Future Planning: Fully Online Voting?

[MichaelEvans]

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There is a lot of background, for the details please read the thread about my motion at the February 2008 meeting.

In short I reached a conclusion that we no longer really need to have Meetings as we have them now, with the exception of the Annual Meeting.

For all the other meetings we currently have we'd separate things out functionally.

• Meets and Greets would occur through schedule activities and events held with roughly the same frequency that we currently have meetings.
• Reports and such would be based on time.
• Voting and all procedural matters would occur through a cryptographically secured process.

It's that last one that seems to have the most confusion, so I'd like to cover it in more detail, and answer questions about it.  However I was told that the issue should be separated from the motion and have thus created this instead.

You might think that it's complex, and in reality the details that matter are.  However actual day to day use of it is very similar to what we already do, and things we're already quite able to do.

You might also think that it requires expensive software.  Everything I'm using to post this, create this, and even to digitally secure my message, are in fact, completely free.  100% free.  I paid nothing for it, it's totally legal, and I can even see the source code with a tiny bit of effort (downloading some additional things).  Similar solutions exist for Windows, Mac OS, etc.

Next, you might wonder why there is this strange bit of text around my message?

Well, if you 'quote' me, and copy everything that's between the end of the [ quote ] start, and the [ /quote ] end, you can then use one of the programs referenced in the other thread, and the attached public key (As of yet, no one has 'signed' it signifying that it's been validated to represent me.  I can explain that later.) to check that this message was in fact signed by the matching private (secret) key that only I keep.

Programs that work with these keys typically secure them by scrambling them (not the proper term, but probably the closest term for anyone reading about cryptography for the first time here) based on a password that is asked for each time you want to sign something or encrypt something with it.   That is, this is based on something you have (the private key) and something you know (the password).

Signing something with these programs means that they run a special math problem over it, which produces a short summary number.  Then your private key is used to alter that number in a way that can be verified by the public key.  In that way, anyone else can use the same formula, then check the result by trying to decode your signature with the public key.  If they match, then the information is the same as the information the signing party saw.  (Technically since it's a reduction there could be more then one message that produces the same result, however the odds of that message actually looking like a valid message are astronomical.  The math problems generally also use a few other tricks to raise the odds of this even higher.)

By using these tools it's possible to build different things.

1) Establishing a relationship between a given Public/Private key pair and a Person.
2) Verifying that clear text (like this post) messages were signed by that Person and unaltered since. (Like this one)
3) By using the Public key, ensuring messages are sent so that only the proper user with a Private key may decode them.

Here are some links to software that the average user may find easy enough to use under various operating systems...

Windows: http://www.gpg4win.org/ (the guide is towards the end of that short list at the top left)
OSX: MacGPG with? GPG tools
Linux: Please Google/etc the following terms to get a guide for your distribution.  Name-of-your-distribution(EG Ubuntu) kgpg OR seahorse
(So for ubuntu, you might google:  ubuntu kgpg OR seahorse )

Multi-OS: http://www.media-art-online.org/wija/ (This -might- work... if it does it looks like it supports other operating systems too.  It looks like it may be slightly more difficult to find a good user interface for GPG for the mac, but one should exist somewhere.)

For use with Firefox see FireGPG


General information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Privacy_Guard

And of course, the background mentioned at the top of this (see that thread).

Note: Edit #3, trying to figure out why it failed to verify...
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iD8DBQFHtU8LNtNlwzbQFW0RAoTiAJ4qEJIye73H7qzaiLlpxyq7MAx8RgCcCtdQ
j/MUMwOMqGXqU/qUiD5R1w0=
=MyL4
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[MichaelEvans]

Ok, the second time it worked.  I must have accidentally done something not QUITE correctly without realizing it.  I could have easily accidentally selected part of the signed message with the side of my thumb on the mouse-pad, and altered it without realizing.  Realizing?  I thought that was with an S... I hope the dictionary didn't revert back to English.GB again...


-- Further Edits --

Originally this was a mistaken reply.  However I'll add some content to it.

