Registering as a co-operative

[Graham_S]

Hello,
I help run a popular UK videogames forum at www.rllmukforum.com.

A year ago we were in a similar situation to h2g2: the existing owner
wanted to stop running the site.

We gathered volunteers (a few dozen people in all), collection
donations from a few hundred more and raised ~£6,000 for a server and
hosting.

We formed a new non-profit co-operative, Rllmuk Limited, which was
registered as an Industrial & Provident Society with the FSA.

Info on IPS here: http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/doing/small_firms/msr/societies/index.shtml

We did this with help from Co-operatives UK: http://www.uk.coop/economy/start-a-co-operative

We now have annual elections for a committee to run the co-operative
and the website.

So far things are working out really well.

If you need any more information about what we did, please let me
know.

Best of luck!

Regards,
Graham

[Jeremy Harris]

Hello there!

This is great information for us to have at this stage. May I ask how you came to find us here? I'm really excited by the people appearing from far and wide offering advice and some case studies...

Whoami?

[Graham_S]

I saw the news story on slashdot and boing boing, and thought our
experience might be a useful model for you, as we spent quite a bit of
time exploring alternatives, some of our volunteers were lawyers and
helped us draw up our rules and our constitution (along with Co-
operatives UK).

The main reason to be a legally incorporated body, rather than a
collection of individuals, was to get limited liability. The main risk
for a site such as ours would be to be sued for libel (we may be
regarded as a publisher of any controversial comments), and we didn't
want the liability for that to be carried by volunteers, moderators
etc.

Also, the mechanism of elections etc helps ensure that we're not
solely dependent on the ongoing interest or support of any one person,
and will hopefully mean we'll exist as long as people are interested
enough to pay for the site, look after the server, moderate the forums
etc.

Graham

[Pistol]

As an rllmuker, and a fan of Douglas Adams who hasn't really used H2G2
but admires it, I would just like to voice my support for your
attempts to save H2G2.

Graham and the other volunteers who formed Rllmuk Limited did a
fantastic job of saving our forum, you could really learn a lot from
them! Good luck!

[Graham_S]

Thanks Pistol! :-)

If anyone needs more info on our structure, you can see our co-
operative's governing rules here:

http://www.rllmukforum.com/cooprules.pdf

These are based off a set of model rules: you can have a certain
number of changes (which we needed as an online community, we may have
been the first of our type to register in this way) but the more
changes you have from the model rules the more expensive the
registration fees.

[Steve]

I can just say, you guys are being complete stars!

Thank you!.

Pastey

[Bel]

Anybody remember Jezza's Exiles for the closed Jeremy Vine
messageboard?
They found an interim home on h2g2 but set up their own:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/approved_entry/A27881535

Bel

[Bel]

Oh, it seems the have moved and can now be found at:

http://81.137.205.188:701/index.html

[Graham_S]

Although I mentioned why we needed a formal legal co-operative (to get
limited liability, and to own the "property" of the server and posts,
there was another option: to form a limited company (possibly limited
by guarantee, as our vision was for a non-profit organisation). This
proved unsuitable for us, as the ongoing administration costs were
higher. In particular, we'd need to employ an accountant who is
qualified to produce the annual audited accounts. As an IPS, provided
your turnover doesn't exceed a rather high threshhold, at the AGM you
can vote to "disapply" the need for an audit. This means we only need
to submit an annual financial statement to the FSA. That can be
prepared by our volunteers with accountancy training, they don't need
to be a qualified auditor, and we save £500+ p.a. (which probably
would have been too expensive for us).

The people at Co-operatives UK can talk you through the various
options, your requirements may be different to ours.

[Steve]

What's an IPS?

-----Original Message-----
From: h2g2communi...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:h2g2communi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Graham_S
Sent: 26 January 2011 10:47
To: h2g2communityconsortium
Subject: Re: Registering as a co-operative

[Graham_S]

An "Industrial & Provident Society"

http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/doing/small_firms/msr/societies/index.shtml

It's a formal co-operative organisation, with limited liability, and a
set of rules (election of a committee, an AGM, an annual finanical
statement that must be submitted to the FSA), and regulated by the
FSA>

It's used by co-operatives, supporter owned football clubs etc.

[Jeremy Harris]

Hello all,

I've posted a digest of the Co-Operatives UK information on structures to the committee group this evening. This is so that it can be idiot-checked (from typos to major omissions), and we can come back to everyone with something resembling sense in the coming day or so.

Thanks to contributors to this thread for their various insights!

Jeremy // Whoami?

[Graham_S]

I plan to look in every week or so to check on progress, and see if
you need anything from us at rllmuk.

Clearly you've all been busy! There are now a lot of places to check
for new info, but I doubt I'm going to be keeping up with it all, so
I'll most likely miss any important announcements.

It seems like it's all in hand.

If you have anything we can help with, let me know, either in this
thread, or come and say hello over at www.rllmukforum.com. (I'm
Graham_S on there, and on twitter too).

