response 38 of 73:

Aug 6 05:35 UTC 1999

Ditto #37 - cut this bullshit of "should we warn for everything that might
affect grex?" - it's sarcastic and patronizing.

response 40 of 73:

Aug 6 16:50 UTC 1999

<sigh> I'm sorry if I was sarcastic and patronizing.  I am just a bit fed
up with all this paranoia, and frankly I don't get the difference between
the law and a killer thunderstorm.  Both are "acts of God", as far as
we're concerned.  Both are unlikely.  Sure, we knew when the law would hit
if it was going to, but we had no more expectation that it actually would. 
I think it was a judgement call on whether to put a note in the MOTD, and
I think we made the right call. 

John, do you think every time the government makes a disaster plan (say,
for invasion by aliens, or an earthquake in the midwest, or a Russian
attack) they should put lots of ads on TV for several days to let people
know about it?  You seem to be saying, in #39, that if it's not worth
doing that, then it's not worth forming a plan.  The logic behind that
escapes me.

response 42 of 73:

Aug 6 18:43 UTC 1999

In probability terms, the "expected cost" of putting a note in the MOTD was
judged worse than the expected cost of not doing it.  In other words,

  P(overreaction to MOTD) * (cost of overreaction)
> P(law goes into effect) * (cost of law going into effect)

The judgement part is in assigning numbers to all those quantities.

response 44 of 73:

Aug 6 19:08 UTC 1999

   I don't think Mark was sarcastic or patronizing, or I'm the same type of
sarcastic soul, I guess.  Mark says it very well; we prepared for something,
"just in case", but truely thought it was exceedingly unlikely.

   I stand by Mark's comments 100%.

response 46 of 73:

Aug 6 22:07 UTC 1999

   Kevin, in retrospect I think we the board could have done a better job
on this.
   Specifically, we should have talked about this in coop, weeks before
the board meeting.

response 48 of 73:

Aug 7 03:06 UTC 1999

Maybe I should quit restating my point.  I've said the same thing 
several times now, and doubt if I can add much to what I've said.  I am 
frustrated because I feel like I'm being misunderstood, but I'm not 
getting any better understood by explaining my position yet again.

response 50 of 73:

Aug 7 13:26 UTC 1999

Maybe I should try one more time, then.

It seems to me the Board is trying to pinpoint this situation into a 
very tiny area.  Important enough to act on, but not important enough to 
notify people.

The impending disaster was urgent enough that the Board needed to make a 
decision, right away, even though it hadn't been considered very well.  
Such a decision implies a certain priority.  The Board didn't decide to 
shut down the system in case lightning struck, or the Iraqis 
successfully invaded the United States and conquered Michigan, because 
those things are too unlikely to be considered.  The possibilities are 
not important.  However, it did act in case this particular law went 
into effect.  That implies the Board thought it was urgent enough, and 
likely enough, to take action.

However, the impending disaster wasn't likely enough to merit a mention 
in the MOTD, or the system announcements item.  It wasn't important 
enough that any mention was made for 2 days after the Board meeting, and 
the only mention made was in the minutes of the Board meeting.

So the Board is stating there's some room, a threshhold above which 
there is need for emergency Board action, and below which the users 
don't need to be notified.

I am stating there is no such gap.  Anything so urgent the Board needs 
to consider it and act on it immediately is also urgent enough the users 
have to be immediately and meaningfully notified.  The users have the 
right to make their own decisions about these things, and to have as 
much time as possible to make their own arrangements, regardless of the 
convenience for Grex's staff.

The Board does have the authority to order a shutdown of Grex.  I think 
that's obvious.  But I don't think it has the authority not to tell 
people it's going to do so, or that it has decided to do so under X 
conditions.

Does that make sense at all?

response 52 of 73:

Aug 7 19:38 UTC 1999

Okay, then, we've narrowed it down to the need to have an immediate 
emergency action, never previously considered by anyone, just to fill a 
"we don't really need it anyway" gap.

