I have been reading up on historic pirate governance as a tangent to my project to write a piece about dispute resolution. In the 18th Century pirate ships where beacons of democracy and equality in a world run by a corrupt aristocracy and an increasingly powerful merchant class. Fascinating reading.

Andrew

How can democratic integrity be guaranteed if mutinying morons run the show?

Is the voting process transparent enough when the ignorants in charge of memberships and counting votes have already shown their disrespect for democratic procedures? Why do we vote at all if the head of policy commiteee can already feel what the majority wants?

Please check the Policy Committee Rules of Procedure here:
http://pirateparty.org.nz/wiki/Policy_Committee_Rules_of_Procedure_%28Draft%29#Voting

Fine.

Mathmo, could you please put the disclaimer back for the next eight days until we've had a proper vote to get rid of it?

BTW I've changed my position due to Matt's persistence. Despite my reservations about Facebook's intrusion on privacy I will now vote that we remove the disclaimer entirely.

I think it might be best to combine the "Should we have a disclaimer?" vote with the "If we have a disclaimer, what should it be?" one, since it's quite possible that, say, some people might prefer disclaimer X over no disclaimer, but also prefer no disclaimer over disclaimer Y. As per RoP, the old disclaimer should be included in the options. I'll throw this in too: "Since you're here, there's a good chance you're pretty tech literate and privacy conscious. You probably already know that Facebook's default privacy settings aren't very private, and you probably already know that whatever your settings, the privacy of your posts ultimately depends on the discretion of Facebook's admins. But we thought we'd mention it anyway, just in case." (It sounded better in my head.)

Agree it should be one vote, including several wordings of mandated disclaimer, mandated absence of any disclaimer, and not mandating anything (i.e. decide this is something we don't need a rule on, and leave it to the discresion of the people actually doing this job for us).

In clarification of Matt's statement: Mathmo is singular, and he is not in charge of memberships. In fact there's effectively no one in charge of memberships atm, which given what the Secretary and his helpers (all volunteers) have had to put up with for the last few years and especially the last 3 months isn't at all surprising.

OK, options so far (this is not the start of the official vote)

Also I think we still need two votes;

Vote 1; should we have a disclaimer at all?

A) Mandatory absence of a disclaimer
B) Optional disclaimer, with wording and placement to be decided by the folk who run the Facebook account
C) No disclaimer, but we should post comment on facebook privacy concerns regularly so people are reminded of the issue.
D) Disclaimer in a location less prominent than the 'about' description, to be decided by further discussion.
E) Disclaimer in the current location (in the 'about' description)


Vote 2; what should the disclaimer say, in the event that we have one.

A) "Some of the Pirate Party membership have concerns about Facebook and privacy as outlined here (link to an article about Facebook privacy concerns). Because of this we'd prefer you participate with us on our website rather than only on Facebook, so that all of our membership can feel comfortable taking part in the discussion."
B) "Since you're here, there's a good chance you're pretty tech literate and privacy conscious. You probably already know that Facebook's default privacy settings aren't very private, and you probably already know that whatever your settings, the privacy of your posts ultimately depends on the discretion of Facebook's admins. But we thought we'd mention it anyway, just in case."
C) "The Pirate Party of New Zealand have some reservations about the privacy implications of using Facebook (make this a link to an article about privacy implications of using Facebook). We're here because it's a way to connect with people who otherwise might not find us, but now that we have your attention we would much prefer you engage with us on our website at http://pirateparty.org.nz/""
D) Current wording
E) "We think you're idiots" wording (If anyone votes for this option I think they're an idiot .. but I'll include it for the sake of completeness)

To me, the proposed disclaimer comes across as just more than a little patronizing.

It also sets a bad impression 'We don't like Facebook, but we have a page with nearly 1,000 members.. with the page being updated daily.. which means most of our members use Facebook on daily basis too'.

This seems frivolous and contradictory.

I'm going to set a vote in advance of no disclaimer.

It's my understanding then that voting starts on the 17th and runs to the 22nd? can the PC clarify this in the top post please? Also assume it's following the usual voting procedure, schulze method was it? by email. Please clarify. (I'd also suggest [with no particular authority] making it 5 final days of discussion AFTER a clear announcement of the timeframe, and parrot the announcement in the mailing list)

I'd also like to make voters aware that you need to have your membership in order by the close of voting. A lot of people currently don't. Renewal still requires a new form. Don't be too concerned if none of the membership admin is available to give much of a response quickly, as long as everything has been submitted on time or prior arrangements made on time, things will get sorted out.

I'm glad this discussion has finally become sensible, and is no longer about insulting people.

I would say use links to encrypteverything.ca and probably one other more specific site, as the main focus of our statement, instead of re-inventing the wheel. (please pass link suggestions on to the facebook page admin). I would leave it up to the volunteers at the coal face (no pun intended) to decide how to word the statement unoffensively.

Anywhere on the page is a prominent place. It's not like a lot of content is kept on our actual page. Mostly everything goes up as short term posts (which is the main feature of a facebook page), or by linking to relevant sections of the website.
I think it would be unwise to overestimate the importance of this disclaimer, compared to e.g. mentioning who we are and the policies we actually stand for etc. Of course, the most prominent way to communicate things to facebook users is not to leave notes on our page, but to go and talk to people about things (which is what the page mostly does!).

I would leave it up to the volunteers at the coal face to use their judgement where exactly to place these things, now and in the future to best respond to different things that come up.

I note that these volunteers have already promoted the encrypt everything site and others a fair bit. It's not as if they disagree with this ideology, or like they are misrepresenting us and we have to reign them in. The main reason there isn't more of this good stuff already, is simply because we don't have more people who choose to spend much of their time helping our particular organization. (that goes for the wiki as well, btw).

The way to solve the problem is to require companies like Facebook, Google etc. to be up front and transparent about what information they collect and how they use it. That is not to obfuscate it in volumes of "privacy" policy.

Companies should be compelled not to harm the individual. The individual should not be compelled to defend themselves from the companies.


Andrew

P.S. Pirates should never engage in ad hominum attacks to promote an argument
.