response 122 of 176:

Nov 20 17:00 UTC 2002

Sounds very good to me.

response 124 of 176:

Nov 21 04:48 UTC 2002

Richard, you should have gone into politics.  If the shrub is any 
indication, you could have been President by now.

response 126 of 176:

Nov 21 06:48 UTC 2002

(votes among non-members usually differe significantly from the member
vote.  the data's there:  look it up instead of taking someone else's
word for it and buying into a flawed hypothesis.)

response 128 of 176:

Nov 21 13:05 UTC 2002

I've reported the results of elections and proposal votes in the
nominations and proposal items in the various editions of the
Coop conference.  The member and non-member totals can be looked
up there.  I'm not going to do that myself right now, but I do
recall that there have been votes in which the member and non-
member totals were almost diametrically opposite.

response 130 of 176:

Nov 21 18:47 UTC 2002

And if non-member votes counted, it'd be trivial for me (or anyone else) to
spend an afternoon creating a hundred or so new userids to skew the results.

response 132 of 176:

Nov 21 19:39 UTC 2002

obviously I specifically said people shouldn't be made members unless they
have VALIDATED (sent the treasurer some form of ID), which eliminates the "oh
they are going to stuff the balllot box" fears.  And if you eliminate ALL
votes for board members, which are beauty contests, and looked JUST at issue
votes and only issue votes, even Carson would have to admit that non-member
votes and member votes generally fall in line.   And even if they didn't,
there is a difference between a validated non-paying  member vote and a
non-validated non-member vote.  One is susceptible to ballot stuffing a nd
creating fake logins.  The other isn't.  IT is the validation that protects
that from happening, not the transfer of money

response 134 of 176:

Nov 22 06:14 UTC 2002

I can't imagine what makes Richard think "validation" is free.
"Validating" ID requires a human look at "stuff", and exercise human
judgement.  Curently our treasurer does this, and given that we have
less than a hundred users, this is a fairly painless process.  If
Richard succeeds in his goal, our treasurer (or somebody) would instead
be doing this for at least thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of
people.  Instead of spending 10 minutes every 3 days, we're now talking
about perhaps hours of work every day.  Freenets had something of the
same problem, when they decided to do validation for free shell access.
Most freenets quickly got flooded with requests, and validation could
take months before it happened.  What eventually happened is that
freenets either stopped offering shell access entirely, or required
payment before supplying shell access.  Basically, to successfully do
what Richard wants requires we hire somebody at least half-time, perhaps
full-time.  That means we need to be something like at least 4x the
paying membership we currently have, or find some other means of
dramatically increasing our income.  Alternatively, we could reduce our
validation criteria, but that opens up the fraud problem.

response 136 of 176:

Nov 22 17:22 UTC 2002

I think Mark is right in the sense that shell access is considerably
more attractive than voting.

Of course, to the extent that's true, making voting "free" won't get
that many more people involved, and perhaps we ought to instead think of
"sending money in" as the perk, and voting as the onerous duty we impose
on those generous souls - we've certainly encountered donors who didn't
want the onerous duty, and I suppose an argument might be made that we
might get more donations if we got rid of the voting "perk".

response 138 of 176:

Nov 22 19:05 UTC 2002

I think that was the point he was making

response 140 of 176:

Nov 22 20:04 UTC 2002

I don't think validation of non-paying members need be so onerous.  If 
certain restrictions are put in:

1. User's login ID must have been active for at least ninety days
2. User provides copy of government photo ID
3. User can validate and be member after ninety days but cannot get
shell access unless he pays dues OR is login ID has been active for one year

IMO the only people interested in validating under those rules would be those
who are truly interested in grex and its community.  Which wouldn't be tensof
thousands of users as mdw suggests.  

I think the real issue mdw has with validation of non-paying members is
bringing too many people into the decision making process.  It is natural that
those who helped organize something are going to want to not see themselves
having a smaller and smaller voice in that organization's affairs.  Things
like limiting membership, and who can vote and who can't, are ways that one
fights dilution of influence.  It is whether you think you can trust larger
groups of people to do the right thing.  I think Grex is stagnating, its
membership is not growing. And its original members are getting older and less
involved out of necessity.  Grex can benefit from being more inclusive and
ought to seek out ways to make people feel more welcome to get involved.

response 142 of 176:

Nov 23 02:57 UTC 2002

I only said that because the fear seems to be too many people having shell
access,more so than too many people being able to vote.  So I suggested 
removing shell access as an issue, keep that as a perk for paying dues, as
it is now, and then maybe there would be less objection to the idea of
membership being offered that doesn't have dues paying being an outright
requirement

response 144 of 176:

Nov 23 17:11 UTC 2002

If shell access is a paid perk and voting is free, Grex's finances
could be expected to go down the toilet.  That, and the now-voting
freeloaders could be expected to vote themselves shell access for
as long as Grex remained operational (which would not be long).

Seriously, Richard.  Do you ever think things through?