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UKAPS, transparency and the future.

I don’t have much to say other than I just wanted to highlight how amazing UKAPS is to a mere mortal.

I had the pleasure of meeting a fellow member in person and buying some equipment from them face to face. We both talked about the hobby and it was mentioned that there wasn’t many of us up this neck of the woods.

Anyway without UKAPS this interaction would never have taken place. It’s the place where we all meet / talk and above all enjoy this wonderful hobby.

Now whatever happens will happen but I just wanted to say thank you. I think some of us members would be happy to contribute financially albeit monthly subscription / donations whatever going forward once the dust has settled as such 😊

Im looking forward to help keeping UKAPS what it is - A sanctuary in a mad world.
 
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tam said:
I've run big forum, bigger than this and seen societies set up and down. My (unasked for) advice is that although setting up societies and committees sounds like a great way to safe guard things, actually it's really difficult to get enough people to committ consistantly to the formal structures that comes with all that. You need AGMs, chairpeople, treasurer, minutes, account etc. etc. as soon as you go formal, you get complicated.

I never assumed that society in the title meant the forum was set up in a formal manner. I assumed, like the majority of forums based on a shared passion, there was someone(s) that had put the time in to set it up and from there mods volunteer time to help running and people offer help towards the costs of servers and software.

I agree a seperate bank account is a helpful thing - I don't know if that was in place or not, that's how I always did mine money going in/out of that. If only for the person running things to keep on top of whether there is enough to cash to keep things going. I frequently topped mine up with my personal funds when the money from sponsor/advertising/donations were enough - which is more the direction these things go that making a fortune. Honestly I'd be impressed with anyone making enough money from a forum these days to in any way compensate for the time spent on it.

The only part of the situation I agree with is that if a mod raised a concern to me I'd be happy to show the costs/income, but I can also understand being upset about someone questioning your intergrity, which is how it would feel no matter how well intentioned. Tracking cash flow seems like the only big complaint and I would tend to look at solutions that just targetted that.

This is a rather long way around to say, my advice would be pick an admin, pick some mods (if you need more than you have), use a seperate bank account and keep the mods updated on the cash flow situation as needed e.g. are there enough funds to cover expenses and otherwise let things tick over. I would predict that if you start getting formal you'll struggle to maintain it - for something this size it just adds more work than it has benefit.

Finally, I know how much work moderating a forum is behind the scenes, all have you that have or are doing it have done an excellent job. I would say this is one of the best moderated forums (from a user perspective) I'd come across.
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I could not agree more with this strategy and it is in fact what I have thought to be the best way forward from the begining. This in my opinon should be the way to go for maximum efficiency in terms of forum operation. We are talking about a small forum after all, not a major corporation with hundreds or thousands of people running it where a more permanent structure is required else nothing works. The simpler and more informal the structure is, the easier and more flexible it is to manage. It has worked so far. I administer a forum myself. We have 9 moderators with 65+k members. It's all sorted out without the need of a committee and complex statuses. A mod wants to leave, then be it, we can replace him/her in a matter of days.

However there is a small but important issue to resolve under this scenario for it to work as intended. A head. One person who manages the forum’s money and under whose name the bank account/paypal should be since UKAPS is not a legal entity. This is the most critical part as people should have full trust on the person managing that account. In my opinon, the only way this can move forward under the above setting is if a list of candidates willing to be that person is set up and a vote made among mermbers. Since @Dan Crawford is the one currently holding the remaining money in paypal and a bank account he would need to agree to this as well.
 
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I belong to a similar sized forum that works like this. It runs on goodwill and spit, basically. And many Mastodon instances run the same way -- if funds are needed for hosting etc then an appeal goes out and people chuck a bit in the pot. It avoids a lot of unnecessary admin.

It does need one or two people to be 'in charge' though, and someone to be prepared to do the techie bits; which seems to be the main issue here. I am very new to UKAPS and the forum has provided me with both a wealth of knowledge and a distraction at a terrible time in my life. I don't know the deep background -- I'm basically sitting here watching a group of mates fall apart, from what I can tell.

Just... keep it simple. That's all. It doesn't need to be complicated. Could funds be used to pay a sys admin? How many hours a month would that mean?
 
The points raised around keeping it simple are well received and i would love this to happen. Unfortunately, while this is the sensible approach and is exactly what was happened for the last couple of decades, it is also what has got us here.
The only way the forum can have a solid future long term is to set it up in a way there is no single point of failure. It is obvious it only took one person with an inclination to pull on this thread, to do so (knowingly the consequences) and it all started to unravel.
The other challenge is you need one person who is trusted by the community and wants it long term, that person is not obvious to us.

