Where are we going??

OK, I can see this thing sort of stalled here, so I will try to get it moving again.
It seems the old Voltage Forum is toast, and even if Ken reappeared, there's a pretty large group of us that wouldn't go back due to the way he just let the thing die. Years of experience and thousands of posts went down the drain. Restoring backups may be more work than just starting from scratch.

The idea of a democratically organized forum seemed good in principle, but failed in execution. My feeling is most members don't really care how the admin runs as long as the board is there and they can post. In fact, the less direction you give them, the better.

Soooo.... How do we fix this semi-broken thing?
I'm open to suggestions, but this is what I would think:

We need a leader. A leader that most everybody likes. Not like our country's president. A leader that can make most of the decisions without involving too many people or requiring a huge debate. Representative government. It has to be somebody who both wants to do it and has time. Some skill would be useful also.

We need a backup leader for when the leader is on vacation, gets run over by a Hummer, or is kidnapped by Big Oil goons.

We need a technical team that can keep the site running and fix problems in the code.

In a democratic system, people run for office and you have an election.
Why not? It would take a somewhat long time frame to accomplish this since you would want a majority of the members to be aware of it and have a chance to vote before the deadline.

All this is just sort of scratching the surface, there's lots of details that need sorting out, like who's going to pay for the domain name and server space. Oh wait, that's what the treasurer does.

Step 1. determine the MINIMUM number of positons needed.
Step 2. open nominations for the positions and hope people apply.
Step 3. once you have enough "candidates", create a poll and have an election. I'd think you'd need to leave the polls open for at least a week. I don't know if cheating would be an issue. There's only so much you could do to stop it.

Once the new admin gets "sworn in", they run the show. If everyone votes for someone who has an enlightened attitude, we will all be in Nirvana, except for the occasional flame war and spam.

What do you other guys think?

A more long-winded version of this discussion is here: http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=172&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Another idea might be to might be to have a periodic poll for each of the admins (moderators, webmaster, whoever) that would simply be a vote of confidence. Sort of like a presidential approval rating. If, at any time, an "elected official" scores less than 50% approval, they should be replaced. Too bad it doesn't work like that in real politics.

A truely democratic government is perhaps impractical in cyberspace, but a representative government where leaders make decisions on their own on behalf of their constituants seems quite attainable.

There are many details to work out. I've been pretty busy with the "day job" lately, so I appologize for not moving faster on this.
What would we call the "leader" of the admin group anyway?
Supreme Commander?
President?
Chairman? (of the board - pun)
Most High Voltage One? you get the idea.

If members do not participate in this process, the decisions will be made without your input.

Exactly who is our moderation team at this point anyway?

Our current moderator team is listed on the Community Volunteers Page

Cheers,
Board Moderator

Below is the list of current moderators, etc. Except for a few, I don't know who these folks are.
Perhaps they had different names on the old forum or are simply new here.

I, for one, would like to know our leadership a bit better. It might be nice to post a breif profile for each one that includes their previous screen names and possibly their actutal names (last name optional for privacy reasons).

Confusion and the perception of secrecy undermines the trust we might want to place in our leaders.

I would also suggest at some point to have a poll to confirm each of these members as being supported by the community in their position. If the majority of members (who actually vote) are OK with each of them, then there will be little room for complaints.

Ultimately, I would still like to see someone voted in as "leader" who could manage most of the issues and provide a single point of contact for members with issues.

Bernie
Gus
Jay
Mij
Nickf23mod
Ollie
Sarge
Taylor
VOE
Elrod
ILBCNU
Stleride
Trillian
David Herron (Webmaster)

Good point Fechter,

I was just over at Yahoo, joining the Vespa Clone Group, because this Forum starts to bore me to tears....
It is VERY important for me to stay in touch with what used to be a resourceful and active group which has helped me tremendously in staying on top of the emerging technology needed to embrace our future in terms of transportation.

Maybe we could suggest every member would volunteer their real e-mail address for an "Emergency Plan" which means these e-mail addresses remain top secret (and in the posession of a "Master Moderator") so that he/she can notify everyone of a potential new forum location, but only in case of a hack.

I miss the old V days when I raced to my laptop to check the forum before I even got my news...;-(

Right on dude,
I miss the days of seeing crazy modifications and hod rod scooters that get pulled over by the Highway Patrol. Smoking tires, smoking motors, smoking controllers and batteries. Push the limits. Doing things that the "experts" say won't work. Like John Wayland says, "We blow things up so you don't have to". Serious EV hackers bent on overthrowing the big oil monopoly on our lives and getting even with them for years of ripping us off and poisoning the planet. Beating common sense into people. Making giant SUV's and needless waste the enemy.

