The State and Future of HMS/Whateverwecallthisplace

Site Management
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Hello ghosts, do you have a few minutes to chat? I’m your (un)friendly neighbourhood ghost, tinoesroho, and I’d like to chat about the current state and future of HMS.

Site Organization
The board is currently sysop’d by @LockeCJ who has stated he can indefinitely maintain server maintainence at its current usage rate. Discussions on funding options and incorporation have stalled (general consensus leans towards operation as a non-profit).

The admin committee currently consists of @waetherman, @LockeCJ, @messana , and @tinoesroho. The founding moderator team is @awfulhorrid, @ChickieD, and @CZAnne.

Development
Naming: @waetherman is running the name election, currently in its third round. You can find the voting thread here: Name This Site - ROUND 3 Voting Open

Theming: Theme development on hold until name voting concludes.

Community guidelines: The moderation team is working on a draft, though meetings have been difficult to arrange due to schedule conflicts.

Current Status
When items get flagged, they wind up in the staff mailbox. As we do not have a written policy, judgment calls and actions are left to staff discretion. As the wolf says, flagging helps.

The board is considered to be in soft-launch period. Invite worthy users. Start threads for your interests. After the naming and theming projects wrap up, a general announcement will be posted on the old homestead. Until then, it’s up to us as the community to set the tone and build the board we want to participate in.

Other
I’ve probably forgotten a few things in my scatterbrained state, but I think this covers it all.
Your (un)friendly neighbourhood ghost,

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I plan to step down from staff as soon as the projects are completed. I believe moderator elections/appointments are slated for sometime after the big launch. I encourage all of you to apply and together, we can build a brighter future.

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Nice summary.

(Grins) I thought ‘scatterbrained’ was one of the essential mutant characteristics!
One for the list, though:

Front-page articles/content - there’s lots of good stuff (on purpose and process) in both the public and ‘editorial working group’ discussions, but they’re currently very stalled.

We can launch (‘hard-launch’, launch-launch) without this in place, but it’s something that would help draw people to the site once we’re launched, so needs to be figured-out before it goes live. :slight_smile:

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Great rounding @tinoesroho!

Re: modding stuff - my schedule frees up around July 20 when my college student heads off to her dad’s.

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As part of a larger social media hiatus, I’ve been AWOL for far too long. I don’t have much to add at the moment other than mentioning that I’m back/ I’ll need a bit of time to catch up on things and start pulling my weight again. Thanks for the round up of current issues, tino.

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I would like to help but I don’t know what I can do (other than provide money, which I’m prepared to help with). I regard myself as temperamentally unsuitable to be a moderator. I’m sure others feel the same.

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This is exactly why I would not make a good one. In a short time I would find myself exhibiting HFB type tendencies – the biggest reason I try not to respond to taunting is the fact that I know other people don’t need to get caught in the middle. But if I had powers…

There is a reason that in RL I avoid any job that even whiffs of having to manage people.

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I’m collecting money for BBS awareness.

(were you aware that we have a BBS?)

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Does anyone know where @waetherman is?

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Is there a cream for that?

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If we do use a donation / micro-subscription / combined method of funding, we should consider a reserve fund: how big should it be, what would be the restrictions on its use, who would have access, how will we audit, etc.

I think we need a reserve to cover funding shortfalls, but reserve funds are awfully tempting, too. I don’t mean on a personal level, but it can be tempting to want to do something with your enterprise that doesn’t fall within the scope of “emergency funding” or the other rules established for the reserve and think “we can borrow this and pay it back”. Which is why those other questions need to be covered.

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I’m reluctant to get too deep into it until we have established an identity, but my current thinking is to establish some sort of corporation/LLC/etc. that would own the site and it should be administered by some sort of board/council/etc, ideally elected from within the community in order to ensure that no one has too much power or responsibility. That’s at least part of the reason I’m happy to foot the bill for now. Without those structures in place, the money would be going to me, and I don’t want the stress that responsibility entails.

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I’m not up on this stuff. Is it possible to structure this in such a way that if we, say, get sued for a million dollars, nobody is personally ruined? It seems like we might need to think about business liability insurance, which is likely to represent a major expense.

If we want to set up the server space to be owned by this entity, then it would seem that the proper order is probably Naming --> Legal Entity --> Move Site --> Establish Blog, in which case we should probably start a new thread and have this conversation now.

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I think that’s what an LLC (Limited Liability Company) does.

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I know a lawyer who can establish an LLC in New York for $1000.

I am also aware that it is cheaper to establish an LLC in DE and that that is where most of the establish case law related to corporations has been heard. I’ll be moving there shortly and may be able to locate a lawyer there who can establish an LLC for us cheaper than the $1000.

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@mdh_AcerPlatanoides has started a thread for the legal entity stuff.

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