Randomised, rotating committees of editors from a pool.
Or psuedo-random at least, depending on applicable factors.
I’d also suggest that the committees have some directive to try and pay attention to popular trends that emerge from the commentariat and do some kind of a job of interpreting that will.
That leaves it to the commentariat to create directions, directives, projects etc and empower the community whilst also allowing different leadership styles to be tried out under the aegis of differing, nascent allegiances to work on or promote or otherwise provide forward motion to the projects that emerge from the Zeitgeist.
Committee life cycle would be important to determine. Perhaps the terms wouldn’t have to begin and end at the same time, just so long as individual members were fulfilling a pre-determined period of duty?
Or has anyone worked at Valve or a company like it? Any experience of cabals in a flat environment?
I’m pretty sure Valve is not he best place to look at, they seem (from the outside) to gravitate to supporting projects that line their pockets the easiest - including glossing over abuse in their systems (underage gambling, paid ads) until the wheel is squeakier than the invisible hand. They have ideals, but I don’t know those ideals are realized well.
@emo_pinata: the method of governance is something separate from the ideals, and of course ideals can be a guiding principle or an afterthought. That’s why a charter or constitution is so important; it lays out our guiding principles, not just how decisions are made.
@emo_pinata
I just threw valve out there as an example of an idea which was different than the one I was talking about. I’ve been critical of Valve myself in the past. Their risk taking behaviour had become atrocious, not to mention the destructive clique-forming behaviour which their style seems to foster.
@waetherman
I’ve heard of but not researched holocracy. Will take a look. Thanks.
I suppose discussing these ideas brings up the notion of leadership structure.
Personally, I don’t think it can be said enough, I don’t want to make the mistakes of the past. Having people who take responsibility for doing work that needs to be done is important, but having any top-down authoritarianism emerge from the organisational structure is, IMO, the one potentially negative effect we should keep foremost in our minds whilst designing that structure.
I suppose we’re dealing with a Chicken and the Egg thing here. Can we foster emergence?
Is it just my imagination or was the point Rob was making about Amzon reviews an indication that once we have enough traffic moving past other content, it is actually possible to generate significant revenue from the trickle of people impulse buying the items you are reviewing?
Obviously the whole “getting eyes on it” problem is central but Rob even mentions using social media traction to promote reviews in lieu, I imagine, of any actual traffic coming from any other source, such as a blog.
Driving eyes to a nexus, through a portal, is obviously the idea, I guess the real moral question arises:
Just how god-damned click-baity do you want to get?
There was a time when BB’s authors recommended products they actually liked; I don’t see a problem with doing that with a referral link at all.
The problem isn’t making money, it’s sacrificing principles to do so. Paid-for advertorials shilling tat is not an avenue we should go down but I definitely trust most members’ judgment enough to be interested in hearing what products they like and want to recommend.
It really comes down to motivation, which is why I think it’s important that we 1) know the expenses we are trying to offset and aim just to meet those expenses and 2) make sure that whatever excess is raised (through donations or affiliate links) is allocated in a way that doesn’t encourage shilling.
I for one would like to see us formed as a benefit corporation which would allow us to set a social impact mission, but still operate as a for-profit company (which is just generally more efficient). That way we could raise money and collect affiliate revenue, but knowing that any excess that was raised would go to EFF or 826 or something.
Something I haven’t seen discussed yet in regard to front page blog content is who owns the blog posts and how can they get used beyond Happy Mutants? Probably be a good thing to address this early on. For some it may just be fun to get featured but for other folks that write for a variety of places for a living it could matter a lot.
Here is the text in the footer of a BB post as a starting point for discussion:
Boing Boing is published under a Creative Commons license except where otherwise noted.
Amazon is not a friendly corporation and I’m not sure why everyone is in such a hurry to drive traffic to their site. Personally, I’m sick of product recommendations; I want a community that (for once) isn’t organized around consumption; where genuine human interactions happen for their own sake, and not as a means to monetize a website. The expenses for a site with ~125 users can’t be all that great. If we someday become a phenomenon then perhaps we’ll have to resort to that, but I’d prefer to go kicking and screaming.
My answer would depend on the kind of editorial board in question.
The distributing of management functions amongst the community would be a pretty involved conversation though.
So as long as that option comes with a proviso like “We will have this conversation if the option is chosen” I guess I would be ok with holding my breath.
Good point. I guess I had assumed the editorial board would be self-selected, in the same way that the “mod board” was. But I guess there are other ways to do it, too.
@popobawa: that’s a matter for another discussion, I think. That falls under “style guide” which I would suggest should be drafted by the editorial board, however that gets formed.