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Grex > Coop12 > #138: Nominations for the Board of Directors | |
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| 25 new of 176 responses total. |
richard
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response 147 of 176:
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Nov 24 05:09 UTC 2002 |
Carson you misunderstand what I'm saying. What issues go to member wide
votes? those having to do with amending bylaws. For most other issues, the
board decides. And if those who run for the board are limited to those who
have paid dues, what difference does it make if non-dues paying voting
members voted for them?>
And Carson, UNLIKE YOU, I happen to think that the users who use grex are
responsible and that those who choose to be involved will be responsible
in what they do. You are an aristocrat. You believe in class divisions
and you believe that those with the most money at stake SHOULD rule. I
don't. Simple as that. You either trust human beings to make the right
decisions or you don't. Period. And Carson, you don't
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richard
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response 148 of 176:
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Nov 24 05:14 UTC 2002 |
And Carson, proof of what I claim about your aristrocratic views is that you
clearly imply if not state outright that if non-dues paying members
increased the membership, and DID happen to change the outcome of votes,that
those outcomes would be worse than if the voting was limited. WHY do you
think that? Why? I want to hear one logical reason, and ballot stuffingis
not a reason since responsible validation would eliminate that, why
allowingmore human beings who like grex to vote in its elections cause worse
results. why carson?
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mdw
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response 149 of 176:
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Nov 24 09:15 UTC 2002 |
Richard's validation policy is almost exactly what we use today,
excepting for adding some time delays. If I understand this part right,
he hopes to trade the "exclusion" of making a financial donation for the
"exclusion" of having to be around for at least 3 months. I'm not clear
on how how many more members Richard hopes to gain this way, vs.
valdation load on our treasure. I'll address shell access next, but
without that, I estimate if successful, we *might* see our membership
grow to about 200-400 people and our treasurer might spend 10
minutes/day doing validation. I also estimate that our *paying*
membership would drop to about 20, because I expect many people would
rationalize that their online participation is all they should owe to
grex, and that somebody else can worry about paying bills. I assume
Richard has a similar fear, since he added the "shell access" feature to
his proposal.
Ok, about that shell access thing. This requires we modify all of our
software to support a "no shell account" feature. This includes
PicoSpan, mail, vi, mail, etc. Lynx/pine probably already have support
for disabling shell access. We'd have to review that to be sure it
works. Mail forwarding would be a problem - that currently can take an
arbitrary command and run it. We might also want to think about
incoming ftp access -- we currently allow that but it might not make
sense with this new "restricted" thing. Web pages is another similar
unknown. All this is certainly doable, but would require significant
work to make it all work right. The result will certainly have
long-term impact on the sorts of people we get on grex. We'd obviously
lose the techie "I want to learn unix" crowd. We might want to revise
some of our other entry level stuff accordingly, which might attract a
different crowd of other people currently turned off by our "it's unix"
face. All in all, this is a pretty major change, with a *lot* of
interesting implications that go *way* beyond members & voting.
Probably this deserves its own item, if people want to discuss it
further.
As I said before, I assume Richard added this in the hopes of attracting
funding lost from people who no longer think their membership dues are
important, but I'm certain how realistic that is. On the one hand, we
*might* realize faster hardware through discouraging vandals. On the
other hand, for-pay shell access already has a well-developed commercial
market; even without vandals it's not clear to me we can equal the cost
and services commercial customers would expect. We would be burdened by
our "free-loading" web/non-shell users, while many commercial shell
provider systems are probably subsidized at least in part by other ISP
activities.
So much for shell access. We've been talking some about "grex changes"
and "200-400" people. There is an obvious implication that grex is
somehow becoming too in-grown. I'm not sure that's really justified;
we've always been pretty "in-grown", and yet in many senses of the word
we've been quite successful. The two most interesting changes I can
think of late that have happened to grex are completely unrelated to
this. The first isn't "our fault" at all -- the web is now a much
larger presence, and we've clearly had mixed loyalties to it. Perhaps
we ought to face up to those directly, rather than attempt to
re-engineer the social system to do so, if that is our concern. The 2nd
is a much smaller and more local: we've had a recent influx of users who
(how can I say this kindly?) feel less nurturing towards grex in
particular, and/or are more confrontational in general. Even this is
somewhat of an oversimplification; I think these people are themselves
changing a lot more rapidly on grex than grex as a whole is changing -
there is a process of cultural assimilation that is working despite our
worst fears. But there is an affect on grex all the same, and I don't
think it helps our membership picture any to have people going around
saying quite publically that "grex doesn't deserve money". We need only
look at m-net to see an example of where that kind of talk leads.
