Question about AGM and IRC?

That’s true, and Discord is software. But IRC is not software, it’s a protocol. Many software projects (servers & clients) implement the IRC protocol, and they will surely eventually cease to exist. But IRC, the protocol, will outlive all of them (naturally).

Could you elaborate? What is missing from IRC (the protocol itself, servers, or clients) or done in a bad way when compared to other chat protocols/systems?

Given that this is an annual event and that we already have other means of communication (such as this forum, the wiki, mailing lists, …), why is that so bad?

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That’s true, and Discord is software. But IRC is not software, it’s a protocol. Many software projects (servers & clients) implement the IRC protocol, and they will surely eventually cease to exist. But IRC, the protocol, will outlive all of them (naturally).

I don’t think that’s particularly relevant distinction here but there are more modern protocols like XMPP or Matrix if you want something more future proof.

Could you elaborate? What is missing from IRC (the protocol itself, servers, or clients) or done in a bad way when compared to other chat protocols/systems?

It basically just transmits plain text if you are connected to the server at the moment. There are bots that provide extra functionality or some extensions that some clients choose to implement but it’s at best building on poor base.

Features useful in a modern chat app:

  • 1on1 and private group chats
  • being able to see and browse chat history
  • replying to messages (certain style that makes it easy to identify what you reply to)
  • rich text formatting (usually using markdown or sth)
  • threads within a channel
  • emoji and stickers
  • embedded content such as gifs, media previews
  • sending files
  • voice channels and/or calls with option for video and screen sharing

Not everything may be needed for every purpose, e.g. Twitch/Youtube-live chat does not implement most of those but then again it depends on what we want for this kind of meeting and I think twitch chat style communication is not it.

You may claim that some of that have been implemented by some clients or is provided by bots but then your argument about client interchangeability falls since then it’s one client choosing to interpret messages certain way or server choosing to employ some bot because these features are not part of core spec. Can’t have both points.

If you read through wikipedia article describing IRC it doesn’t paint this protocol as something that has a bright future in my opinion: IRC - Wikipedia

Given that this is an annual event and that we already have other means of communication (such as this forum, the wiki, mailing lists, …), why is that so bad?

I explained what was meant about community building. Whether that’s something that is considered desirable is everyone’s personal opinion.

For me this kind of engagement is more likely to make people stay in osm longer. People are social animals and having other people to talk about given hobby can help in keeping their interest in it. Most people can draw only so many buildings (or w/e else) on a map before getting bored and moving on to something else.

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I think a few things have been missed in this thread. The key thing is that a company AGM is a legal requirement which is rather formulaic, and unless something has gone very wrong, boring. It’s just about the last place where one might engage new users.

The OSM Foundation is a company incorporated in England and therefore subject to the Company Law of England and Wales. AGMs are a necessary formality of these laws. Normally every non-profit organisation I have belonged to over the past 50 years has treated them as such. Most usually have the AGM as part of a more interesting meeting (as OSMF did until 2015), not least because the usually last under half an hour. There is no scope for asynchronous involvement as suggested by @nukeador, because of the legal basis of the meeting.

They are not really an occasion for carrying out normal business, and in effect there are usually 3 main items: board’s report, treasurer’s report and the election of directors.

Typically, the first two items are passed by members without a vote (nem comm). Ideally, the reports would be available a week or so before the meeting.

Obviously, OSMF has a sophisticated method of electing officers and in the main time in the OSMF AGM is spent waiting for the results.

Sometimes there are resolutions affecting the Articles of Association (AoA). So far with OSMF these have been discussed up front and voted on prior to the AGM, so there is little scope for discussion.

I think other items for the agenda actually have to proposed quite some time before the meeting happens according to the AoA, so this also limits any scope for broader discussion. The one thing I would like to see added as a regular item is a “Vote of Thanks” for the Officers, Directors, Working Group members etc.

A further complication is that the first two items relate to the previous financial year, so this year these cover events which happened nearly a year ago. I think there is a case for OSMF to return the AGM to mid-Summer, as it’s very confusing approving accounts which are nearly a year old. Usually, the treasurer has reported financial data for the current financial year, but technically this is out of the scope of the meeting.

Given the meeting is entirely virtual it is important that attendance by any member is as easy as possible, and that who has attended the meeting is recorded. IRC might not be very glamorous, or cool, but it enables attendance with the minimum of technology and bandwidth.

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Almost all IRC clients support DCC for private messaging. Ad-hoc private group chats are awkward because of the need to set up a private channel for the purpose.

Yes, IRC is rather lacking in this department.

Most IRC clients support the mIRC formatting codes, giving you bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough. Realtime line-oriented chat doesn’t need fancier formatting.