If anyone at all wants to help me demonstrate how to use this, and comment on how easy or difficult it is, I'd like to virtually go through some of the exercises.  We'll also probably want to use either keys we plan to dispose of, or keys created specifically for training purposes.

I'll help by role-playing through a few of the more key events, such as what is normally called a key signing party.  Pretty much taking a copy of a few pieces of information, exchanging, verifying, and then validating it.  To do so, at the point of exchange you taking a peek at an official ID, like a driver's license (You can blank out everything but the mailing address and photo id with tape or something), then later at your computer, you take the information that you verified matched an ID, and match it to the Staff List as an example.  At which point you've verified that the person who says they're someone actually is, and that they gave you this piece of information that can be used to verify messages they send, their public key.

The next step, which is somewhat important, is to send them a message with the public key, to make sure that they control the private key (the only key that can decode it), and have not instead given you someone else's key by mistake or worse.

If a few people help out, I can even demonstrate how a web of trust works by extending that method.

[MichaelEvans]

http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/gpgwin-Screenshot-35240.html << Some screen-shots of the windows software.

Interestingly, Gmail and FireGPG seem to integrate nicely, very easy buttons integrated in proper areas to let the user do exactly what they want with the message.  You can't see it here, since I've yet to receive an encoded mail with it, but it should also show signature/crypto status from others.

Depending upon the key-size (difficulty to crack), your computer's speed (mostly CPU), and your Internet connection the download.  Start to  the completion of a key should as little as 20 min, or as much as an hour (if your connection is slow, or you have a slower CPU and choose a huge key (4096 bit)).

To start with, I suggest a demonstration key.  My "Mobile AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3400+" based laptop was able to produce a 1024 bit key in about a min.

That way when I cooperate with you for a demo, we won't have odd signatures on our keys.  We also won't need to exchange anything, and can revoke the trusts on them when the demo is completed.

-- edit 1 --
Forgot to attach the image.

[babysugarbear28]

MichaelEvans

First off I would like to say that I believe that these posts that you've been putting up regarding the the remote voting process, online voting process and the lack of need for general meetings SHOULD be placed within the general discussion of the STAFF forum as all these subjects are regarding staff and not general atendees.

The way I see it Michael everything that you say or do here on the forums so far to date is in the benefit of you and you alone. When I read your posts it is hard to tell what you are saying anymore and if everything is formatted in such a way that you are the only one that has the ability to read it, then what is the point of being involved anymore because in the end I become uninformed staff member and unable to make a decision that is in the best interested of not only myself but also in the best interests of the con. Michael do everybody a favor and look at these acts you preform (your suggestion of remote voting/ hoop jumping, all the screaming about the bylaws, asking the hotel to reprogram their elevators, the hijacking of other peoples' posts and your suggestions to use programming that hardly anybody has the ability or knowledge of how to use) and all your selfcentered behavior before inflicting, not only the rest the staff members, but now the regular atendees on the forums with your acts of idiocracy.

Not only are you stepping on everybody's toes and making it harder for us to do our jobs for something that is supposed to be a for the fans, by the fans non profit convention, but you are angering people in the process which is not only destructive for business, but it creates a large ammount of bad blood that could be potentially scaring off people that we would love to have as future volunteers or staff.

We have open general meetings so that the puplic (atendees) can see what goes on and can become informed on things that go on between staff and the board if they so wish to be. Volunteers are able to atend these meetings for that same reason because an informed volunteer is far more useful than one who has no knowledge of the system. I as a volunteer regularly attended meetings and therefore gained a far better understanding of what was going on in the inner workings of the convention that I love so much that I am putting a great deal of my own time into.

To eliminate the face to face nature of our public meetings entirely is an idea that I cannot in any way support. If anything we are lacking alot of face to face time in our own meetings. Our staff members need to know who the rest of the staff members are and who our board memebers are so if they need to speak to another staff member or a board member they know exactly who to speak with and this builds good blood relations between staff so that we may work better together as a team and as a family. As I have heard, when Kumoricon began the meetings used to be not only about the business of the con, but also very much a social occasion for people to get together and meet one another face to face. IF we spent less time debating over ideas such as the ones that you have been presenting over the last few months there would be more time for this social interaction that we are indeed lacking.