Ironically, m-net seems to be on the verge of returning to its original
funding model: a rich man's hobby. Unfortunately, Richard's proposal
works directly into this process; it splits the board from the
membership at large, and separates funding from participation.
Having said all those mean things about Richard's proposal, allow me to
make one kind observation: as matters stand, it is very difficult for
users in poor countries, such as India, to become members or otherwise
help grex. Very few of them have US funds, Indian rupees aren't worth
much, and there are other obstacles to individuals exporting cash from
India. Richard's proposal would make it a lot easier for our
established Indian users to become voting members, which they would very
likely appreciate.
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carson
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response 150 of 176:
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Nov 25 00:32 UTC 2002 |
(it's amusing to see that Richard is drawing upon his own views
[albeit as summarized by myself] to cast aspersions on someone else.
aside from that, nothing in resp:147 disputes my assessment as
outlined in resp:146, and therefore conclude that my assessement was
correct. based on that conclusion, I would suggest that anyone who
believes that non-dues-paying users should be able to vote equally
with dues-paying users offer a solution that would give such vote
meaning instead of couching it in language that places decision-making
power exclusively in the hands of seven people, as Richard's would.)
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aruba
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response 151 of 176:
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Nov 28 05:42 UTC 2002 |
mynxcat is now a member, and so is eligible to run for the board.
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remmers
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response 152 of 176:
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Nov 30 20:17 UTC 2002 |
Thanks for the nomination, but I've decided not to run this year.
Maybe next time.
I've emailed all the nominees who haven't declined. Six of them --
aruba, bhelliom, carson, gelinas, mooncat, mynxcat -- have accepted
and are members in good standing. They will appear on the ballot.
Krj will be on the ballot if he accepts in time; polytarp will be
on the ballot if he becomes a member in time.
The election starts tomorrow, December 1.
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aruba
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response 153 of 176:
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Dec 1 05:16 UTC 2002 |
It's now December, and I haven't heard from polytarp, so he is not eligible
to run for the board.
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other
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response 154 of 176:
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Dec 1 08:57 UTC 2002 |
I'm crushed.
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remmers
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response 155 of 176:
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Dec 1 13:45 UTC 2002 |
The vote program is now up and running. The candidates are aruba,
bhelliom, carson, gelinas, mooncat, and mynxcat. The polls close
at the end of the day (EST) on December 15.
To vote from a tty connection, type vote from a Unix shell prompt
or !vote from just about any other prompt. To vote via the web,
go to http://cyberspace.org/cgi-bin/pw/voting-booth . You can vote
more than once; each vote replaces any previous one.
The vote program will display a brief statement from each candidate
who prepares one. I've emailed all the candidates instructions
on how to create such statements. Since I did this recently, you
might want to postpone voting until all the candidates have had a
chance to prepare a statement.
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bhelliom
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response 156 of 176:
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Dec 2 17:09 UTC 2002 |
Actually, Carson isn't an aristocrat. Firstly, that's hardly an insult
. . . secondly, the word I think you may be looking for is Elitist.
Either way, name-calling will get us nowhere.
The whole member versus non-member business is getting rather
ridiculous. Strike that....it's already to the point of 'completely
lacking in value'.
It is not true that either "group" universally manifests those traits
that were brought up and complained about ad nauseum in this item. I
have only been a member since last year, and in the years previous I was
never treated in the disrespectful way that is described, neither have I
treated non-members in the way described after becoming a member. So,
please, remember that this is a lot less black and white than many of
you would have the rest of the user base believe.
