The May 5 meeting did not cover all the agenda items, which will be discussed at a later time
( see https://steemit.com/informationwar/@stevescoins/informationwar-discord-meeting-may-5-agenda)

I am adding feedback from folks that did not attend the meeting, but who read the meeting log and suggested items for consideration. They have been added to the Participant list as well.

This is a looong read folks, grab some coffee and tie your significant other to the bed for the short term ;>

Participants

@stevescoins
@WakeUpND
@TruthForce
@dwinblood
@richq11
@metalmag25
@thoughts-in-time
@deliberator
@Scandinavianlife
@newtreehints
@commonlaw

Purpose of meetings

The purpose of these meetings is to get community feedback about what we are doing. We are not a democracy, but instead look at us as a coordinating body...

The Comanche did not typically organize their raids with 5 Paragraph Orders and the like. A warrior would announce a raid, and those warriors that wanted to join in, and that trusted his leadership, would follow him on the raid. If the raid was successful, he would have an easier time leading men on the next raid that he called for.

I like that idea as far as organization of our own community. No one is required to "work" for IW. We all have different ideas of what is most important to share.

What the Comanche idea does for us is give us a general idea of how we can cooperate with each other for specific goals, like building our community a bit more, or spreading our messages on the web outside Steemit, or going our own way on other ideas that the IW consensus does not join us in

Basically, these Discord meetings are the way to make suggestions for the way we handle the @informationwar account and try to spread the #informationwar message. We might not do what you suggest, but we do want to hear it

Structure of IW community and leadership

• @stevescoins & @TruthForce hold the account keys jointly. @stevescoins is lead, and @truthforce is johhny-on-the-spot if @stevescoins drops off the map.
• the Board chooses successors to the keyholders, but the board's input on all matters should be listened to; this is why we asked them to join
• the keyholders are in charge of curation selection and demotion (which means changing those keys and reissuing them if necessary)

The community consists of people with an interest in #informationwar.

Remember, we are trying to build this community on decentralized lines. We don't want a hierarchy and a chain of command, and neither do we want a set of complicated rules.

@dwinblood makes this point about the way in which we organize:

rather than trying to predict and plug all holes now
things will happen we can't predict now... so rather than spending energy predicting them... we deal with them when/if they actually happen

Curation Standards

I think that what people are looking at is a set of rules that if they follow, they will automatically get the full, UV, RS, and comment treatment...even though I think most folk don't really care about the comment ;>

That isn't what we are looking to do; this last meeting clarifies this in my mind.

The curation guidelines are flexible and imperfect, relying on a stated purpose and the judgement of our curators

• guidelines pertain to "Our Purpose" on our index page and to the biases of the curators
• IW is manually curated
• Even if you have a good, and relevant post, it may miss curation!
• We are very likely not to "punish" people who "misuse" the tag, we simply won't curate that post.
• We will try to nudge people in the right use of the tag as we go along...
  @TruthForce notes:

i think we be proactive as we curate. when i see something that isnt IW i tell them and say how we can only upvote stuff related to Our Purpose

• What we can do instead of a detailed list of rules is to provide positive examples...

but should find a few examples of really good posts and share them on the IW account so everyone kind of knows what we're looking?

• This could be the following:
  -"best of" posts on a weekly or daily basis
  -indexes of past IW & critical thinking material

• @WakeUpND notes that

Curators should have discretion or we'll be upvoting like 5 posts a day that fit all the rules

• so far, most of the curators align closely with my own biases, I wanted it that way, and that's why I stressed the need to add a "my bias" post under the @informationwar account for each curator
• There is a need to bring a contrarian curator on board, IMO, but this is an issue for later down the road
• @dwinblood notes:

I've up voted posts before I didn't like the topic or agree with the conclusions but the quality and effort and THOUGHT that went into it were sufficient that I felt compelled to at least give it some up vote.

• anyone should be able to use the tag...its our curation that matters to the community
• there is not a set of rules in which a post is guaranteed to be UV; we need to stress this
• @stevescoins made this comment about the guidelines

still hammered out...we'll make a first run guide within two weeks

• I am going to revere myself on that, I will run this by the board but I think the flexible method of curation that we have been discussing is best. I will run this past the board before an "official" decision is made, but I think this is the most likely course of action.