I find that it is a sad day when I, being the only registered staff for Post Registration did not really even recognize my Reg Manager, because there are so many squabbles like the ones you have been presenting and firing up that I have very little time to actually speak to and meet the other members of the staff whom I will be needing to work very closely with over the many months ahead.

In saying all this I must digress back to the point at hand. We must maintain the monthly meetings with voting rights for those who do attend.

BSB28

[AnimeMatrix]

MichaelEvans

First off I would like to say that I believe that these posts that you've been putting up regarding the the remote voting process, online voting process and the lack of need for general meetings SHOULD be placed within the general discussion of the STAFF forum as all these subjects are regarding staff and not general atendees.

The way I see it Michael everything that you say or do here on the forums so far to date is in the benefit of you and you alone. When I read your posts it is hard to tell what you are saying anymore and if everything is formatted in such a way that you are the only one that has the ability to read it, then what is the point of being involved anymore because in the end I become uninformed staff member and unable to make a decision that is in the best interested of not only myself but also in the best interests of the con. Michael do everybody a favor and look at these acts you preform (your suggestion of remote voting/ hoop jumping, all the screaming about the bylaws, asking the hotel to reprogram their elevators, the hijacking of other peoples' posts and your suggestions to use programming that hardly anybody has the ability or knowledge of how to use) and all your selfcentered behavior before inflicting, not only the rest the staff members, but now the regular atendees on the forums with your acts of idiocracy.

Not only are you stepping on everybody's toes and making it harder for us to do our jobs for something that is supposed to be a for the fans, by the fans non profit convention, but you are angering people in the process which is not only destructive for business, but it creates a large ammount of bad blood that could be potentially scaring off people that we would love to have as future volunteers or staff.

We have open general meetings so that the puplic (atendees) can see what goes on and can become informed on things that go on between staff and the board if they so wish to be. Volunteers are able to atend these meetings for that same reason because an informed volunteer is far more useful than one who has no knowledge of the system. I as a volunteer regularly attended meetings and therefore gained a far better understanding of what was going on in the inner workings of the convention that I love so much that I am putting a great deal of my own time into.

To eliminate the face to face nature of our public meetings entirely is an idea that I cannot in any way support. If anything we are lacking alot of face to face time in our own meetings. Our staff members need to know who the rest of the staff members are and who our board memebers are so if they need to speak to another staff member or a board member they know exactly who to speak with and this builds good blood relations between staff so that we may work better together as a team and as a family. As I have heard, when Kumoricon began the meetings used to be not only about the business of the con, but also very much a social occasion for people to get together and meet one another face to face. IF we spent less time debating over ideas such as the ones that you have been presenting over the last few months there would be more time for this social interaction that we are indeed lacking.

I find that it is a sad day when I, being the only registered staff for Post Registration did not really even recognize my Reg Manager, because there are so many squabbles like the ones you have been presenting and firing up that I have very little time to actually speak to and meet the other members of the staff whom I will be needing to work very closely with over the many months ahead.

In saying all this I must digress back to the point at hand. We must maintain the monthly meetings with voting rights for those who do attend.

BSB28

I wholeheartedly agree- that's why I ask Mr. Evans what his intentions were in another thread (and I've never even met him!) I really think the motions that Mr. Evans is making is for staff to decide because staff have voting rights, though the input by general attendees is much appreciated, ultimately it's up to the staff (though of course, if any general attendees would LIKE to become staff and gain voting rights, we certainly won't argue ^_^). I really like the general meetings because it creates that personal connection that the internet can't ever recreate. Also, I agree with babysugarbear that general meetings aren't just general meetings- they are kind of like social gatherings in which you also hear updates about the con as well.

[MichaelEvans]

First off I would like to say that I believe that these posts that you've been putting up regarding the the remote voting process, online voting process and the lack of need for general meetings SHOULD be placed within the general discussion of the STAFF forum as all these subjects are regarding staff and not general atendees.

