A membership driven site

We believe the most successful and stable websites  are membership-driven, almost entirely run by their members. This especially applies to a poetry site, where we must be vigilant against such issues as cliqueyness and cronyism.

Along this line of thought, we're happy to announce that we are moving to the next stage of giving our members more control over both day-to-day operations as well as greater influence over the larger decisions. Aiming at total ownership.

We are announcing a new group to be known as the Advocates Election Committee (AEC). This group will elect the members who run the Advocates program, select new Advocates, and for rare cases, be empowered to strip a member of their position.

The AEC will be the primary organ of general membership - it is the main forum through which our members express their voice. It is a syndicalised committee, totally accountable to membership, not a power group.

Committee members will be elected by the general community. We will be phasing this in through the next few months - initially, we will start the committee with a small, handpicked team.

The AEC has primary responsibility for:

* The election of new Advocates
* Helping with long term planning and strategic direction
* Organising events like contests
* hosting chat


Some of the issues we invite members to discuss (and which will be posted as separate forums) are:
* Who votes on members of the AEC? Suffrage (which members get to vote, should there be a limit as to how long they have been members or how actively they have participated?) Remember we have an AEC to avoid public embarrassment of rejected Advocate applicants.
* Rules for the site
* Censorship

We will be announcing the members of this committee shortly.