Townhall meeting this weekend!

[popecrunch]

1) By and large, admin and wizard votes are held completely secretly. we are rarely, if ever, informed of what is being voted on, and usually we don't even get the results of that vote if the results weren't unanimous.

will any of those procedures get "declassified" in the future? I'm thinking a quarterly review of what votes were held and what the results were, with any identifying information stripped out. I feel like we don't really get an understanding of what wizards *do*, and so it's difficult to gauge whether they're doing it effectively.

2) because of the nature of certain topics, it doesn't make sense to be 100% transparent on all admin matters. it's hard to trust that the system is working when nobody has eyes on it, and it's also hard to get an idea for if the community's voices are being heard. do we have a plan for how we can "audit" the official goings on to make sure things don't fester in the dark, going unaddressed?

1:
I feel like simply answering the question as asked wouldn't give a full representation on what's going on behind the curtain, so to speak, so I'll answer it four times, sort of.

HOW IT USED TO WORK, BACK IN THE DAY
- Wizards pick people to be admins. Sometimes it's a vote, sometimes it's not, very very informal.
- Admins find out there's a new admin when someone shows up in their IRC channel that wasn't there before and nobody throws them out.

HOW IT WORKED AFTER THAT UNTIL FAIRLY RECENTLY, NO I DON'T KNOW EXACTLY WHEN IT CHANGED AND I DON'T REALLY THINK IT'S IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO GO DIG IT UP
- Wizards pick people to be admins. Sometimes that comes from suggestions from other admins. Wizards vote, then admins vote.

HOW IT WORKS AS OF THIS VERY INSTANT, I THINK, I MEAN EVERYTHING'S IN FLUX, SO
- When someone, admin or wizard, wants to hire a person, they post a thread in admin forums to vote on it. The end.

HOW IT'S GONNA WORK GOING FORWARD
- We don't know yet. We know we need to figure that out. We're working on something else first (specifically, what 'wizards' are for)

2:
The general sense of 'how it's gonna work going forward' is proceeding in steps - the step we just finished is the admin guidelines, the current step is 'what are wizards'. The general idea is that for each thing, assume that that thing happens at the all-admins level, with it being kicked to the (whatever wizards wind up being) level if there's a compelling reason, for instance if it touches on legal matters, legally prickly details like personally identifiable information, stuff that has a compelling reason to minimize the amount of eyeballs on it. How will we make sure that's not abused? How will we audit that? We don't know yet, but 'trust-but-verify' and 'transparency is generally more important than mild embarassment' are Core Ideas, so they will definitely be kept in mind.