Best of luck!

Graham

On Jan 27, 1:43 am, Jeremy Harris <jer...@jeremyjharris.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've posted a digest of the Co-Operatives UK information on structures to
> the committee group this evening. This is so that it can be idiot-checked
> (from typos to major omissions), and we can come back to everyone with
> something resembling sense in the coming day or so.
>
> Thanks to contributors to this thread for their various insights!
>
> Jeremy // Whoami?
>

[steve dunkley]

Don't worry, it's almost a certainty we'll come asking for info/help.

Again, thank you!

Pastey

[MartinBzm]

Hi Graham,
I'm probably jumoing the gun here but imho the best place to watch for
progress reports is http://www.h2g2c2.co.uk/?pid=5 .

Cheers!
Martin
---
Free?! Does that mean I can't get a Discount?
I thought I heard a Dolphin Wistle

[Graham_S]

I had a comment about

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/entry/A80949153

"If a community takeover of h2g2 is to be genuinely community-led, it
will need to offer the opportunity for any and all members of the
community to participate in its running. Structures under
consideration by the Interim Committee are being evaluated on the
basis that this should be the case. The idea would be that there would
be a governing body taking the day-to-day decisions about the running
of the site. This would be elected from among a membership. What
constitutes a member would be debated further among the community and
committee. There would be an annual general meeting to discuss matters
of specific importance, and to undertake elections to the committee
and ratify any necessary changes to the structure. Votes would be able
to be made in person or by proxy."

We would have preferred everything to be done online. However, this
isn't quite the case with our structure.

Our monthly committee meetings are all on-line (usually Skype). One
meeting a year needs to be in person. It doesn't need to be the whole
committee. I think our quorum is three: so three members need to be
able to meet up once a year to meet that requirement. (This presumably
isn't carefully policed by the FSA, but we try to meet all
requirements).

In addition the AGM needs to be in person.

This might seem like an onerous requirement.

However, we do everything else online: all substantive voting (most
notably for the committee elections), discussion, and the occasional
poll to understand member's wishes.

The agenda for the AGM is set by the committee, and will be quite
simple: we accept the accounts, we disapply the need for an audit, we
approve the results of the elections. That's it. Should take five
minutes for a small group of people. No major debates, that can all be
done online.

We set how large the quorum for the AGM needs to be, so we just need
to get a few people in a London pub (say, the venue is up to the
current Committee) to nod everything through.

One of our concerns was that a "rogue" group who can attend and
"ambush" the AGM, would not accept the expressed wishes of the online
community. We carefully set the numbers for AGMs and Special General
Meetings to make this more difficult. Given the agenda is set in
advance, their freedom of action is limited. The inevitable result of
that stuff not passing would be a Special General Meeting, where the
massed troops of the wider membership who can make the effort to
attend, now there is warning of a controversy.

We don't expect this to ever happen: our membership want to do
everything online, but we needed to think through the process in the
event of trouble. Have a read through our rules to see what we came up
with (we tried to keep the changes from the model set of rules down to
six, it would have been substantially more expensive for more changes
or a custom set of rules).

Graham

[Jeremy Harris]

Hello again,

The issues you raise are precisely the ones being considered by the committee at the moment. As you've noticed, the document released yesterday details the need for some real meetings.

My personal view, and I would hope that of the committee, is that if meetings are required, it's as well to embrace them and advertise them properly. For the majority of site users, it makes no practical difference. But for those who wish to take an active role in the future of the site, it's important that the option is there and that the route to it is clear and transparent.

I'll be in touch later with more on this insightful and helpful email - my lunchbreak's over...

Jeremy // Whoami?

[Graham_S]

Yes. Just to be clear, I didn't mean that the AGM is secret: it needs
to be properly advertised in the appropriate place, and we're happy
for as many to attend as wish to (we'd probably include it as part of
one of our semi-regular pub meets).

I just mean that because the overwhelming majority of our membership
would be unable to attend (unless there was a *really* good reason),
we don't plan to carry out any important discussions, decision-making,
or voting at "in-person" meetings, beyond what is required to meet our
legal obligations, so as not to exclude anyone from the process. We
haven't yet had our first AGM, that will happen in a few months time.
By common consent, I hope that it will remain as an annual formality.

The real business is the online voting to elect the committee, and
then the online committee meetings where the elected committee make
decisions, and then post the minutes online for review and discussion.

At election time we had a few weeks of discussions amongst the
candidates, and with the membership, which hashed out in detail their
views on everything we could think of.

We also have a very vocal membership, who are happy to argue at length
about the smallest of matters, and that sort of debate goes on through
the year, and the Committee listens carefully to the feedback.

I didn't stand for the elected Committee, as I was the central figure
in organizing it all and thought it was best (for us to be a truly co-
operative organisation) for others to take a turn (and for me to have
a welcome break).