There are a few options for the future of the forum, the preference is for enough people to come together to make light work of getting it all going again. I remain positive this can be accomplished pretty quickly and isnt too much work, but more people just need to put their time where their mouth is and offer to help! For anyone that might wants to help but unsure know what it entails, please raise your hand now anyway, once we have enough people to even make it viable we can discuss in a group chat what will be needed, which you can then of course decline if its too much.

So final call out, please message me with a title Happy to Help and any of the below;
  • happy to be considered for a more formal 'committee role' - moderate time commitment
  • happy to moderate- some commitment, normal forum visiting time if you tend to visit most days anyway, clean up spam and moderate threads etc.
  • happy to discuss Admin duties - IT knowledge required and a reasonable commitment of time
  • happy to discuss a Treasurer role - basic financial knowledge required and a commitment of time, certainly initially getting accounts set up (probably the trickiest bit)

Please keep the message simple, my ukaps inbox is a disaster zone at the moment so please be patient, a response will come, possibly after my holidays.
 
I know I said I'd bow out of the conversation, but crikey this makes for painful reading. Just keep it all really simple otherwise it won't work.

Aside from the banking issue there was nothing wrong with the way the forum ran before. Except you're obviously down two admins and a few mods. But a forum like this doesn't really need more than an admin and a couple of reasonably active mods anyway.

1. Transfer the money in to a business account with 2 signatories, a global admin, and a treasurer. Since @Wookii is an accountant I suggest him for the latter role, if he's up for it. That way it's all above board. Most of these accounts have free money managing tools etc which integrate with accounting software. Either way it's not rocket science.

2. Appoint a global admin with complete oversight, and to run the front end, and keep the sponsorship money coming in. It's what I did basically.

3. Use a xenforo hosting company to run the back end, £10 a month, give or take. Paulo has reset the forum back to vanilla so it shouldn't be too complicated anyway. That way he gets to enjoy the forum as a member without any further hassel.

4. Carry on enjoying the forum.
 
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ostler said:
I know I said I'd bow out of the conversation, but crikey this makes for painful reading. Just keep it all really simple otherwise it won't work.

Aside from the banking issue there was nothing wrong with the way the forum ran before. Except you're obviously down two admins and a few mods. But a forum like this doesn't really need more than an admin and a couple of reasonably active mods anyway.

1. Transfer the money in to a business account with 2 signatories, a global admin, and a treasurer. Since @Wookii is an accountant I suggest him for the latter role, if he's up for it. That way it's all above board. Most of these accounts have free money managing tools etc which integrate with accounting software. Either way it's not rocket science.

2. Appoint a global admin to run the front end, and keep the sponsorship money coming in. It's what I did basically.

3. Use a xenforo hosting company to run the back end, £10 a month. Paulo has reset the forum back to vanilla so it shouldn't be too complicated anyway. That way he gets to enjoy the forum as a member without any further hassel.

Carry on enjoying the forum.
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well f@#k, its almost like you should have said this to the ukaps team before setting fire to it Tim. Dont try and now come in as the savior of ukaps.

1 -is exactly the the objective, the fact its called a committee is irrelevant aside the fact at least the two banks i have spoken two, having a duel signature society/club account require an agreed constitution to be in place.

Sorry folks, its just all getting a bit much.
 
This whole thing has been ridiculously overblown in my eyes - top line this is a great forum run by lovely dedicated people for many years successfully.

I've been quiet on the forum for a while as I'm currently rebuilding my very falling apart house on top of a very busy job, but I'd hate to lose ukaps in the meantime, especially before I can share the awesome waterfall wildlife pond and big tanks that'll be set up further down the line. And I'd hate for future hobbyists to not get to read all these fantastic journals and information here - AI scraping doesn't cut it. I would step up more if I didn't have such a full plate already, but I will be happy to try quietly modding in the meantime.
 
It's just advice Iain, you don't have to take it. And I don't think you need a constitution to set up a joint account.

You know my opinion on this ad nauseum. But if you're determined to move forwards and let bygones be bygones, then I'm hardly going to stand by and let the forum crumble. I've invested a great deal of time and energy in developing it over the years, so folk could enjoy the hobby as a shared experience.
 
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Iain Sutherland said:
well f@#k, its almost like you should have said this to the ukaps team before setting fire to it Tim. Dont try and now come in as the savior of ukaps.

1 -is exactly the the objective, the fact its called a committee is irrelevant aside the fact at least the two banks i have spoken two, having a duel signature society/club account require an agreed constitution to be in place.

Sorry folks, its just all getting a bit much.
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What are the minimum requirements for something to count as a constitution?