Why this discussion is here, instead of in the staff forums?  The general meetings are open to the public at large.  Therefore discussion of items from said meetings should be as well.  We may well want to create a different area where threads specific to meeting information can be created by any staff member.  The current Meeting area is -not- setup that way.  At the moment the General forum is the only proper venue for this type of information.

An alternate method, which we do not currently have any procedures in place for, would be explicit allowance of moderated thread creation in the meeting forum.  Probably moderators for that forum moving or creating posts in that area.
shunted

The way I see it Michael everything that you say or do here on the forums so far to date is in the benefit of you and you alone.

It is impossible to deny that anyone is driven by what benefits them.  However I would argue that in this case; establishing a way of allowing for more staff participation, allowing staff to participate on an issue level as they desire, and instead of meetings having Meet-Ups at various places where we'd actually have a group bonding activity instead of a procedural nightmare: would benefit everyone. (Grammar note, sorry for probably butchering it...)

(PS: Yes, I read, and will re-read when done posting this the large cuts.  I do not currently have anything I can say in response to these sections, and am therefore keeping only areas relevant to my replies.)

...
To eliminate the face to face nature of our public meetings entirely is an idea that I cannot in any way support. If anything we are lacking alot of face to face time in our own meetings. Our staff members need to know who the rest of the staff members are and who our board memebers are so if they need to speak to another staff member or a board member they know exactly who to speak with and this builds good blood relations between staff so that we may work better together as a team and as a family. As I have heard, when Kumoricon began the meetings used to be not only about the business of the con, but also very much a social occasion for people to get together and meet one another face to face. IF we spent less time debating over ideas such as the ones that you have been presenting over the last few months there would be more time for this social interaction that we are indeed lacking.

I find that it is a sad day when I, being the only registered staff for Post Registration did not really even recognize my Reg Manager, because there are so many squabbles like the ones you have been presenting and firing up that I have very little time to actually speak to and meet the other members of the staff whom I will be needing to work very closely with over the many months ahead.

I am not in any way proposing that General Meetings go behind closed doors.  In fact I want them to be held in the wide open, where -everything- is preserved for later observation by those who couldn't make it at the moment it happened.

The issue of face time.  I'm extremely bad at remembering names and faces, I always have been.  I know i'm a poor judge of this.  However I'd like to say that the actual meeting format, aside from maybe breakouts afterwards, is a really poor place to help learn faces, names, and roles.

Having something different replace the current monthly meeting, maybe planned activities at places, with breakout between the activities, would likely be far more constructive.  We don't even have to use other venues then the ones we currently use for meetings, just do the meeting stuff elsewhere and use the area purely for fun and breakout.   All the business crap that I agree is taking too much time at current meetings, would get moved elsewhere.

[MichaelEvans]

...
I wholeheartedly agree- that's why I ask Mr. Evans what his intentions were in another thread (and I've never even met him!) I really think the motions that Mr. Evans is making is for staff to decide because staff have voting rights, though the input by general attendees is much appreciated, ultimately it's up to the staff (though of course, if any general attendees would LIKE to become staff and gain voting rights, we certainly won't argue ^_^). I really like the general meetings because it creates that personal connection that the internet can't ever recreate. Also, I agree with babysugarbear that general meetings aren't just general meetings- they are kind of like social gatherings in which you also hear updates about the con as well.

I don't think I've ever suggested these issues be decided by anyone besides the Staff, not even the Board.  Though there is one place where I have suggested one possible way of becoming compliant with ORS65 that bends that slightly.

I'm explicitly saying, as I said above, that I think the Social meeting, and Business (voting, motions, status reports, etc) meeting should be separated.  Here, I'm mostly focusing on the Business Meeting part, and merely saying I think the Social part should be decided elsewhere.  Which is something of a cop out because I don't have any solid good ideas for it, just bits and pieces of a few ideas that I don't have a proper sounding board to toss them at and see how things mix.

I'd really love it if someone else made a thread for picking that part up, especially if you had good ideas for it.

Are you two (and maybe others?) asking me to instead pull the better written external documents in here, with some formatting?

Say create a story version of how I'd think we should be doing this?