It seemed important to me to give the Committee the mandate to take
decisions. That's reflected in the rules which grant the Committee a
great deal of power (with checks and balances for a group of members
to call a Special General Meeting where necessary, which will
hopefully never happen).

We don't have members voting on every issue, and a lot of procedure
associated with running the co-operative, as that didn't seem like a
good fit for us. We were already worried by forming the co-operative
that we were adding too much process and overhead for a videogames
forum. And as being a Committee member is already a thankless task, it
seemed important that they were trusted to make decisions on
controversial topics: if they were always being bound to actions by
voting we thought the quality of decision-making and the calibre of
candidates might suffer.

We have had a few informal polls, but most of the Committee-member
interaction happens in lengthy discussion threads, with the final call
being made by the Committee. There's certainly room for more formal /
inclusive decision-making processes if required: this may suit your
community better than ours.

Regards,
Graham

On Feb 7, 2:55 pm, Jeremy Harris <jer...@jeremyjharris.com> wrote:
> Hello again,
>
> The issues you raise are precisely the ones being considered by the committee at the moment. As you've noticed, the document released yesterday details the need for some real meetings.
>
> My personal view, and I would hope that of the committee, is that if meetings are required, it's as well to embrace them and advertise them properly. For the majority of site users, it makes no practical difference. But for those who wish to take an active role in the future of the site, it's important that the option is there and that the route to it is clear and transparent.
>
> I'll be in touch later with more on this insightful and helpful email - my lunchbreak's over...
>
> Jeremy // Whoami?
>

[Graham_S]

And speaking of voting, I put a lot of thought into the mechanism for
voting, and the electoral method for counting votes. This is a topic
in itself: there is no perfect system, and your choice of system
depends on your goals for the electoral process. We decided on "the
Schulze method": All voters submit a ranked list of preferences
amongst the available candidates, and then the top candidates are
elected. We used this website, and I was very happy with them:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/andru/civs.html

We wanted to ensure that there were enough people on the Committee who
had the administrative skills that we need, so we had a separate
election for Treasurer (financial / accountancy experience preferred
for that) and a Secretary (legal experience preferred). These two
committee roles were elected unopposed this year.

[Graham_S]

RE: "What constitutes a member would be debated further among the
community and
committee"

There are a few requirements for membership in our rules. Basically
people needed to agree to the rules, and we needed their real name and
address for the member's register, which the FSA requires we maintain.
There was some debate with the lawyers about whether an email address
was enough, so rather than risk it we decided it had to be a postal
address. Members are allowed to inspect the register, but this isn't
something we widely advertise, and they'd need to do it in person at a
time convenient to us, and we put restrictions on them copying it out
or whatever. I doubt anyone would ever ask to see it, but our members
wanted us to protect their privacy, and we don't link real names to
their forum names in the register.

The name and address requirement excluded a handful of people who were
unable / unwilling to give us those details.

The process for joining and getting a share in the co-operative (we
don't issue physical certificates or anything like that) is set out in
the rules. In practice, once they've given us £10 or more, we email
them a link to a Google Spreadsheet form, which they click a box
saying they want to join the co-operative, and fill in their details,
and that goes into our spreadsheet.

Many people donated more than £10 (anywhere between £10 and £100). We
also had a scheme where people who donated more than £10 could elect
to pay the fee of long-time members who couldn't afford it. We ended
up with 300 members, (more if you count people who donated but didn't
want to join) and about £6k.

We don't currently take advertising, our members mostly don't want it
and we don't need it to pay the bills.

Occasionally there is talk of merchandising, but that hasn't happened
yet, and the potential profit for the co-operative is small, we'd
probably rather people just donate / subscribe so we get all of it.

[Graham_S]

And of course there is a difference between "member" being a member of
our forum, and "member" being a member of the co-operative. We call
the latter "Supporters". The latter get a few trivial benefits on the
forum. They have a private folder for co-operative business, and are
the only ones entitled to vote or stand for election. In practice,
other than at election time, we talk about the running of the forum in
a public folder. We did keep the election folder Supporter only: more
as a carrot to sign up than anything else. In general we wanted to
avoid a two tier system: many of our most valuable members of the
forum don't want to join the co-operative, and that's just fine.

[Graham_S]

A comment on the latest update:

"Like most websites we wouldn't buy a server and keep it in someone's
house. We'd rent it from a host company."

You may have a lot more money coming in than we did, or perhaps your
server / bandwidth requirements are much lower than ours, but we found
that renting the sort of server we needed was several times more
expensive than buying a server of our own and renting a space in a
server rack in a data centre. We couldn't sustainably afford managed
hosting (although this would have been preferable, easy, and less
risky if budget was less of a consideration). A server cost about
£1,500, hosting it costs us ~£90 a month with poundhost (we get a few
TB of bandwidth a month for that). A comparable managed server with a
vendor experienced in forum hosting was more like £4-6k per annum,
IIRC.

