To: Traveler, The Legionnaire, Irving and others

X-Prize community

This document is made with the agreement of:
Elliot Kulakow (TerraMrs) US
Sigurd Gabriël De Keyser (Sigurd) Belgium

Asking agreement from:
Traveler
The Legionnaire
Irving

On the following proposal:
We (Elliot and Sigurd) joined our strength to focus on a better future for the X-prize community.
We came up with a Democratic, X-Prize supporting, Friendly, Social and Moral idea to handle the community together.

Our idea is made out of several building steps. (written in context to Traveler, The Legionnaire and Irving)

The first one is to bring the main community members together, we used the forum top 5 to choose who they will be and we’re happy to announce you’re one of them.

We had in mind using MSN Messenger, AIM Messenger, E-Mail, … or something else, depending on what you’re using.
We suggest you send one or both of us your contact information using the Message Board Private Messaging system.

When we succeed bringing the elite of the forum together, we can go to the next building step of the idea.

The second idea includes: sharing ideas, learning to know each other a little bit and building in this way a more personal community starting from the top.
In this way we can stand together having the same ideas to bring out to the public, this is an important step for when the community becomes more populated to avoid differences between important members.

The third idea includes: contacting together the x-prize team and webmaster to ask them to give us access to moderate the message board.
This will open the way to:
- Moving topics when posted in wrong board.
- Making polls or important topics stick to the top of the board.
- Removing topics when needed to a board invisible to normal members, open for x-prize board and webmaster to ban the person doing so and to check the moderators moderation.

The fourth idea includes: making a more friendly democratic moderating team with 3 changing members, with a topic each 2 month open, where registered users with a different IP Address, with more then 10 posts can put a name (not their own name) for the 3 people who will be the changing moderators the next 2 months. People can only be a moderator for 1 time 2 months a year. And this can change when the community becomes more populated.
People with a bad reputation can also become banned from being moderator.
In this way, the 5 main moderators can take a few steps more to the back to handle the management and to give other people a chance being part of it too.

The fifth idea includes: when the 4 other ideas are working as it should; opening the 5 main moderation team members to be removed when needed, when 85% of the forum agrees to remove someone from the team for any good reason..


Other people on the message board, who’re against this proposal, please respond to this topic within 1 week after this post had been posted.

Hi,

These are interesting ideas. I think the moderator idea, at the least, should be implemented. We probably won't need it that much, but it could be useful. I would be for that. Have you contacted the webmaster yet?

Didn't contacted the webmast about it YET, we first want you(The Legionnaire) and (Traveler, Irving) to agree with it, and to make it possible to contact each other on an other way (Online Messaging; E-Mail;....).

While I reported the spammer on this board to Peter, I mentioned a little about TerraMrs and my idea, but promised more detailed information when others agreed with it.

Traveler contacted me on Private Messaging and he Agrees.

Only waiting for Irving before we'll officially send this proposal to the x-prize board.

I think a moderator is a great idea. I think the problem is that school is on vacation and there are some kids here that normally were in school.

Agreed. Obviously this board is in need of moderation. I'm currently traveling for the holidays and am using borrowed systems until January. Thanks for the effort, will support as best I can.

You may want to set up a moderator forum so you don't have to send so many Messengers and it will give the moderators a spot out of the public view to discuss policy or problems.

Yep, that's a good option.
But I guess most of it will be anyway public discussed... I think moderating for spammers... is the real problem.. and to make it possible to chose what polls always stay on top etc...

We've got support from everyone now, the final proposition will be sent to Peter pretty soon.

Sounds good; be sure to keep us posted.

One other idea I just had is that maybe we should implement a sort of "rapid update" section to the main X-Prize website. A lot of us were earlier discussing the fact that the X-Prize website is not updated as frequently enough as we would like. Perhaps if the X-Prize staff gave us moderators a section of the website that we could update at any time (sort of like a weblog), that would fix the problem.

Don't worry, we'll keep you up to date



This is very simple and realistic for the webmaster (if he has time), if we create a moderator news forum only, it's easy to implent anywhere with code a banner with those posts.

On this way we can also move good topics to that place, people can't make topics, but can reply as normal posts to the topics themself.

I think, we can best send such proposal after this one is done.
And even without the news on the front page, we can make it on the forum already when we're moderators;)


btw, Peter promised: Gregg Maryniak our Exec Director will be in touch shortly.

Folks.
Great ideas all around here about the site and the messageboard. I removed Guest posting last night, which should keep the unsavory time-wasters out...However, I've spoken to Peter and Gregg about your proposal and we'll get this stuff ironed out after the holiday break.

Thanks for organizing this and helping us keep the list tidy thus far.

Best.
themechanism.

Well, Guest posting has been off since I first saw this messageboard, and there are still no moderators. This could present a problem, although there is little call for moderation as yet.

One other suggestion is a karma system -- enrich the webboard environment, and you get positive karma; just be annoying, and you get negative karma. It's very useful on other webboards I've been on. Keeps most people in line because those with the spiffy titles are respected far more than those down on the bottom of the totem pole.

Also, a vote for the first moderators might be a good idea, although I'm not positive how well it would work.