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Grex > Coop9 > #80: Modifying the concept of membership | |
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aruba
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Modifying the concept of membership
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Mar 27 06:21 UTC 1997 |
This item is to discuss whether we should modify the idea of membership.
We currently have essentially two membership categories: voting and non-voting.
If you've paid for at least three consecutive months including the current
one, you are a voter, otherwise not. A number of people feel strongly that
no one person should control more than one vote, and since any membership
automatically becomes a voting membership if it's paid up for 3 months,
our current policy is not to allow one person to control more than one
membership.
Membership (voting or non-voting) carries with it some other privileges, too;
namely access to most internet protocols (like telnet, ftp, and irc) which
are forbidden to non-members.
This week Grex received a check from a person who holds two login ids. One
of them is already a member, and the owner would like to make the other a
member too. I had to say no, sorry, you aren't allowed to do that.
I hate turning down money for Grex, and when I mentioned this at the board
meeting tonight several people said they didn't have a problem with someone
having internet privileges from two accounts, only voting privileges.
Unfortunately, our current membership rules are not flexible enough to
allow someone to control two memberships under any circumstances.
So how about this: We allow a person to pay for memberships for as many
accounts as s/he likes, but at most one of them can be a voting member at
any given time. I'm not sure, but I think that to make this official, it
should probably be an amendment to the bylaws. (The bylaws are a little
vague on this point, but have definitely been interpreted to say "one
person, one membership".)
What does everyone think?
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| 115 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 1 of 115:
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Mar 27 06:50 UTC 1997 |
By state law, "..'member' means a person...". So one person cannot have
two memberships. You can accomplish what you want, however, by in effect
selling accounts with internet access (as that is what it would be). Call
them Subscribers....or maybe....Patrons???
You may also create different classes of memberships, with different
privileges, but the rule is still "one person - one membership". See
MCL 450.2108 and 450.2304.
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nestene
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response 2 of 115:
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Mar 27 08:53 UTC 1997 |
Why can't we just add the second account to the internet group? He's a
member, it's his account, let him surf with it. You'll have to make a note
somewhere that member a also controls account b for things like reaping,
but is that prohibitively difficult?
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aruba
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response 3 of 115:
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Mar 27 09:12 UTC 1997 |
No, it's not prohibitively difficult to keep track of; it's just not provided
for in our current system.
And Rane, I see no reason why what we call a "member" has to correspond to
what state law calls a "member". We simply have to specify what the mapping
is from one to the other. Please don't cloud the issue with semantics.
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rcurl
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response 4 of 115:
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Mar 27 15:58 UTC 1997 |
In answer to that load of semantics, I will say that for a Michigan
corporation to use a term that is defined in Michigan law in another manner
is inviting confusion and contradiction. Use some other term, to avoid
clouding the issue. What does concern me is that, once we start *selling*
accounts, we get into a ball game that Grex has been trying to avoid, such
as collecting sales tax, etc. If Grex wants to permit a member to have
several accounts with internet access it can do that, but I don't think it
should charge for them (I actually don't think it should do it at all - the
basis of the community here are individuals, each with the same rights,
privileges, and responsibilities: to give some of them additional privileges
just because they can afford them, violates this equality.)
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aruba
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response 5 of 115:
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Mar 27 17:08 UTC 1997 |
I'm sorry, #3 came out a little more ascerbic than I had intended. All I
meant was, we are used to the terminology "member", and I kind of suspect that
we already use it in a different manner than it's used in state law - I
suspect that what they're calling "members" we're calling "voting members".
I haven't read the law, though, so I don't know.
You raise a good point about selling internet access, though. I hadn't thought
of it that way, but I can see how some tax collector might.
But the fact is that we already give extra privileges to those who can afford
them (I'm talking about members vs. non-members). So it's patently not true
that all individuals on Grex have the same rights and privileges. All we're
considering here is widening the spectrum to have more than two layers.
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pfv
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response 6 of 115:
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Mar 27 18:09 UTC 1997 |
Been true from the beginning <shrug>
OTOH, the (dis)enfranchisement schtick is worn threadbare..
Soo... What "classes" of "member" are there..? Gee, this almost
sounds like the Arbornet Patron/Member/User(guest) schtick..
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rcurl
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response 7 of 115:
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Mar 27 21:36 UTC 1997 |
OK Mark..I responded rather sharply, myself. Sorry. If we want a class
of membership that is non-voting, we can call it "Non Voting Member", and
define it in the bylaws. What state law requires, however, is *one person -
one member*, no matter how many categories of members you have.
Let's have a fact here. Why does someone want telnet privilege from a
non-member account? They can copy back and forth between the two accounts,
so only need one telnetable account.
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aruba
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response 8 of 115:
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Mar 27 22:04 UTC 1997 |
I think, primarily, such a person wants to support Grex. Secondarily, s/he
figures s/he might as well get whatever perks s/he's entitled to for doing so.
(I'm not speaking of the person referenced in #0; i don't know what that
person wants, exactly. I'm just guessing about what I would want in a similar
situation.)
How does state law define a "member", Rane, in the context of the type of
corporation Grex is?
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mdw
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response 9 of 115:
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Mar 27 22:29 UTC 1997 |
I see no reason to modify the bylaws for the purpose described here. I
think it is reasonable to ask and *encourage* members to donate for any
extra accounts, for the good of the system. That doesn't mean we need
to make it a *requirement*.