Most IRC developers and users consider the absence of this a feature, not a bug.

Most IRC clients support the DCC protocol for file transfer.

Most usually have the AGM as part of a more interesting meeting

I think that’s the point that some here are trying to make. I agree that it would be nice for the AGM to coincide with an event that continues once the legal formalities have have closed. For a start, it would be a good way to get to know the new directors better and it could be used to help get more people interested in volunteering for the Working Groups. If we never try it we’ll never know if it could be beneficial.

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My $0.02

IRC being not resource-hungry is one good point.
Not even needing to log in is another.

On the other hand, for quite a lot of people these are not problems, but having to go to another medium is.

So, maybe let’s keep IRC as the channel for AGM, but bridge it to wherever we can? We have Matrix, Twitter, Discord, Mastodon (here OSM has even it’s own server), facebook… Let people use it via a bridge.

Small nitpick, the OSMF just has “General Meetings” and no special “Annual General Meeting” (that went away with the first revision of the AoA many years ago). And yes board members should know better than to refer to them as an AGM, but old habits etc (I’m just as guilty).

While I’m not directly responsible for the change, I believe the current handling of GMs was purposely changed to online / detached from other events to make it easier to schedule and reduce the amount of effort arranging everything around it (voting/elections etc). I can see a certain value in bridging the IRC channel to matrix as we do essentially for all other OSM ones, so that there is scroll back etc.

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Should the wiki pages about each year’s General Meeting be renamed to account for this change? (I recognize that election-related wiki pages tend to get copied forward from year to year without noticing such things; this isn’t limited to OSMF by any means.)

No real opinion on that, but the 8th and later General Meetings should not be named AGMs. What clearly needs to be changed is the text at the top of the page which is ancient it seems.

I’ve attended many general meetings as a former director and conducted the voting for others.

A GM must meet certain legal requirements that make it ill-suited for promoting interaction with other foundation members. A GM must be synchronous, real-time, and is for members only. This means that any time you pick will exclude many people, there’s no place for general discussion, translation has to be real-time, and the business to be conducted is largely announcements.

A text-based medium is better for accessibility for people who don’t speak English at a native level. I’ve heard from many non-native speakers that they’d rather read English text than deal with speech from people who may have a strong accent over a limited connection.

If you can’t make the GM, don’t worry. I’m very involved in the foundation, and I don’t make the GMs. Anything I want to ask about the reports I can do when they’re published, or I can ask on one of the many asynchronous communication methods, where everyone will see the question, and people have time to properly answer.

If we didn’t need the GM for legal reasons, I’d prefer to see all of the business at it conducted in other ways, but the GM is part of the legal apparatus the OSMF operates in, so it has to exist.

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Finally a voice of reason. Any opportunity to meet and build community is good.

Ahhhh, for many years the GMs and before that the AGMs -were- during the largest event we have, SotM, with all kinds of parallel/accompanying events and so. Nothing that has been brought up in this thread is even remotely new or hasn’t been tried before (that doesn’t mean things need to stay the same, just that there are reasons why we are currently doing things the way they are done).

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If I’m correct, one can simply join the room #_oftc_#osmf-gm:matrix.org with any Matrix-capable client, no bridge needed apart from what https://www.oftc.net/ offers by default.

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An online event coinciding with the AGM would be new as far as I am aware. The previous link with SotM was in-person. But the history is mostly irrelevant here anyway.

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Why? Broadly: “We’ve done it that way for ages and we’ve just kept it up”.

As other say, the (A)GM needs to meet very many legal requirements as per the Companies Act. As quick search tells me there is 55 pages of UK law about how we have to conduct our “General Meetings”. IME AGMs are often kept boring in other clubs & organisations.

Since (A)GMs are important legally, there is a higher benefit to wide accessibility that IRC provides, and since they’ve been boring, there is less need for the benefits of video chat on some other platform.

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It never occurred to me before, but after attending this year’s general meeting via IRC, backscroll was the thing I was left wanting the most. There were many latecomers filtering in as the proceedings unfolded, who wouldn’t have been able to catch up on the bits that had just taken place. (@Stereo had to frequently remind folks to give Dorothea their real name, though this probably would’ve happened in any medium unless it were to ask for that upfront when signing in.)

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@SimonPoole Can you point me to a source for this?

https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Articles_of_Association

and

https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Annual_General_Meetings/13

I suppose I would also be considered a primary source for this as I actually worked out the changes with our counsel at the time.

I wonder if a Discourse chat channel would meet these requirements:

It would likely address the frustration about the lack of backscroll that I mentioned earlier, and it would probably require less setup for most members.

On the other hand, this Discourse instance requires an OSM account (that hasn’t been blocked), which is technically more restrictive than the IRC channel we’ve been using.

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