As for agreement, I assume it can be a part of the sign up process for the forum, like we do with the forum rules? (I assume I agreed to follow the rule, but I don't actually remember.) I'm not sure about existing members, but there's likely something similar to how companies change user agreements.
 
shangman said:
This whole thing has been ridiculously overblown in my eyes
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I want to agree with you, but brutally donations were not transparent, and it’s a huge blow to trust. A society is built on trust. It could/should have been sorted early, but it spilled and the less details we had the worse it got. Remember, “random dude on the internet”. The start was a cluster****.

…

Mostly now I look forward to peoples journals 😊
 
ElleDee said:
What are the minimum requirements for something to count as a constitution?

As for agreement, I assume it can be a part of the sign up process for the forum, like we do with the forum rules? (I assume I agreed to follow the rule, but I don't actually remember.) I'm not sure about existing members, but there's likely something similar to how companies change user agreements.
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It’s not that hard and there’s lots of free support for writing one. It depends on the structure that ukaps will be (I'm assuming it will be a small charity, would be great to hear from Iain on that for clarity) - here are some simple guides for that kind of structure -

www.gov.uk

How to write your charity's governing document (CC22b)

How to set out your charity's purposes and rules in its governing document, how to start using it and how to change it.
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk
^ this pfd looks like a good bet

Assign some trustees (admin, mod team, etc), have a zoom call, hash out the details for what is relevant to ukaps, bish bash bosh.

Generally small charities have to meet 3 times a year to discuss the previous few months and any future plans, but it could be very short meetings so shouldn't take up lots of time. Minutes are needed
 
castle said:
I want to agree with you, but brutally donations were not transparent, and it’s a huge blow to trust. A society is built on trust. It could/should have been sorted early, but it spilled and the less details we had the worse it got. Remember, “random dude on the internet”. The start was a cluster****.

…

Mostly now I look forward to peoples journals 😊
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It may have been a blow of trust to you, it hasn't been for me.

But whatever has happened so far, we are all people who are here because of our shared ability to build beautiful complex structures and ecosystems out of basic materials, and this forum has been built in the same way with passion and expertise which mustn't go to waste.

We are just giving UKAPS a rescape - taking the structure which used to work but doesn't quite anymore, and rebuilding it into something we think will work a better for its inhabitants.
 
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I have already written a draft constitution as i had templates handy (i work in Cambridge University and 50% of my time is dealing with and sitting on committees). A committee can just be 3 people but have a few more allows for succession planning ensuring the future of the forum.

I know i sound like a broken record but this thread is still meant to be about people volunteering to help, thankfully a few have offered help which is a positive sign . Now, if folks stopped speculating and instead put themselves forward then we would have enough people to debate the future as a group of folks that will actually be doing the work.
 
Iain Sutherland said:
Now, if folks stopped speculating
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Think most if not all posting in thread are trying to help with various ideas/setups that have worked elsewhere, from business to running servers. Having been a sole 'Boss' decisions can made much simpler/quicker than any Committee. Stopped working at a hospital as too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.

Alter all there are many ways of skinning a rabbit
 
Zeus. said:
Think most if not all posting in thread are trying to help with various ideas/setups that have worked elsewhere, from business to running servers. Having been a sole 'Boss' decisions can made much simpler/quicker than any Committee. Stopped working at a hospital as too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.

Alter all there are many ways of skinning a rabbit
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I know I'm being a bit flippant.. 😛
 
I used to visit the forum for years Nayr88 was my user name and I have requested a name change on this one. Apologies its been that long since I created this alt account because I couldn't access the for sale section after forgetting my password on old account.

Anyway. Where did this all stir up from?
Am I being a being lax when I say why do we need to know the information on the money side. If there was a money wobble then what's been suggested should be fine moving forward.

Clear view of comings and goings for a person or two that represent openess and can scrutinise respectfully and voted for by the masses then all is well for me

Other than that aslong as the forum stay afloat I really dont need to see anything.
 
Iain Sutherland said:
I know I'm being a bit flippant.. 😛
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By the way, whilst we're being a bit flippant

Iain Sutherland said:
Dont try and now come in as the savior of ukaps.
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Didn't realise that role was still available. Does it come with benefits like being able to post under your real name? Can you post in threads without being deleted or banned? If so I'm thinking of applying.
Oh wait...I'm guessing there'll be a multipanel interview, and the final decision will be made by committee. Guess I better not bother then.

Seriously, for what it's worth I think a committee is a really bad idea. Why not just take my advice above and assume the mantle of Admin yourself Iain. I'm sure you'll do a splendid job.
 
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