitfalls and inadequacies?

If I don't see something to start putting effort in to soon, I think it quite likely that I'll spend any free time I have between here and the general meeting writing my own proposal so there's at least something for the community to comment on.

[rictheron]

Just a quick note on this.  After the completion of the elections, both member and board, the bylaws committee had to be reformed to accomodate new board members who have been reviewing the bylaws draft notes.  Shortly there after, 2 of the 5 members of the committee involved with the bylaws were placed on a hiatus for a month.  We are working on it but some patience is required while we go through revisions. 
  Everyone is welcome to make their proposals and to help out as they see fit, but please be aware that we are working on this, as well as many other things, with an eye towards creating a set of laws which will help this convention continue for years. So please do not begrudge us some time to try and make this work the best we can.  Thank you.

[MichaelEvans]

  Everyone is welcome to make their proposals and to help out as they see fit, but please be aware that we are working on this, as well as many other things, with an eye towards creating a set of laws which will help this convention continue for years. So please do not begrudge us some time to try and make this work the best we can.  Thank you.

Everyone else could help out best working on a single unified vision.  So far, there has not been one published in this thread.  I have no idea what they need help with, what they have completed, or if any work has occurred at all.  Thus leaving me only one option.

Here is a proposed version of the bylaws I constructed based upon my own observation of our current procedures, solutions to flaws I see, our current bylaws, and the bylaws of our older sister convention.

[MichaelEvans]

The attached file is an html file, like you'd see on a website.  You may have to associate that file-type to a web browser, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.

In case you still can't open it, but only if you try, I'll post it in some other format if requested.

[gemineye42]

I like this re-write, personally. I would like to see though a better definition of volunteers as opposed to staff, and what rights they have as such, and how a volunteer may qualify to become staff at a later point. We should also mention something of the new volunteer process where a director can appoint a staff position if there is obviously a need and a volunteer has been filling it, and make them staff. Otherwise the only difference is staff can vote and gave the con $10.

Also, spellcheck is win.

[MichaelEvans]

I like this re-write, personally. I would like to see though a better definition of volunteers as opposed to staff, and what rights they have as such, and how a volunteer may qualify to become staff at a later point. We should also mention something of the new volunteer process where a director can appoint a staff position if there is obviously a need and a volunteer has been filling it, and make them staff. Otherwise the only difference is staff can vote and gave the con $10.

Also, spellcheck is win.

Spell-checking I have.  However, one point that worries me (but not enough to shell out $100+196 for something I rarely use) is that it lacks grammar-checking, making proper peer review even more important.  I know from past experience that I really need grammar checking, especially for words that sound the same, but are spelled differently.  Did such a mistake slip through?

Also, I'll try to make the difference between staff and volunteers more clear in revision later tonight if I'm just waiting for stuff to break at work, instead of fixing it.

-
Edit:  Holy cow, it's even more expensive then I ever thought, and for the wrong OS! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116092

[MichaelEvans]

I searched for and found an addon for OpenOffice that kind of does grammar check, only not nearly as well as I need.  When I was rewriting the Staff position stuff I realized I may have used the wrong spelling of role, and did a quick thesaurus check.  I ended up doing a search and replace on that.  However I've got no idea what else I may have missed, other than then.

I should clarify that currently Volunteers are defined precisely as they should be according to the discussions we had at Membership meetings last year.  A volunteer is literally anyone who's volunteering time with us (which includes staff, but it's sort of ignored that Staff are Volunteers which are also part of the Membership...).  I'm merely codifying that decision in to the written text in a clear way, while also allowing anyone to be a volunteer without having to pay money. (A good idea for community service for example, though I'm not really sure there would be many cases where we would want to allow someone who has to do community service perform it with us...)

As far as the reasoning behind making it a little difficult to create new staff positions, staff positions entitle voting rights, which could unfairly be used to quickly unbalance the system to the point where it either no longer functions, or worse, malfunctions with emergency powers exercised as a hostile takeover.

[DancingTofu]

I just scanned them over and emailed my results to Jeff.  Most of my significant editions were breaking up confusing phrases (these were all highlighted in red).  I found 5 or 6 errors that were simply punctuation, one instead of "my" where it should have been "may", and the only other modifications that I didn't highlight were consistency errors.  The primary consistency error in question was Officer/officer.  I changed all incidents where it was noted as "officer" to "Officer", where "Officer" referred to an Officer on the Board.

[MichaelEvans]

I just scanned them over and emailed my results to Jeff.  Most of my significant editions were breaking up confusing phrases (these were all highlighted in red).  I found 5 or 6 errors that were simply punctuation, one instead of "my" where it should have been "may", and the only other modifications that I didn't highlight were consistency errors.  The primary consistency error in question was Officer/officer.  I changed all incidents where it was noted as "officer" to "Officer", where "Officer" referred to an Officer on the Board.

Most occurrences of words with extra capitalization are due to something that I setup to be processed by a script I wrote to clean up OpenOffice's xhtml export filter.  While I clean it up, I apply smallcaps and hyperlinking to words that are defined elsewhere.  That's the same reason I post the exported version and not the raw version (though I will send or post it upon request).  To avoid confusion.

Last night while printing out the bylaws things at work, I discovered that even associated Internet Explorer can't work with the .xhtml extension, but likes .html just fine.  Firefox did not have that issue, and happens to be my browser of choice.

I improved this version with some things discussed during the meeting, and which I got from discussion at the meeting.

Most notably, I slightly altered the meeting and voting requirements, and added a process for having a vote outside of a meeting, as well as allowing special meetings to occur on the forums.