-- Edit 1 --
Clearly I had meetings on the brain, fixed that to what I probably meant to say in the first place, thread.

[babysugarbear28]

First off, No Michael, simply no, You cannot place something that deals with staff only such as voting rights in a public setting when it deals purely with the staff members, whom I might add, pour their souls into the convention year round to earn that right to vote at meetings.

Secondly, I do believe that everything that I've seen you suggest has been self centered and confusing as you do flip flop, on one hand you want to get skype long distance voting for people like myself who can't always come to the meetings but on the other you want to disban all general meetings besides the main general election? Come now really what are you trying to get at? If you can make it to one of these so called locations which indeed puts more strain on our staff leading staff members why can't you try to make it all the way to the actual meeting itself? Its a bad idea and it is once more putting the strain on our already stretched thin convention staff. Why you can't see this, I am really not sure, but open your eyes because your suggestions are taxing and have obviously have not been well received by anybody. Quit being so self centered, this convention isn't all about you and the way you want things to be run. Open your eyes and see that everything that the majority of us do is in the best interest of the convention itself and not in our own best interests. I could save my mom alot of gas money by not attending a majority of the meetings, but I go so that I can be informed about what is going on and so that the price of everything does not become the welfare of the convention itself. I do everything for the convention and for the atendees that go to it. Having stated all this it is obvious if you even care to speak with anybody that we already have a great work load on our hands and you want to create more? What is the cost Michael? Think about that before you go making everybody else do all the work.

Thirdly if you try to make the meetings completely over the internet and as "wide open" as you say then you deprive the people who do not always have internet access of their rights as staff. I know that some staff use library computers to check the forums or have slow connections. Everything that I have seen seems to work better face to face. Not Only that, but it is hard to read a person and their intentions if they are not in the same room with you. Currently I've not a clue what your intentions are other than to make an already busy staff do more work and make them wait longer for results to things which are better left purely in the meetings themselves. To put this simply, I refuse to jump through your hoops, to get new programs to bog my computer down with, to deal with your online voting shananigans and time consuming extra processes to get what has already been doing well on its own done in some more complex way. I refuse. If something isn't broken, why try to fix it?

Once More.... If we were able to eliminate useless squabbling over the same material that we've been going over here when we are attending the meetings themselves then perhaps we would have more breakout time to get to meet other people and get more official section things done. It couldn't hurt to have other meetups for staff (other than our lovely staff retreat and our winter party) but they are called general MEETINGS for a reason. We have to MEET and DECIDE upon certain things which must be voted upon by INFORMED STAFF. So although we are lacking personal time to talk to other staff we do have to maintain a sense of business so that things can get done in a timely manner.

IF you wish to have staff gatherings throughout the year then maybe you should give suggestions as to where and when instead of trying to make everything internet based. Even better though, maybe you should fork out the money it costs for us for us to have said gatherings. I would love it if you took more than a fifty of us out to sushi or payed for BBQ for all of us. Though I suppose you hadn't entirely thought of that before now either.

Think things through before you suggest them.
Suggest them in such a way that people can actually understand them if you suggest them at all.

And NO, I don't want to read your time consuming documents. I already have other things that I need to be doing, people I need to be talking to and a life that I need to be living. Not every staff member can be sitting at a computer all day constantly hitting the refresh button to see if there are new posts on the forums.

BSB28

[MichaelEvans]

Story time first, as that is what I was working on, and the post before this is big.

New

Hikari watched the bright sunny day invade the Maxline car again as it exited the tunnel.  She was almost to the park where this month's Kumoricon gathering, her first ever, was being held.  A few weeks ago she'd met Tomo at the fourth Anonymous rally this year.  They had hit it off beneath the masks, and while they were walking away to the vanishing points to safely remove their masks they had talked about Anime and Manga.  Tomo eventually confident enough in their safe distance to pull out a flier for Kumoricon.

She'd read about it, seen the forums, and decided to attend the next outing they had.  It was something slightly unusual, a fair-weather event they were trying at a local park.  Ultimate on the field and charades between rounds.  It sounded like fun.