Ahh... the good old days.

We need to get them back!

Hi,

This is the fist time I have logged in here, so I don't know what has been going on lately, though, I have some thoughts.

First: I really appreciate all the effort that that went into the old Visforvoltage forums. I appreciate what Ken had done from the old yahoo group, to the Visforvoltage forum. Thank You.

I do have a few caveats: The forum went down before, I believe from equipment failure, and seemed not to be backed up, and restored. We were assured that it would be. Of late, the forum was hacked, and is still down months later. The forum should have only been down for 24 hours, and people should have only lost perhaps, a days worth of posts.

I've seen this new site since then, and I have been confused as to if is temporary or permanent. It has some interesting features, such as RSS, and I do appreciate that someone stepped up and helped. Thank You. Though with this said, it's not much to look at, is it? Beyond the look, I find myself searching for common things. The UI needs work.

I have other questions:

Will this site be backed up and restored in a timely fashion?

Who owns VisForVoltage.com/net?

Is Ken still involved in EV's. Is he present?

If he is not connected to this site/project, are there issues with the Visforvoltage name?

Who hacked the old site, and why did they take the time to do it?

Thank You,
BrendaEM

BrendaEM says:

BrendaEM,
Good to hear from you again. I will try to answer your questions for you and others.

Will this site be backed up and restored in a timely fashion? YES, this site has been and will continue to be save to backups. We have a backup procedure in place with an administrator and an alternate. These individuals have been working together on this site from almost the very beginning of it's formation and work very well with each other. Yes, more than one person has the keys so to speak.

Who owns VisForVoltage.com/net? When the .net site was setup it was intended to be a place for the members to use while the .com site was repaired. The .com site is the old site and is not owned by the same people as the .net site. The owners of the .net site do not believe the .com site will be rebuilt so we have registered the name "VisforVoltage Forums" as the new site and created a new logo "V is for Voltage" which is also registered. The old logo and name were never registered by anyone. With that information imparted to answer you question the site is owned by several individuals as a joint effort. The main reason for joint ownership is to avoid only one person having the keys. Public data may be found on GoDaddy.com. Here is some of the public information. -

Registrant: V is for Voltage
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: visforvoltage.org
Created on: 18-Nov-06
Administrative Contact:
Stevenson, Chas chas_stevenson@yahoo.com
Technical Contact:
Jones, Jr., George georgejjonesjr@hotmail.com

Is Ken still involved in EV's. Is he present? I can only answer this question with known information. I have heard many explanations, some of which are here on the new VisforVoltage site. My personal knowledge is that Ken is no longer active in the EV world at this time.

If he is not connected to this site/project, are there issues with the VisforVoltage name? He is not associated with this site. As I said earlier the old VisforVoltage name was not registered by anyone.

Who hacked the old site, and why did they take the time to do it? Again I can only answer from my own knowledge. I do not know who or why the site was hacked. I only know we are using a different forum application which is harder to hack. With some luck we will all be here a long time.

Hope this helps,
Site Alternate Administrator and Co-owner
chas_stevenson
Chas S.

Moderator Captain

Hi Brenda, I'm glad you found us again.

Though with this said, it's not much to look at, is it? Beyond the look, I find myself searching for common things. The UI needs work.

Please help me understand what 'common things" you think are lacking. That should be covered on a different thread than this one.

The Drupal software this site is built from is a highly popular system that's used for thousands of web sites. I've got a couple years experience building web sites using this software .. so perhaps my eyes are unable to see missing features that your eyes can see.

Who owns VisForVoltage.com/net?

Ken still owns VV.com .. but that means nothing in terms of VV.net. They are different domain names under different ownership. The VV.net domain is owned by ChasS and George, while I own VV.org.

Who hacked the old site, and why did they take the time to do it?

All we know is they used the code name "Hacker Ntition". If you search for that string you'll find hundreds of InVision based boards that have been cracked by that person.

Why? Often the reason is that some people get their jollies doing destructive things like grafitti on the sides of buildings. But in this case the site was also reconfigured to spew virus's into peoples computers. So perhaps the person was one of those who set up networks of hacked personal computers who can be coerced into sending SPAM or whatnot.

- David Heron, http://davidherron.com/

- David Herron, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, http://www.7gen.com/store
- EVT 4000, Charger bike (rebuilt), Vego 600sx (rebuilt), Electrified Electra Townie
- Lectra motorcycle