A good portion of this ill-feeling is based upon absolutely nothing, but
has become a life of it's own, thanks to people with chips on their
shoulders, some with an unwillingness to be fully apart of is social
experiment that prefer instead to hold memberships over the
organization's head so their wishes are met. We also have some members
that often sport the unfortunate attitude that help perpetuate this
silly argument rather than finally put it to rest. This whole
discussion doesn't last long before it becomes poisonous, hate-filled,
and clogged with the same tired rhetoric that has been posted item after
item.
No one ever said solving problems was very easy. Neither did anyone
ever say that you get what you want without working for it. Petty
arguing counts as neither problem solving nor working for what you want.
And you don't get something for nothing these days....if you wish this
to be a better system, it does cost something, whether it be time,
energy, money....Grex certainly doesn't live on love alone. You have to
decide what you're willing to give and what you're willing to deal with.
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aruba
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response 157 of 176:
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Dec 2 20:47 UTC 2002 |
Nicely put!
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remmers
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response 158 of 176:
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Dec 16 12:58 UTC 2002 |
Election results - 34 out of 77 eligible members voted. Totals:
aruba 30
mooncat 19
gelinas 16
bhelliom 12
carson 12
mynxcat 9
As there were 3 open positions, aruba, mooncat, and gelinas are elected
for 2-year terms.
Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to all the candidates for
running.
(The unofficial non-member totals: bhelliom 32, aruba 26, mynxcat 17,
mooncat 15, gelinas 12, carson 11. 54 non-members voted.)
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bhelliom
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response 159 of 176:
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Dec 16 16:56 UTC 2002 |
Hey folks, congrats!
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polytarp
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response 160 of 176:
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Dec 16 16:59 UTC 2002 |
You didn't even win!
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mynxcat
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response 161 of 176:
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Dec 16 17:31 UTC 2002 |
Thanks to al those who voted for me. And congratulations to the winners. Can't
think of anyone better to do the job
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bhelliom
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response 162 of 176:
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Dec 16 18:17 UTC 2002 |
Phil, what's that got to do with it? [shrugs] I've lost before.
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mynxcat
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response 163 of 176:
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Dec 16 18:19 UTC 2002 |
His name is David, actually.
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keesan
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response 164 of 176:
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Dec 16 19:09 UTC 2002 |
Looks like we won't have a chance this year to experiment with a phone
connection for an out of town board member. I suspect mynxcat might have
received more votes if she were local. Congratulations to everyone who
received votes. And I wonder which four people did NOT vote for the current
treasurer. How does the grex election turnout compare with a typical turnout
for a national election?
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remmers
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response 165 of 176:
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Dec 16 19:14 UTC 2002 |
More than 34 people vote in national elections.
(I know that's not what you meant, but I couldn't resist...)
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mynxcat
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response 166 of 176:
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Dec 16 19:21 UTC 2002 |
Re 164> Thanks for the vote of confidence keesan :) Actually I guess I'm a
little relieved that I didn't win. I seem to have way too much on my plate
for the next year. But it might have been nicer not to have come in last ;).
But still, 9 votes isn't too shabby, considering I'm relatively new.
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remmers
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response 167 of 176:
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Dec 16 19:32 UTC 2002 |
A number of people who've served on the board didn't win the first
time they ran. That includes at least 4 members of next year's board.
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gelinas
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response 168 of 176:
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Dec 16 19:34 UTC 2002 |
And one who didn't expect to win the second time. Thanks, folks. :)
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aruba
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response 169 of 176:
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Dec 16 20:09 UTC 2002 |
Re #164: Well, I didn't vote for myself, so I'm one of the 4. Thanks to
everyone who ran - we had too many qualified candidates this time, which is
a good place to be in.
I think it might still be a good idea to experiment next year with
connecting to remote users via phone during the meeting. That'll give us
an idea how well a cheap solution will work, in our current meeting place,
so that when and if we have a remote board member we'll be ready.
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mynxcat
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response 170 of 176:
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Dec 16 20:48 UTC 2002 |
That sounds like a good idea. I'd be willing to call in to one of these
meetings
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davel
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response 171 of 176:
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Dec 16 21:10 UTC 2002 |
I'll put in a metoo on that one, Mark. I think that if it's not going to be
feasible, cheaply, we want to be able to say so before anyone is elected on
the assumption that it's feasible for us. And (again assuming that the first
thing we try doesn't work well) that way we have time to try something else.
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