However she was also ready for the business portion of the event.  A government ID, and a printout diced up in to business card sized slips.  Each of which had three pieces of information on it.  Her name, her forum name, and something they called a 'key fingerprint' which was a huge string of letters and numbers.  It took up about as much space as the other pieces of information.

The download for the software that made it took a few min on the cable Internet connection at home.  Setup was about the same as anything else, though it did insist on Administrator privileges.  It took a few moments to figure out what they meant by 'make a key' but a pictorial helped her.  The hardest part was picking what the program thought was a good password.  Then letting the computer chew on making it for what seemed like forever as she surfed a few websites.  Uploading the public key was pretty easy after all of that.  The pictorial also recommended using FireGPG, which after Firefox was restarted added all those crypto things to the right click menu.  It also added buttons for them to the Gmail edit windows.  It took a little bit to understand what the terms meant, but the basics section of the guide helped out.

Arriving at the park, she stopped thinking about last night.  Instead smiling as she saw things were already starting.  Everyone was so friendly, she could hardly believe it was necessary to bother with this stuff.  Forgetting about it until towards the end when she made up her mind.  Asking how she could volunteer, she was pointed towards the Volunteer Manager.  After chatting for a few moments about what she might be able to do Mikata asked if she'd brought contact info with her.

They exchanged the cut-out business cards, and quickly verified each other Ids matched the cards; one a driver's license, the other a student ID.  She asked Mikata why this stuff was necessary, and shaking her head, Mikata told her that in the past there had been issues with some 'friends' of Yuujin's.  One friend actually, Bakamono didn't like how the Yojimbo had cracked down on him at the 2006 convention, and had tried to use Yuujin's account to stir up issues or get him blacklisted.

“That can't happen anymore though.” Mikata said, “Now we only read emails if they're properly signed, and even voting is protected by the digital signatures this system offers.  Though the key-signing thing is a little annoying.  Be sure you follow the next steps in that guide -exactly-.  Or else we get to do this again next month.”  She finished by pointing to two random others from the crowd, and getting them to exchange information with Hikari as well.

After the ride back home, she logged in, virus-scanned, and then signed in to the forums.  It was at that point that she saw the next step was to enter the 'key fingerprints' from the business cards she'd received in exchange.  Downloading the keys from the servers automatically, and verifying that the information she expected matched.  After completing that for all three, she went to the key-party thread and posted a message.  A bit of text signed with her own key listing who she'd exchanged with.  Then for each exchange she had a short thing she wanted them to quote back to her public key.  Each individual personal message different, and encoded with their public keys, and signed with her private key.  She knew that they would be doing the same.

After going over some normal forum stuff and killing time in the spam forum, her first message back happened.  Once she'd verified Kuro's response was valid she replied with that and his addition in quotes, along with the signature for his key.  Trusting that once he received that proper reply he'd sign her key as well.  It was a bit tedious setting it up.  However as she added the other keys and set the minimal trust level on each of them, especially the Volunteer Manager's key, the other unknown trust-level keys that had been signatures began to fill in, confirming that everything was linked.

Mikata followed up via signed email, asking her to reply via encoded and signed email with more specific details and contact information now that she had a secure line of communication.  Suddenly the idea that her Personal information could be protected from identity thieves and others like this made the setup work seem almost worth it, and if she became staff next year, it'd definitely be worth it.

To be continued?

There might be some slight inaccuracies in the precise procedure, but this is one way I think it could work.  A -lot- of assumptions were made about how things would turn out in various ways.  However this should give an idea of the slight inconvenience it takes initially, and a glimpse at the benefits that are on the other side.

Questions, comments, replies to prior posts?

[MichaelEvans]

First off, No Michael, simply no, You cannot place something that deals with staff only such as voting rights in a public setting when it deals purely with the staff members, whom I might add, pour their souls into the convention year round to earn that right to vote at meetings.

