There should be somewhere where official decisions made by the Makerspace are recorded and made available to members to view
Why
Currently it’s hard to see what decisions have been made, how they’ve been made and the reasoning behind them - otherwise we are doomed to have endless discussion threads with no definite outcome. If as a member you want to see what the official position on something is, currently you have to trawl through lots and lots (sometimes hundreds) of posts discussing the issue before you find a definite decision. And even then, sometimes that decision is later changed - there’s no link between those two things.
Also, there are a multitude of ways in which decisions can be made - currently there’s no record of how decisions have been reached - other than a director said it should be so at some point - which obscures any processes which led up to that decision. This is not good for transparency.
How
A simple way to do this would be to make a discourse section which is read only to all members, but write for directors. Directors should take responsibility for recording decisions. A template could be used to make the format consistent.
Ideally, decisions should link to proposals (like this one!), so that people can follow the whole process leading up to a decision being made.
Decisions should be immutable - if they are superseded in the future, the new decisions should link to the original decision and the original decision should be marked as superseded and link to the current one. This way, we have a record of historic decisions as well.
It ‘may’ actually cut their work. If they make a decision and note it officially, it means they don’t have to revisit the question numerous times in numerous posts to give reasoning to the decision. Do it once. Do it properly and then simply direct everyone to the decision area of discourse for any queries they have.
Great proposal.
Perhaps in the name of democracy and lower burden on directors, anyone can access the template and write-up a decision, but only directors can move into the “decisions” section/category? Perhaps at members meetings, the post could be created and a volunteer is tasked with writing up the decision?
Recording ownership of any task - yes, I say that should be part of the template. Or “vacant - looking for volunteer to lead” (eg. CNC?). And then progress reports as subsequent posts - all other chat/discussion to happen on other threads. Keeps “decisions” as a nice clean reference document.
I worry that it would give to much power to a small number of members who can bair to spend the required amount of time on discours ,
Most members can’t spend there whole lives 9n hear
I guess there needs to be a definition of a decison. Here’s a starter for 10:
A decision is any resolution made by the Makerspace (as a collective entity) to pursue a course of action, which involves exchange of money or goods, and/or results in a change to the Makerspace (physically or otherwise).
So that would cover things like: fix the ducting (exchange of money, results in a change); change to governance structure (no exchange of money, but a change to the Makerspace); creation of a new @ role (no money, change to the space).
The template should include a section for the person who is responsible for it, plus any additional contacts. Really, a director should “sponsor” it, even if they’re not the one actively doing it, for the purposes of continuity (e.g. if a volunteer cannot complete it, it shouldn’t be left unfinished).
In that proposal, the project archive is where decisions get “consistently stored”. But yes, that’s definitely something we talked about more than is fleshed out there. Should we revise / add to the proposal?
Generally my thinking is that if we get the project decision making thing working, in time it will absorb other things like the any decision being mooted here. Partly because culture, and partly because there’s actually a place.
