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.

response 64 of 73:

Aug 12 15:16 UTC 1999

From hints given in this item and the other two in which it's being 
discussed, there was a fair amount of time spent at the Board meeting 
discussing the issue.  Is that common for unimportant issues?  How much 
time was spent discussing the stapler?  Did whoever wanted the stapler 
show up at the Board meeting, ask for it, and (despite it's absence on 
the agenda) get the same treatment as the "unimportant" question of 
whether to shut down Grex?

response 66 of 73:

Aug 12 18:31 UTC 1999

If either of janc's MOTD messages had been posted, I think the BoD
would have performed its duty of properly implementing a very
*bad* policy.  That would have been better than *improperly*
implementing a very bad policy.

response 68 of 73:

Aug 13 01:30 UTC 1999

Re #58/60/61:
Yes, Indian as in "a lawful citizen of the Republic of India".  As in 
India's per-capita GNP is a fraction of what's spend on the *average* 
American's health care.

The "right" of Grex users that i was referring to in #58 was the "right"
to time-consuming personal attention from a staff member who had a
hundred or more users asking for such attention - all at the same time. 

response 70 of 73:

Aug 13 14:04 UTC 1999

I don't think they were trying to avoid public discussion.  They said they
were trying to avoid panic reactions from people (including me) who were
worried about a low-probabilty event, a low-probability reaction and a
short-term solution.    Yeah, the board could have done this much earlier and
could have had discussion in coop about it before they took this action.

But our board members didn't think of that ahead of time.  So they did the
best they could.  It is now being discussed in coop.  The board has time to
create a plan to put on the shelf in case the legal outcome is not what we
think is the most likely scenario.  I, for one, am not worried about a goof
of this magnitude (small to miniscule). 

response 72 of 73:

Sep 16 20:43 UTC 1999

untenable.  (it is either -able or -ible or rarely you have a choice, as in
collectible/collectable)