The only angle that even begins to make sense is that you think I'm somehow trying to let absolutely anyone vote at General Meetings; which is completely false.  In fact, in every way it is as if I am discussing this at a meeting which happens to have an audio recording, as no voting will take place within this thread.  You might mistakenly think that only staff may listen at meetings, or download recordings.  When there is no policy yet set for the later, and the former is false as anyone at all is welcome to attend.  That is, General Meetings are open to the public.  Everything else that comes to mind should be addressed in other areas, as that is well beyond anything that is supposed to be discussed here (reference the first post).

Secondly, I do believe that everything that I've seen you suggest has been self centered and confusing as you do flip flop, on one hand you want to get skype long distance voting for people like myself who can't always come to the meetings but on the other you want to disban all general meetings besides the main general election?

There is no flip-flop.  I want the most Staff possible to be able to vote on any given issue.  I also want proper verification of all votes.  What seems like flip-flop is actually the result of two entirely different approaches to that problem.  One that I see as a temporary solution which works with the current meeting format, and another that replaces it entirely.  This thread being the one for the later.

Please read the story I just posted above, it should explain one idea I have for how to replace the meet and greet part of the meetings we do now.  The actual motions and voting and stuff I think I covered in the first post here, but if it wasn't clear enough I can try to explain it again.  Though I don't know where your area of confusion was (everything, or if there was some key point at which you misunderstood something I was trying to say that caused everything else to collapse.) so it would be nearly impossible for me to quickly resolve it.

-- Giant block of text cut --

I don't truly believe anyone here is trying to work towards anything they don't honestly believe benefits the convention as a whole.  However I suggest that your approach to this is wrong.  You shoot down this proposal without a proper logical argument as to why.  Discussing it takes too much time?  Using the system once you get past the setup cost (pretty much just time alone) takes too much time?  How can you say that when you haven't even -TRIED- it yet?

Thirdly if you try to make the meetings completely over the internet and as "wide open" as you say then you deprive the people who do not always have internet access of their rights as staff. I know that some staff use library computers to check the forums or have slow connections. Everything that I have seen seems to work better face to face. Not Only that, but it is hard to read a person and their intentions if they are not in the same room with you. Currently I've not a clue what your intentions are other than to make an already busy staff do more work and make them wait longer for results to things which are better left purely in the meetings themselves. To put this simply, I refuse to jump through your hoops, to get new programs to bog my computer down with, to deal with your online voting shananigans and time consuming extra processes to get what has already been doing well on its own done in some more complex way. I refuse. If something isn't broken, why try to fix it?

You have one good point there, sometimes staff access from limited systems.  However are there any staff who can still do an effective job and do not have even an ancient hulk of a personal computer with even the slowest dial-up imaginable?  The software in question easily fits on to a CD, and I'm sure that it would be easy enough to provide such along with any finished directions if this happens.

Waiting longer for results?  You mean like, waiting for a meeting to come up so you can propose your motions, have them deferred for discussion, and then voted on at the next meeting after?  What about this, Post the thing directly to the forums, discuss, vote.  That's about 6-10 weeks the old way, verses about 2 the way I propose.

IF you wish to have staff gatherings throughout the year then maybe you should give suggestions as to where and when instead of trying to make everything internet based. Even better though, maybe you should fork out the money it costs for us for us to have said gatherings. I would love it if you took more than a fifty of us out to sushi or payed for BBQ for all of us. Though I suppose you hadn't entirely thought of that before now either.

Staff gatherings are an incidental, but highly useful part of the current General Meetings.  I'm saying keep that part, but do the discussion of major issues and voting elsewhere.  The day would instead be purely for social activities. (board games, simple sports games at public parks, maybe a nature hike, other quality bonding activities.)  It would also, as it is now, be open to the public.  You seem to keep missing that point.

And NO, I don't want to read your time consuming documents. I already have other things that I need to be doing, people I need to be talking to and a life that I need to be living. Not every staff member can be sitting at a computer all day constantly hitting the refresh button to see if there are new posts on the forums.

Gee I was thinking about the same thing, except my time consuming documents are trying to lay out an argument in logical order.  Your screens of text seem to mix attacking my ideas, literally, and blasting me in the process for even suggesting them.  Which is clearly something I need to respond to -now- as opposed to letting it sit.