This is incongruous.  If it wasn't needed, it wasn't needed as soon as 
someone brought it up at a Board meeting.  If it was, then other people 
needed the chance to act on the situation as seen by the Grex board.

If this wasn't a mishandling for the reasons I stated, then it does 
create distrust.  In that case, I wonder: are there any actions 
undertaken by the Board which have been blotted from the minutes so as 
not to create a panic?  Two weeks ago I would have laughed at the very 
possibility of this happening on Grex.  Now, though, the entire Board is 
arguing that this was a perfectly reasonable way to handle the 
PA 33 situation.

I don't believe that the Board does things that way, but even one 
incidence of "we won't tell people for their own (our our own) good" 
leads to this kind of speculation.  It damaged Grex's credibility.  Was 
it worth that?

response 54 of 73:

Aug 9 14:56 UTC 1999

I still believe that the board did the right thing.  The extra information
that steve just provided makes me even more sure they did the right thing.
I understand John's concern, but believe that contingency planning for low
probablity events is important, but not necessarily something you broadcast.
In retrospect, I would have liked something more than a line in the minutes
(which I missed).  Perhaps a new item in coop saying "We did this in a hurry,
does anyone who regularly reads coop have any better ideas."  But, certainly
not an announcement in the MOTD.  

response 56 of 73:

Aug 9 16:33 UTC 1999

I think the vote was to continue email but suspend party and bbs.  Since ISPs
are exempted from pornography laws if the pornography is in private email.

response 58 of 73:

Aug 10 01:57 UTC 1999

Ignoring all the glowing little words in this virtual never-never land,
it appears to me that Grex's staff has a long history of working hard
and doing the right things to keep Grex up & available to the world.  

Maybe users here have a "right" to notification of an unlikely event
which would effectively take Grex down for a while, to answers from 
staff about how to deal with it, to help setting up .forward files, etc.  
Certainly there are more users who's lives are seriously harmed out in
the real world by a few-hours outage than there are staff members here 
to be hassled under any scenario. 

The user-to-staff ratio on Grex is thousands-to-one.  Staff on Grex
volunteer their time when they can.  Legit or not, that "right" of 
Grex's users is about like the "right" of the average Indian to top-
of-the-line American medical care.  The resources aren't there, and
no poetic words, rational argument, legal opinion, government program,
or anything else is going to make the resources appear.

Taking a large chance of hitting staff with a huge load right before
a very unlikely crisis that they'd need to work really hard to cope
with strikes me as crummy people & resource management. 

response 60 of 73:

Aug 12 10:22 UTC 1999

 "Staff on Grex volunteer their time when they can.  Legit or not,
  that "right" of Grex's users is about like the "right" of the average
  Indian to top-of-the-line American medical care."

Er, although I think the Board did the right thing here I very
much disagree with your statement above.  First, about American
Indians and secondly about Grex users not being to expect certain
basic "rights", like being kept informed.  I would not vote for
or want anyone on the Board who expressed the statement you made
above.  If someone thought they didn't have the time or energy
to include those "details" then they really shouldn't be 
involved as staff.

response 62 of 73:

Aug 12 14:28 UTC 1999

Or you could have put something in the minutes like this:

There is a slight possibility Grex may have to shut down for a few days, 
in response to Michigan Public Act 33 of 1999.  See item #blah in 
conference blah for further details.

This is how Grex usually handles announcements of things complex enough 
that they don't fit in the MOTD.

I just can't believe the Grex Board thinks it was urgent enough that it 
needed the decision it made, while still not being important enough to 
merit explaining to the users.  For all the claims of respecting the 
users and freedom of information and all that, some of the Grex Board 
(all of it, apparently) really believes in keeping things under wraps.  
If I seem to be attacking people a little too vigorously, I apologize 
for that, but I'm still shocked 2 weeks after I uncovered this sneaky 
action.