Conspiracy Theory

This became a large part of the discussion as to whether it should be curated material. I will note curator discretion, but I do want to share two points of view on the matter

• @thoughts-in-time

Well, how about things that cannot be proven?
well they can use the tag all they want but if we start curating that stuff, we'll look less serious than we could

• @dwinblood

many things we talk about here a large amount of people don't take seriously... so again YOU deciding what is "too far out" is subjective. You don't have to curate it yourself, but many far out things have been proven true with time. The quality of the post and whether they were attempting to share information that points out things the official narrative wants to ignore, conceal should be our main focus. Not whether we agree with everything or not.
You thinking it is too "far out" is subjective... can be a danger of being thought police which is I believe anathema to the actual mission here
A lot we write about can't be proven... YET (emphasis @stevescoins)

• I am going to go off-meeting and refer to earlier posts about things that can not be proven:
  Understanding What We Can't See - Conspiracy, "Debunking", and Absence of Evidence - Part One
  Understanding What We Can't See - Conspiracy, "Debunking", and Absence of Evidence - Part Two

and if a curator ever becomes a problem?

This is an issue that @stevescoins and @truthforce will resolve

Skin in the game - Delegation

• one suggestion has been that the more delegation, the more say in curation
• there is a FIRM consensus on NO to that idea...delegators will delegate if they think the IW account provides value...NOT if they want to have more input
• the suggestion has been made that delegators should receive stronger votes; we did not discuss this fully but I am opposed to this idea

Skin in the game - Kickback to @informationwar

@richq11 and @dwinblood both made a similar proposal

if you don't give back a % of your payout, you stop getting votes!

This was an idea we did not discuss fully, and should be included in future meetings.

Skin in the game - Delegation for low SP

We have discussed from time to time the idea of requiring delegation to receive curation...this would be impossible for lower SP holders, but a workaround was suggested by @commonlaw

As far as getting people involved I think giving people the opportunity to commit to delegating 25 SP is the way to go. As you say low SP members are not going to have the SP to do that. However In my own case I committed to deligating 25 SP as a way to support and give back a little. I think we could create a deal with the new low SP earners. It took me less than 40 days of being a IW member before I became able to delegate 25 SP and all 25 SP came from the IW curation of my post.

My idea:

Get a commitment to delegate 25 SP when the new members SP is 50 SP

Get a commitment to put all SBD into vest by powering it up until it is 50 SP.

Make it clear that not following through with the delegation will create the condition of not having your post curated until such time as you do.

Members who have the 25 SP to delegate should be given a grace period where they can see the benefits of the curation before asked to support through delegation or being cut off (week or whatever is decided).(edited)
Merit's and doubts:

I am not sure that our delegation amount right now is enough to be the carrot we want to implement this idea. The merit of this idea is that all IW members will know that everyone is a contributor( Putting their steem where their mouth is) and everyone will know that the person they are dealing with can keep there word (whether they do or not in every case is not the point). Also as the IW team grows so will the delegation and curation.

IF we run with this system, please understand it does NOT mean automatic upvoting!
It is defintely going to be part of next week's discussion

Skin in the game - other methods of building investment in the community

@KrNel and @insanityisfree making new logos and banners is skin in the game too, for example
Another possibility was that we could create tasks for low SP Steemers to help us(research, creating specific posts, use of outside SM - these would be examples)

Skin in the game - Recognition System

This would be a method of recognizing more contribution to the community without committing additional curation or influence...
There was not enough encouragement to continue with this idea at the present, but we may look to one in the future
@thoughts-in-time notes that

people like to do stuff that gives them bragging rights

and he also proposed a basic system of recognizing delegators.

New Members 0
Bronze Members 25+
Copper Members 75+
Silver Members 150+
Gold Members 250+
Platinum Members 500+
Keepers of the Flame 1000+

At this time, we won't be committing to such a system, but it is an idea I like as we move down the road

Still building the community

Several of us noted the decrease in Steem rewards as we focus on building the IW community.
We all noted it was worth it.
@truthforce notes

I think decentralized truth platforms can be a good way to keep the info from being censored, and at the same time earn a little reward if people like your stuff. And maybe years from now a lot of us might be able to quit our day jobs and do truth based podcasts/blogs that make enough money to keep us from going back to a 9 to 5 job.

Meeting Guidelines

Additional notes about future meetings

• Lets not argue about a specific case at this time, but keep it in generalities
• There will be personality clashes, mods should attempt to head these off
• Everybody in this community should feel free to speak up...we may ignore you or argue with you, but the point is to get the point of view out there
• I asked about posting the full chat log, and most folks think it is not a good idea, so I won't ask in the future

My impression

Initially, I thought the meeting went off the rails; I was tired and not fully modding, but as I put this summary together I see we had a lot of good discussion
I only had to smack one person with the agenda stick ;>

I am two months behind on thanking our current delegators, I need to get that info out there!