First up, I will never assume I'm being attacked and thank you for asking the question :)
Second, the Board is drafting up a post so you'll get an official response.
Third, me rambling... I think there were a lot of factors, some of which were apparent to me as a new board member, and some are slowly emerging as I follow all the reactions.
Apparently last year there was a lot of discussion about what the role of the Board actually was, and whether it was a 'lead and guide' kind of thing or more of a 'serve the wishes of the community' kind of thing - not that they are mutually exclusive :p One approach does lend itself to a little more in-Board decision making over community-consultation though - not that they don't both happen, it's a sliding scale.
There was also a metric ton of discussion about Meta (of which I have read much of the past discussion but by no means all of it) and some very heated views about whether to include or exclude. That paired with said lack of clarity about who could actually make that decision, made this an exhausting and difficult discussion.
When we convened as a board for 2013 we revisited (or visited in my case) the issue, and the history, and found that we didn't have conflicting views. I think that came as something of a relief after the months of debate. There was also a stronge sense that this was a policy issue: whether meta fell under transformative works as we defined them for AO3 and that setting this kind of policy is a Board level task.
I think this is where we could have handled it better - we were clear that we wanted the decision made, that we were in agreement on the outcome, and that we felt it was reasonable for the Board to make it.
What we didn't do, is the next level of organisation / communication where we got all the affected committees together and jointly worked out what the next steps were going to be RE: implementation.
Now this is just my opinion and it's early days, which means my analysis is still developing so I'd really like to know what other people's perceptions are (I always want to know). Please let me know if this doesn't in any way match your experiences, and help me (and the Board) do better by the OTW and the fannish community.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2013-02-18 12:27 pm (UTC)Second, the Board is drafting up a post so you'll get an official response.
Third, me rambling... I think there were a lot of factors, some of which were apparent to me as a new board member, and some are slowly emerging as I follow all the reactions.
Apparently last year there was a lot of discussion about what the role of the Board actually was, and whether it was a 'lead and guide' kind of thing or more of a 'serve the wishes of the community' kind of thing - not that they are mutually exclusive :p One approach does lend itself to a little more in-Board decision making over community-consultation though - not that they don't both happen, it's a sliding scale.
There was also a metric ton of discussion about Meta (of which I have read much of the past discussion but by no means all of it) and some very heated views about whether to include or exclude. That paired with said lack of clarity about who could actually make that decision, made this an exhausting and difficult discussion.
When we convened as a board for 2013 we revisited (or visited in my case) the issue, and the history, and found that we didn't have conflicting views. I think that came as something of a relief after the months of debate. There was also a stronge sense that this was a policy issue: whether meta fell under transformative works as we defined them for AO3 and that setting this kind of policy is a Board level task.
I think this is where we could have handled it better - we were clear that we wanted the decision made, that we were in agreement on the outcome, and that we felt it was reasonable for the Board to make it.
What we didn't do, is the next level of organisation / communication where we got all the affected committees together and jointly worked out what the next steps were going to be RE: implementation.
Now this is just my opinion and it's early days, which means my analysis is still developing so I'd really like to know what other people's perceptions are (I always want to know). Please let me know if this doesn't in any way match your experiences, and help me (and the Board) do better by the OTW and the fannish community.