I didn't take notes that were detailed enough at the time, and I cannot remember hearing which department will be responsible for the logistics of the equipment we are going to help community events with.

There are still several 'FIXME's in there, but those should be addressed in context for the most part.

emailing Jeff may eventually get the corrections back to me, however posting them here would be better (Please do not use the 'note' feature from Word's document format... ODF's current version only supports point notes (a little character sized discoloration).  So I'm likely miss them.  Highlighting manually should work just fine.  As far as fixing ODF and having OpenOffice support that version, they're (slowly for my tastes) working on it...)

[MichaelEvans]

I just scanned them over and emailed my results to Jeff.  Most of my significant editions were breaking up confusing phrases (these were all highlighted in red).  I found 5 or 6 errors that were simply punctuation, one instead of "my" where it should have been "may", and the only other modifications that I didn't highlight were consistency errors.  The primary consistency error in question was Officer/officer.  I changed all incidents where it was noted as "officer" to "Officer", where "Officer" referred to an Officer on the Board.

I've still not seen any forward from Jeff, however I have to wonder, thinking about it further, if you were actually reviewing the current bylaws, or my un-official draft.

What does it mean when I say mine is an 'un-official draft'?  Simply that I have not actually been asked to perform such work, and that there is no current expectation for review, oversite, or ultimate plan for inclusion of my work in to any official effort, at this time.

I am of coursed, slightly biased, in my opinion as to the above statement.

I went through, fixed some spelling errors caused by the clunky addon language checker for OOo (they're cased when you move the document window, AT ALL, during the 'check' process, which I sometimes REALLY like doing so I can see the context of the error...), broke later sections out to temp documents to check and fix errors hidden by obvious checker glitchings after multiple ignores (it's definitely not ready for prime time...), and added one important clause do the Quorum section of Voting.

Quorum
   1. Any positions defined within these Bylaws or approved Department Structure Documents which are not filled shall be counted as anonymous, always abstaining, members of the bodies such positions are part of, and if unfilled for more than 100 days the last individual to hold said position, regardless of current standing with Altonimbus, shall be permitted the voting and meeting related rights of that position.

Oh, background stuff.  I altered how I was setting up the lists and removed one anchor tag that had commas.  Now the page is fully CSS, xhtml strict, and linking validated (w3 standard tool checks).

- EDIT -

I should also repeat and summarize some things at this point.

• I want any input you want to provide about improvements/complaints/suggestions in general relating to my bylaws draft.
• Points that are vague, unclear, or otherwise that you don't think have been properly made.
• Data for ?FIXME?'s
• Grammar corrections, and anything else of that nature.  (I never considered being anything like an English major, know I have shortcomings, and worse, that <$200 programs lack any real kind of grammar-check at the moment.)
• Your opinion in general, even just replying with "I read (full draft name) and liked everything." or "It's broken, I can't get it to open right." would be helpful (of course please be truthful.)

[DancingTofu]

I proofread and editted the one that Jeff linked to.  I'm guessing yours would be the one in your signature?  I haven't looked at that yet.


Is there some way I can upload or attach it?  If I just post what I have, all the formatting will be lost.

[MichaelEvans]

Yes, actually.

Forum help, 103:  "Additional Options"

Beneath the edit window when you post is an image + text link (+ Additional Options...).

Click it, if it does nothing, you're probably using firefox and noscript, Click the S at the bottom right of your browser, and allow kumoricon.org scripts to run.

It pops open, and you have three check boxes (they're self explanatory), and an attachment line.  You can attach up to 4 files, per reply, but they must all be smaller then 128kb (Honestly, why?  Hard drive space is sooo cheep, and you can break the 4 file limit by replying multiple times... it's more of a hassle then anything, but large uploads are more likely to break... (IE connection timeout or similar.)).

To attach a file click the 'Browse...' button, which will let you 'open' a file for attachment.  When you hit Post it will send the file.

Then when looking at posts, you will see an additional area, above the signature but beneath the post, which contains the files that were attached to that post.

Downloading them is very easy.

-

Probably whatever editor's HTML cut/paste import support is better at coping with the formatting that I desire then me randomly picking an export and trying to get OOo to do it...  So go ahead and do that.

[DancingTofu]

Totally missed the "Additional Options" the last two things I checked for it.  Not sure how; I guess I was just looking for it somewhere else or something.

Anyway, the attached file is a slightly editted version of the EXISTING by-laws.  I'll hopefully get yours looked over tomorrow.

Blue = redundant; removal/revisal advised
Red = poorly phrased; revisal strongly advised

[MichaelEvans]

Specific phrasings and ideas in mine were copied from the existing bylaws, however it's undergone some substantial refactoring and in areas I have directly participated in I've been able to expand it further with my own experience, and how things were run/could be improved.  I suspect you may see some of the smaller errors slipped past during that process, but I hope the larger ones are not an issue.

[MichaelEvans]

Well, it's been nearly a week so I've collected all the known issues I can think of and applied solutions for them within my version of the Bylaws.  Things are slowly getting better, but there's still one major issue outstanding.

Text that is green is text that I added (or changed, aside from little things like changing words to become hyperlinked.)
Text that is red indicates there's a FIXME that probably covers that section (check near the top of the red sections).

I had to manually add the classes after the export filter because it's not smart enough to properly insert them when it later finds a fixme... so it may have human errors, and the new stuff would require comparison with prior versions anyway.

This update mostly adds Status Updates and clarifies Document Availability, with marks for one big section I'll need help with.