It's difficult to say any more about that without access to a lot more
detail about your technical requirements, which don't seem to be
publicly available yet.

Also, in terms of technical volunteers, being a forum full of nerds,
we have access to a core team of 8-10 well qualified technical people
with directly relevant professional experience (but without a great
deal of spare time), and a larger number of people who can chip in
with specialist skills when required. Even for us, just migrating to
the new server, upgrading to new versions of the forum software etc is
a substantial drain on our limited spare time and we can only attempt
such things once or twice a year. General housekeeping tasks are
shared between us, and are more manageable.

We don't have the resources to do any development to speak of, beyond
a few tiny tweaks. We have the advantage that our forum software is
very widely used across the Internet, and well supported by the
vendor, so this isn't a big problem. You're in a completely different
position with a custom platform only used by h2g2.

I don't yet understand the sort of technical support you'll be able to
draw on going forward, and I'm sure the BBC team will help you
understand the costs and technical requirements, so you can understand
whether you have the capacity to support h2g2 before you commit to
taking it on.

[Graham_S]

Found an old email. We were quoted £200 setup, £3,600 p.a. for a
comparable managed server from GlobalGold. I beleieve they hosted
avsforums, so knew what they were doing. That was for a linux box. If
you needed a Microsoft stack then it could be substantially more
expensive, SQL server in particular cost a lot.

[Graham_S]

And to run our forum doesn't need such a large team of tech admins:
one guy just out of college used to do it on his own, but it was too
much work to support it reliably, and a big commitment for him.

[Paul W. Harvey]

Hi, Graham

You mentioned that you have a pool of excellent computer technology
people who help out. Do they appear at the site where the server is
housed, and work on it on site, or do they work online from wherever
they happen to be? H2G2 has people spread across the planet, from
Capetown to Scotland, and from Australia through the U.S. to nearly
all of Europe. There might not be as many who can converge on the
server's site for tweaking.

paulh

[Graham_S]

All remote. A few of us did bring the server and install it in the
data centre one weekend, but the data centre staff could have done
that by delivering the server straight from the manufacturers and we
could have installed and configured the software afterwards.

Remote management cards in servers let you do just about everything
remotely. I imagine there might be the odd occasion where data centre
staff have to cycle the power or something on request, but that
happens rarely, if ever.

We're mostly UK based (with one admin in the US), but the decision to
site it in a UK data centre was more about having fast connections to
our UK users, rather than because we need physical access to the
server.

[steve dunkley]

Hi Guys,

One of the things that we've had is a very generous offer from a hosting company. They've said that they're willing to provide us with x amount of servers and y amount of support if it means that h2g2 continues, in exchange for linking through/ advertising them. 

This is still at the stage where we've not hammered anything out, or agreed to anything yet (that'd have to get the okay from the community at large) but we've told them the stats that we're aware of, which is how used h2g2 was during its recent BBC MOT, and they're more than confident that what they're offering will be capable of it.

It's always good though to hear how others have done it, and we are still considering that route too. Maybe as a back up, maybe further down the line when/if we have the capital to do that.

Pastey

[Graham_S]

We had a few offers like that, but they weren't things that we could
ultimately accept once we looked at them in detail and our technical
requirements were finalised, but then our independence was very
important to us. If someone comes through for you, then that's great.
It might be a good idea to make sure that your operation is
sustainable at market rates from the community's own resources, in
case things change, unless you're confident that a particular
benefactor guarantees a long term future.

[Graham_S]

Also, the logic in buying the server went like this:

Initially we had a lot of interest, support, motivation, and money to
"save the forum", and we made the most of that. We expected the amount
we raised that first year to be the best possible case for funding: if
anyone was going to give us money, they'd have done it then, so we had
a budget for any upfront start-up costs. Going forward, subscriptions
and donations are likely to be smaller, so we wanted to keep ongoing
running costs to a minimum. We'll need to continue to build up a
surplus to be able to buy additional / replacement servers in the
future.

In practice, we've probably already saved the initial costs of buying
a server in the first year, but even if the alternative options had
been more affordable, some upfront spending & lower running costs
suited our cashflow.

Benefactors lending server capacity changes those calculations, of
course.

[MartinBzm aka Haragai (U14769281)]

Hi Paul,
Putting my muddy boot in this one...

Very few activities in running and maintaining a site (large or small)
require for someone to be physically at the server.
The most physical contact an IT-person has is when the hardware is
installed and the connections are made.
After that there are several layers of virtuality that provide enough
possibilities to interface with the hardware, the operating system and
the software running on that particular piece of hardware.

Personally I've done an upgrade project where I was the first person
to actually physically touch the server in five years.

If a piece of hardware fails then someone has to be there to swap out
a drive or replace a circuitboard, but that can be comfortably
arranged with the hosting provider.
In the case of h2g2 I would consider hosting the site et al in "the
cloud" so that no individual piece of malfunctioning hardware can
bring h2g2 down or have us scrambling to jump-start the backup
machine. The possibilities are there, it's a matter of cost-
efficiency.

