The importance of forums is immense in democratic communities. It allows everyone to share ideas and voice concerns towards executives and authorities. Forums can be an effective way to affect policies as we do currently here. It is a crucial part of community governance. But we must ensure the health and independence of forums.
This is the part I find missing in the announcement. Forums are not mentioned as a way to share ideas not in the documents or the replies:
Unfortunately, the suggested ways are not sustainable and effective to share ideas and voice concerns. First, those individuals are already very busy and cannot respond to all community members. 99% of cases will be dismissed. It is easy to see that bottleneck and I would take this reply as we do not want to hear community ideas.
Also, I know from my personal experience that this is a dead end. Two years ago, I received an official warning from the moderation here for saying REPs are useless. Now, we read plans to overhaul the ineffective REP process, which kinda proves my point. At that time, I tried to reach moderators but got no further explanation. It was an arbitrary decision trying to suppress my forum discussion. My forum rights are still at the basic level today.
On another occasion, I asked this question on forums:
This was a question asked to an OSRF board member on governance. This got no response either. Now, let me ask the same questions again.
Who owns forums under the new governance? Who pays for the forum staff? What policies would you take to ensure voicing concerns are not suppressed even if they are against the OSRF practices or platinum members’ business?