d.org

[Knud Sørensen]

This is NOT about a new d website :-)

There have lately been a lot of discussion about handing over phobos 
to a community based standard library effort.

A natural question is then how to organise such a community effort.

I would here like to suggest that we try to use a bottom-up organisation
structure.

The organisation is based on project groups lets say the names is phobos,
mango, ares, and gcd. 

Every project group chose a leader, the leaders role is to set goal for
the group and make decisions for the group.

But every member of the group have the right to challenge the leader
for his position. 
When that happens the group vote between the two candidates.
Such that if the leader have made some decisions which is out of line 
with the groups wishes, then he will be replaced very fast.
If a member have unsuccessful challenges the leader then 
he can't challenges for the next 3 months, 
such that the leader gets time to work. (other members might still
challenges him)

Now the group of project leaders form a meta group 
they choose a leader for the d organisation, which is elect
in the same way.

(If anyone knows of web software which make it possible to
organise this type of organisation then please let me know.)

Let take a look how it compare to other type of organisation.

1)

In a top-down organisation advancement is decided by promotion.
the leaders at the top decide how get to be the next level leaders.
The weakness by this type organisation is that many times you 
get promotes to incompetents. In the way that if you do a good job 
you get promoted up, until you reach a position where you 
don't do well and then you get stuck there.
Another weakness is that they are easy to takeover. 
If another organisation what to takeover a top-down organisation 
they secretly place a few good man in the organisation.
When one of these man is promoted, then he start to favour 
the other men from that organisation and soon, 
they will raise to the top in the top-down organisation.

The bottom-up organisation don't have this weakness, 
if a leader is incompetent he will be replaced soon 
after a better candidate arrives.
To takeover a bottom-up organisation you will have to replace 
most of it members not only the top ones. 

2)

Now comparing to a democratic selected organisation.
This type of organisation is typical selected from a huge number of
voters and each member is selected for one period at the time.  
Decisions in this type of organisation is typical based on a vote.

The weakness in this type of organisation is that its members
is typical based on how good a campaign they make before the election.
This typical depends on factors like how many money that they have for
the campaign, and that they are good at making false promises.  

Another weakness is that decision by voting can be very slow 
and that it also require many members to study a subject in detail to make
a good decision, which is rarely the case.

In a bottom-up organisation the leaders is not selected for a given
period of time, so they can be replaced if there work is not in line 
with there promises and it is the leaders responsibility to make a 
decision so it can be made fast if it have to or be delayed to the right set of details is known.
  
3) In a grass root organisation every member do what he/she feels is best
to archive a common goal.

The weakness is that some work might be done twice and some might not be
done at all.
In a bottom-up organisation there is a leader to ensure that the
organisation is working smart, but at the same time the election system 
ensure that the leaders decision never is to far away from what the
members feel is best.

Sorry for the long message.

Knud