Monthly General Meeting, November 2025
Propositions and Motions
Confirmation of new members
This meeting voted to confirm the membership of the newest member of staff.
Election stuff
This agenda item was added to provide an opportunity to voice any ideas or concerns regarding the election platform, timelines, or any bylaws changes regarding the election process or board makeup before candidate announcements kick off.
The elections are typically held in March. An asynchronous election is run on CIVS whose results are then confirmed during the general meeting (due to bylaws requirements). No ideas or concerns were raised regarding this process at this time.
Proposed bylaws change for idle removals
A change to bylaws was proposed for this meeting that would codify that an asynchronous election must take place, as well as require organisation members to vote in one at least every other year to maintain membership. Casting a blank ballot would be permitted. Notably, the exact process for performing the asynchronous election would not be codified, so as not to tie us to any particular platform.
It was noted that, as-written, someone could be elected to a position but be removed from the organisation for failing to vote in the election. The meeting agreed that this is unlikely to occur and that, if necessary, the board can call an EGM to immediately re-invite the member. Concerns were also raised that other forms of contributions to the network or the organisation running it should also count for the purposes of retaining membership in the organisation. However, in absence of specific suggestions, the meeting agreed that the proposal could be adopted as-is and amended later.
There has been support for some mechanism for removing very-inactive organisation members without having to specifically vote to do so during a general meeting, and voting in an asynchronous election that occurs once a year and is open for thirty days is a low bar of effort to clear. Ultimately, the meeting voted to adopt this proposal, and will be enacted for the next asynchronous vote. Therefore, the earliest someone can be removed from the organisation due to this policy is after the AGM in 2027.
Other questions
Should we forbid the use of network ban automation that staff cannot disable?
Earlier in the month, a ban evasion detection tool running from a staffer’s connection began to produce false positives with no way of disabling the tool without forcibly disconnecting the staffer. Bots run by staff usually run under a dedicated user account on an internal toolbox server, but in this case the tool in question was written as a script for a graphical IRC client and would require a significant rewrite in order to run independently.
This meeting agreed that it would be beneficial to have an internal rule that ban automation needs to have a documented process for any member of staff to disable it if necessary. The meeting also emphasised that long-running autonomous software really should on our infrastructure. The meeting also agreed that a few other internal policies and guidelines that had been agreed upon but never formalised should be written down alongside this latest internal policy item.