To cut a long ramble short: Not having someone in the flesh sitting
next to the server 24/7 is not a problem.
Umm.. that's two negatives, so it must be positive.

Cheers!
Martin
---
Free?! Does that mean I can't get a Discount?

I thought I heard a Dolphin Wistle ...

On 10 feb, 16:50, "Paul W. Harvey" <pwhar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, Graham
>
> You mentioned that you have a pool of excellent computer technology
> people who help out. Do they appear at the site where the server is
> housed, and work on it on site, or do they work online from wherever
> they happen to be? H2G2 has people spread across the planet, from
> Capetown to Scotland, and from Australia through the U.S. to nearly
> all of Europe. There might not be as many who can converge on the
> server's site for tweaking.
>
> paulh
>

[MartinBzm aka Haragai (U14769281)]

Graham I absolutely agree with your words.
Like you say, It's not the start-up costs that will break the bank
it's the monthly/yearly fees to keep things running that brings
headaches.
Any deal proposed to the Consortium will be x-rayed, scrutinized,
queried, conversed about, calculated and buried in soft peat for six
months. Or six days, depending on the amount of alcoholic content of
the deal.

The offer to host the site is generous but until we are sure about the
requirements it is too soon to start negotiating the terms of such an
offer. Or even to speculate on the possibility of crossing our
mind(s).

Crud, I'm doing it again, mixing references and quotes with serious
stuff, that for the time being is not ready to discuss as yet.

It's good to speculate on the possible solutions, even ones that are
"really out there" and it warms my heart (hart?) that hootoo has such
great supporters. *sniff*

Oh dear, I guess it's scotch-o'clock.

Anyway, good to have you aboard Graham.

Cheers!
Martin
---
Free?! Does that mean I can't get a Discount?
I thought I heard a Dolphin Wistle ...

[Paul W. Harvey]

I very much appreciate the explanations, Martin and Graham. The server
for the library network (which included the library I worked in) ran
into problems like the air conditioner breaking down, or cable service
breaking down, or electricity being cut off -- and, of course, viruses
and reboots, etc. They had two or three technicians on the site. I
didn't know what provisions there might be for this particular server.

I am very pleased that benefactors are out there willing to help, and
my fingers are crossed. Thanks to everyone!

paulh

[Graham_S]

RE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/F20154027?thread=8058925

I don't know for certain, but I doubt you can allow people who aren't
fully signed up members of the co-operative voting for who is on the
committee.

[Paul W. Harvey]

You could put that stipulation in the bylaws.

paulh

[Graham_S]

I'm not quite sure I understand you.

The rules as we set up our society recognises people who joined the co-
operative as members, and allows them to vote in the election for the
committee. People who can't, or choose not to join the co-operative,
have no official status, and no say in the election. They have a full
say in running the forum in day to day matters, and who and who is a
Supporter doesn't matter for most other purposes. I don't know whether
it would be valid to do anything else, I suspect not.

On Feb 11, 4:18 pm, "Paul W. Harvey" <pwhar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You could put that stipulation in the bylaws.
>
> paulh
>

[Graham_S]

Incidentally, I may have drastically over-estimated the scale of h2g2.
When I first came here, I used the "who's online" feature, and got
1,000+ people currently logged in, which is roughly the same as our
forum (840 people as I write this, more during big events).

Now I think that could include other BBC forums like 606, and the h2g2
numbers might be much, much smaller. (25 people currently logged in).
That doesn't quite square with something I read which says the BBC has
two full-time staff working on h2g2. Which is correct?

If the smaller number is accurate, then it should be much much cheaper
to run in terms of server load and bandwidth than I previously
expected.

It does mean that your pool of volunteers is much smaller too, which
may pose problem in terms of technical support.

It also means that the additional overhead of registering as a co-
operative (rather than it being owned by a trusted individual) is
likely to prove more onerous for you than it is for us.

That's for you guys to judge, though!

[Tavaron]

Yes, the 'Who is online' also shows people on other forums.
My 'who is online' in brunel just showed 21 people online (all of them
definitely h2g2) before it refreshed to the 1100+ number of all the
boards. 21 seems a very low number, but maybe it's true at the moment.

[Graham_S]

If those user numbers are true, and the archive size is indeed ~ 80 MB
compressed, then that's basically nothing in terms of server load, so
most likely you could piggy back off somebody else's server resources
without it impacting them in any way.

The additional cost (if any) and complexity would be all about the
nitty gritty of running your custom software, which I know nothing
about, and can't find any public details to understand it better..

[steve dunkley]

h2g2 has approximately 150,000 visitors a week. Most don't log in, either because they're not registered or don't have anything to say. The edited guide entries themselves are just over 80mb in a mysql database (i don't know what sort of db they're on on the BBC servers) add to that the forums, user spaces, under guide (fictional work) and general stuff, and it gets a lot larger. Those are what facts we do know at the moment. we're hoping for some more in the next week or so.

