Minutes from "LondonCommons.net General Meeting" on Nov 30 2008 - 6:00pm

Nov 30th 2008

Agenda items:

- Administrative tasks
- Welcome newcomer posts
- Changing rating system
- Changes to advertisment policy
- Moderators/admins
- Removal of comment (Dan H)
- Emergency donation plan
- automatic email notifications automatically

Emergency Donation Plan:

The people working on the commons have been responsible for transferring the commons to a VPS, which Thomas has been paying for for some time now.
We forgot to entirely transfer over from our last domain name (suso), and they didn't tell us that it was going to expire.

They still have rights to the domain and are asking for 100 dollars to transfer it over to us.

We need to raise 100 dollars.
Thomas suggests that we have a show to raise some money, also working in an e-commerce feature so people can donate online.

The members can front the money for now and will be reinbursed at a later date, as we are all too busy to organize a show in haste.

Automatic email notications automatically

Setting this up would be labour intesive, pete and matti are willing to help.
Thomas will set a time with pete, show him how to do it, and pete will do it,

Moderators/Admin

Jeremy and Rachel officially resign as moderator and admin.
Mike will be made User moderator.
Matti and Pete will become moderators.
Thomas the official admin.

Lauren M had been nominated as a potential moderator, if she will accept.

Welcome newcomer posts

As moderators we should take the initiative to welcome newcomers when they post their first comment or peice of content. (provided it doen't violate our policies).

Change to the rating system

Concerns about how the 5 star rating system. It only takes 3 ratings with an average of 2.5+ to be promoted to the front page, therefore if two people vote 5 and one person votes 1, the content will still be promoted to the front page, which is contrary to the reason the person who voted 1.

Other concerns being that there is a lack of content on the site and the front page can be stagnant, so any new content on the front page is a positive thing, Making the threshold higher would cause the front page to be even more stagnant.

There will be an entire revamping of the site happening in jan/feb, at which point the issue will resolve itself.
In the meantime we will remain with the current system.

Advertisment Policy

There are concerns with the advertisment policy. Mike will rewrite the policy and post it online for review and will bring it to the next meeting. All input will be welcome.

Removal of Comment

Concerns over accountability, as well as punitiveness.
Last initial will be removed from comment as a compromise.

Policies and procedures need to be clarified and important points need to be highlighted and bolded if possible. (to prevent further confusion)

Administrative tasks

Mike has some suggestions, as well as some outstanding tasks from the alst meeting, and will work with thomas to impliment them.
they are:

-feedback link which directs to feedback forum
-feedback email - forwards to mod email account
-getting rid of lesser used features
-visible recent posts link
-clarification of firstname/lastname policy during signup
-bigger image sizes.