Pastey

Sent from my Etch-a-Sketch.

-----Original Message-----
From: Graham_S <labbu...@gmail.com>
Sent: 11 February 2011 17:37
To: h2g2communityconsortium <h2g2communi...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Registering as a co-operative

[Timothy Green]

> The edited guide entries themselves are just over 80mb in a mysql database

That's 10036 entries for the Edited Guide. There are 248231 other
entries. Some of these are amazing and beautiful. Some are just a
place to hang interesting conversations. And some are drivel. Anyway,
they take up a fair bit of space. The conversations would take up even
more.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/info.

TRiG.

[Graham_S]

That's fine: hard disk space is super-cheap.

It's the CPU load on the server from supporting a lot of users (who
are each using the forum and its database quite heavily for long
periods of their day) and the bandwidth cost of sending them loads of
data that limited our options and forced us to buy our own expensive
dedicated server. Sharing a server was a non-starter for us.

If you have a small number of active users who are logged in and
posting lots of stuff, and a larger number of people who are just
reading entries (which possibly are cached), then your server
requirements are likely to be much smaller, and more compatible with
shared hosting, which can be very cheap.

I would say that you're more likely to be drawing your pool of
volunteers from the people who are registered and logged in rather
than more casual lurkers.

I wasn't trying to imply anything about h2g2's relative importance to
our site! Rllmuk isn't important to anyone but our members, we're just
some nerds chatting to each other.

I was just questioning my initial assessment, which was that the two
communities were broadly similar in terms of userbase and activity, so
we might be a good model for you to follow.

If we're quite different in size and make-up, then that analysis needs
further thought..

I'd hate to make it seem like going down the co-operative route is
easy. It was a lot of work for us, made a lot easier by the support of
hundreds of our users and dozens of volunteers. If your resources turn
out to be smaller, then the additional overhead may be prohibitive.

[steve dunkley]

Hi Graham, I'm no longer at the bar trying to order drinks while barging hipsters out the way, so I can take a bit more time over this. First up, again I'd like to say thank you. Every single thing you've posted to us is helping us with planning for the decisions we may have to make. we're still at that stage that until we know for absolute certain what is happening we have to plan for every contingency, and to be blunt without your help we'd still be struggling.

With the help and advice you've freely given, and the very generous offers of assistance we've received we've been able to get the basis of a very stable and credible business plan together for the long term survival of h2g2.

We should hopefully be finding out over the next couple of weeks what the longer term plans/actions are, and how we proceed. When it will no doubt get more hectic than it already seems, so in case we forget then (which I really hope we don't) thank you again for your help and advice, we wouldn't be able to do this without the help we're receiving.

Pastey

Sent from my Etch-a-Sketch.

-----Original Message-----
From: Graham_S <labbu...@gmail.com>
Sent: 11 February 2011 19:56
To: h2g2communityconsortium <h2g2communi...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Registering as a co-operative

[The entire original message is not included]

[Solnushka]

I'd like to add my thanks to Pastey's, Graham. It really is helpful
for us to have someone who has done this/ is doing this to come and
explain things to us.

I think a possibility with the voting is that the voting for the
company committee would have to be by co-op members, but voting for
other people who help out on site might not. Although I assume you
have also read on in that thread and have seen the same point made
there. Of course, this may not be practical or possible.

I must say I find all the ins and outs of this fascinating.

Anyway, your insights will always be very welcome.

Sol.

[Graham_S]

Oh, you're all more than welcome. It's no bother at all. How often
does knowing a lot about saving an online community by forming a co-
operative come in useful? I might as well make the most of such a rare
opportunity to show off.

Solnuska: yes, the legal stuff says nothing about how you organise the
positions of responsibility on your site.

For us we have these six elected people who have the legal
responsibility for the place, make sure the bills are paid, and
occasionally make a ruling about something important, but otherwise
leave things to the other volunteers (moderators, tech people etc)

Everything else is done by people who might not even be members of the
co-operative. You can appoint those people however you like. You have
a free hand in how the site is managed, the co-op stuff doesn't affect
that at all.

[Paul W. Harvey]

This is all very interesting, Graham. Thanks!

You mention "moderators" in the same sentence as "volunteers." At
present, the BBC hires moderators for us. We're going to have to
figure out how to do that ourselves, until or unless Lady Bountiful
comes through with the money to hire moderators. I'm familiar with
some much smaller, one-person sites where the webmaster is also the
moderator. H2G2 is on a much larger scale. I just can't see how one or
two people could moderate. Obviously, this is something we would need
to work out....

paulh

[Steve Dunkley]

I've actually been thinking a bit about that from a technical standpoint.
h2g2 used to be fully community/self moderated, and in a way there's no
reason it can't go back to that. Bring back the use of the yikes button to
allow users to flag up inappropriate comments, and extend the role of the
aces (community volunteers) to keep an eye on those postings that get
flagged up. Have a bit of an automatic temporary removal for postings that
receive a large amount of yikes, and I think you'd have it sussed.

Pastey

-----Original Message-----
From: h2g2communi...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:h2g2communi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Paul W.
Harvey
Sent: 12 February 2011 15:36
To: h2g2communi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Registering as a co-operative

[Paul W. Harvey]

I like those ideas, Pastey. People seem to be good about using the
yikes button appropriately. There might have to be some formal
procedure to handle people who feel unfairly put upon. I know some
researchers who have seethed about messages from the BBC moderators,
telling them they broke some rule, but not letting them know which
rule it was. How can people correct their mistakes if they don't know
what they did wrong?

paulh

[steve dunkley]

Everything would have to be completely transparent, and the fact that it would be other members of the community that were making the decisions, and that researchers themselves could volunteer for a stint at moderating would take a lot of flack off them.

Personally I hate it at the moment that a of my posts won't post because of something that "may seem offensive" yet it doesn't tell me *what* it's complaining about.

Pastey

[Vip - sleeping]

The most common offenders are the characters < and >. So any smilies. Plus any words it feels like. *sigh*

Vip

[steve dunkley]

I tried taking all the words out, and it still refused to let me post.

I was half tempted to commit a new release of barlesque with a back door in to bypass the moderation for myself, but thought it was probably more trouble than it was worth.

at the moment.

[h2g2 Community Consortium]

IIt gets itself stuck in a loop where you can't post at all. You have
to save your post in a text file and close the browser window.

--
Steve Makin / Z / Dr Zen
Chief herder of cats for h2g2c2

[steve dunkley]

Has that been posted as a bug? It'll be setting up a zend session for the error that it's then not releasing. 5 minute fix.

Pastey

[B GILDAY]

I've mentioned it a couple of times.....

 

 

GT

---

From: steve dunkley <steve....@gmail.com>
To: h2g2communi...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, 12 February, 2011 22:37:52

Subject: Re: Registering as a co-operative

[Graham_S]

Moderating? Of course you can do it yourselves, just pick a few
sensible people, write some guidelines, and let them get on with it. I
doubt this crack team of professional moderators have had years of
training.

The important thing is you need to be assiduous about deleting
potentially libellous material: you are likely to be regarded as the
publishers of it. We also have to take a tough line on deleting links
to pirated content, and to be safe we also avoid too much detail about
illegal drugs.

My impression is that the BBC takes a Talibanesque view on what they
allow on h2g2, with swear filters and whatnot, so you've got plenty of
leeway if you decide you want to redraw the line.

For us, moderating is always potentially contentious, as we're a
community of bored, irritable, argumentative nerds: often intelligent,
pedantic, fascinated with rules and logic, and with poor social skills
and little empathy for others. This means people fight a lot, the
moderators have to decide whether or not to intervene, and then people
like to argue the toss like it's an offside decision on Sky Sports.

In the past this has often led to bitter rows, but we've got a
reasonable grasp of it at the moment. To be honest it's the only
aspect of running the forum that most users care about, is a pain in
the arse to actually do, but seems to be a necessary evil to keep the
forum a reasonably pleasant place for most users.

[MartinBzm aka Haragai (U14769281)]

Steve,
The only way to re-submit your post after a rejection is to copy the
text, close the edit-window, re-open the edit and paste the text
removing possible offensive characters.

Cheers!
Martin
---
I know where my towel is. It says so on the towel.

On 12 feb, 23:26, steve dunkley <steve.dunk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I tried taking all the words out, and it still refused to let me post.
>
> I was half tempted to commit a new release of barlesque with a back door in
> to bypass the moderation for myself, but thought it was probably more
> trouble than it was worth.
>
> at the moment.
>

[Graham_S]

We have a few thousand posts every day. 3-5 of those posts are
"reported" by our users for some reason for the mods to look at. We've
had a few spammers breaking through the defences lately too, who are
shot on sight. We have about 10 volunteer mods, of which maybe four or
five might have done a bit of modding this week. One or two will help
resolve any issues in our trading folder. Users can be warned for
breaking the rules (usually abuse) and repeated offences lead to short
temporary bans, repeated bans lead to lengthier bans.

Users who are told off like to moan about it. Once every 6-8 weeks
they'll be a proper row about something to do with modding or some
other aspect of running things, which can be time consuming and
aggravating.

On Feb 12, 3:35 pm, "Paul W. Harvey" <pwhar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is all very interesting, Graham. Thanks!
>
> You mention "moderators" in the same sentence as "volunteers." At
> present, the BBC hires moderators for us. We're going to have to
> figure out how to do that ourselves, until or unless Lady Bountiful
> comes through with the money to hire moderators. I'm familiar with
> some much smaller, one-person sites where the webmaster is also the
> moderator. H2G2 is on a much larger scale. I just can't see how one or
> two people could moderate. Obviously, this is something we would need
> to work out....
>
> paulh
>

[Timothy Green]

I think it's best to keep the current rule from h2g2 that moderation
issues are not discussed onsite. E-mail only.

TRiG.

2011/2/13 Graham_S <labbu...@gmail.com>:

[steve dunkley]

If the rules are available to be seen on site by everyone, then no one can complain. Personal, or rather individual decisions should not be discussed on site, definitely.

[Solnushka]

Actually, Graham, that's not half as bad as I had feared. The volume
of moderation, I mean. I reckon that would be eminently do-able. I
wonder how many posts there are on hootoo each day. The upheavals
sound a bit of a trial.

I have a couple of questions, I find. You went for a co-op. Did you
consider a company limited by guarantee? If so, why the co-op in the
end?

Do you ask for annual 'subscriptions' as part of membership to your
site? Or as part of membership of the co-operative? If not, do you
know if it is possible to do so with a co-op (as well as issuing
'shares')?

Do you do merchandising? Is it open only to members of the co-op?

I'm sure I shall think of more...

Sol.

[Graham_S]

The primary reason for dismissing a limited company was the
requirement for audited accounts. We can't afford the cost (maybe
£500?) and don't have a volunteer qualified to do it.

With an industrial & Provident Society, we can vote at the AGM to
disapply the need for an audit. The annual financial statement for the
FSA can be prepared by one of our accountancy trained volunteers.

Members of the society have to pay £10 a year. The first 1p of that in
your first year of membership buys your 1 share.

There were lots of different ways of organising that, the lawyers and
accountants talked for ages, that was what we agreed. You can see the
detail in the rules PDF.

[Graham_S]

We haven't yet made any merchandise. Only our members would be
interested. Only a small percentage of the purchase price of T shirts
and mugs goes into forum coffers. It's better if they just send us
cash.

It might happen at some point, if somebody makes something cool. We
nearly had a vanity set of Top Trumps. My card had great scores on it.

[Graham_S]

If only our users thought that no one could complain, given a clear
set of rules. If you have a culture of accepting moderation without
complaint then I'm very envious and you should preserve it.

Arguments about moderation over the last decade have been the cause of
loads of agony for over a decade at Rllmuk and its forerunners. They
contributed to its formation, and nearly led to it's demise, before we
turned things around.

The main consequence for us nowadays is a bunch of paperwork and
process on warning and banning people, and a degree of oversight more
suitable for the court of human rights than a videogames forum.

It would be a darn sight easier if the users just let mods get on with
it. Since we took over, the team are widely trusted, but there's still
a lot of unnecessary back and forth. There are a bunch of lunatics in
our asylum, and on occassion it can be really funny. For the mods it
can feel like being a supply teacher in an unruly bottom set maths
class.

On Feb 13, 4:13 pm, steve dunkley <steve.dunk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If the rules are available to be seen on site by everyone, then no one can
> complain. Personal, or rather individual decisions should not be discussed
> on site, definitely.
>

> On 13 February 2011 15:46, Timothy Green <timo...@green.name> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I think it's best to keep the current rule from h2g2 that moderation
> > issues are not discussed onsite. E-mail only.
>
> > TRiG.
>

> > 2011/2/13 Graham_S <labbuild...@gmail.com>:

[Solnushka]

Thhere were some lively fights about the very active moderation we
have now back when it was first introduced. We're all rather house-
broken now. It might not take long, though, especially if we get new
users who have not been under the thumb of the beeb. Good to be
prepared. Still, some debate is good. We got a bit settled I think,
owning to the fact that there wasn't much we could do. This is why
this move could be a really great thing.

I shall definitely have to go off and read your Rules now.

Sol

[Solnushka]

Oh, on the off chance that this isn;t in your Rules, do members/
directors have to be UK residents? If it's there, don't worry, I'll
find it.

On Feb 13, 11:02 pm, Graham_S <labbuild...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If only our users thought that no one could complain, given a clear
> set of rules. If you have a culture of accepting moderation without

> complaint then I'm very envious and y I!ou should preserve it.

[Graham_S]

No, one of our committee is Dutch.

[Graham_S]

The rules I linked to in an early post are just co-op / legal stuff.
Nothing about running forums in there really.

The forum rules that are about not being mean to each other are in
some other document. I can dig it up if you like, but you're probably
be best just drafting something that works for you.

[kea]

That's not a moderation, that's a bug that's using the profanity
filter. It's being fixed.

I think moderation needs a thread of its own onsite. If we get to run
the site post-move, I think moderation is going to be one of the
contentious issues. There is a fairly wide range of views of what is
acceptable, so how would self-moderation work? Actually I'll go start
a thread onsite, don't want to derail this one.

cheers,
kea.

[kea]

Ugg, ignore that. I posted from the groups page and missed the newer posts.