BTW, that members get extra internet access is not spelled out in the
bylaws in the first place. Bylaws should contain the logic that
controls how the organization is governed (such as voting rights), but
should not contain logic that is merely a question of policy, such as
internet access. Bylaws should contain only information that does not
need frequent revision.
Early on, the people then associated with grex made a very conscious
decision to avoid a multiplicty of membership levels. The theory then
was that by creating many levels & varying access rights, people would
start thinking of the access as something they "bought", and start
thinking in terms of individual selfish good, rather than for the good
of the system. The main reason internet access is "special" is because
it's using a "scarce" resource, and there is the special potential for
abuse, which in turns raises "conditions of use" issues.
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rcurl
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response 10 of 115:
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Mar 28 03:43 UTC 1997 |
Mark, tell the person that wants to support Grex, that *donations are very
welcome*, and he/she will get in return *gratitude*.
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aruba
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response 11 of 115:
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Mar 28 04:35 UTC 1997 |
Well sure, I tell people stuff like that all the time, and in this case I
said the money could go toward the other membership or we could change
everything over to the new membership (and drop the old one).
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tsty
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response 12 of 115:
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Mar 28 10:42 UTC 1997 |
in addition, there are two *separate* lists for members and voters.
one is coded 80 and the other is coded 90 a situation i mentioned
in a previous incantation of coop.cf. and there are other, separate
lists fo r other separate qualifications.
i think anyone can type !groups at the respond prompt and
see what groups apply to the current login in use. and, i think
that !groups <loginid> will generate an appropriate result.
yup, just tested both incantations. we can accept the money.
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kaplan
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response 13 of 115:
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Mar 28 17:49 UTC 1997 |
The historical reason for separate groups for members and voters is that you
need to be a member for 3 months in a row to be a voter. Yes, the technical
way to implement the plan in #0 is in place. But we're having a policy
discusion here.
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dpc
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response 14 of 115:
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Mar 28 21:07 UTC 1997 |
Sure, Grex sells Internet access now, since that comes with being
a member. Michigan doesn't tax the sale of services, so the sales
tax argument doesn't apply.
I am opposed to letting one person have two memberships.
I can't figure out what the person wants to do, anyway.
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aruba
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response 15 of 115:
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Mar 28 21:26 UTC 1997 |
Like I said, I think such a person wants to support Grex, and get as many
perks as possible. I think that's a reasonable attitude.
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pfv
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response 16 of 115:
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Mar 28 22:32 UTC 1997 |
Sell 'em as many memberships as the check cashes for <shrug>
Money is good..
Let 'em vote those too: like it is going to harm a member-driven
system..? Think of them as "SHARES", and the system as a co-op and
CU <shrug> Again, no biggy.
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jenna
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response 17 of 115:
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Mar 29 05:47 UTC 1997 |
I say if someone wants a "second" membership tellnthem
no because of the voting issue... no PERSON should have more than
one vote, but make sure they know you love dionations.
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aruba
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response 18 of 115:
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Mar 29 21:12 UTC 1997 |
What I proposed in #0 is a way to still only allow one vote per person, but
also allow people to have internet access from several accounts if they pay
for it. I am *not* talking about changing the one vote per person rule - I
have no desire to open that can of worms; it seemed clear to me the last time
that came up that quite a few people felt strongly about it.
Rane, I'd still like to know how state law defines "member", so that we can
tell whether we're already using the term differently than they do.
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albaugh
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response 19 of 115:
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Mar 30 00:09 UTC 1997 |
This sort of sounds like a modeling problem being exposed: The voting
privelege should be associated with a *human* (i.e. FN-MI-LN), not with the
handle that human logs into grex with. Yes, I know it's convenient to *use*
the handle, since you can use it in unix groups and such. But the association
should be to the human. At the same time, one or more login IDs (handles)
are also associated with a *human*. Further, internet access perks should
be associated with a *handle*, not a human. The human inherits the internet
access perks through his associated handle(s). What this means is that if
one or more of a human's handles has been enabled for internet access perks,
he gets to use 'em, while also being able to exercise his *one* vote. This
model would allow a human to pay for enabling of one *or more* of his handles
for internet access perks, but if doing so still limiting his voting
priveleges to an instance of *one*.
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jenna
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response 20 of 115:
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Mar 30 05:51 UTC 1997 |
I guess if it was easy to program it would be fine if one person
paying for multiple memberships had internet access from multiple
accounts; if it's not though... *shurg*
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aruba
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response 21 of 115:
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Mar 30 22:51 UTC 1997 |
It's not hard to implement at all. (And Kevin, yup, that's exactly what I'm
talking about.)
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jenna
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response 22 of 115:
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Mar 30 23:40 UTC 1997 |
then why not just implement it? seems to me like that's all fair
until you get into #'s of votes, which no one wants to do.
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valerie
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response 23 of 115:
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Mar 31 00:31 UTC 1997 |
This response has been erased.
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mta
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response 24 of 115:
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Mar 31 02:33 UTC 1997 |
I'm comfortable with it, too. I was a lot more comfortable with it
before someone mentioned that as "proof that we're in the business
of selling internet access." I would want to make it utterly clear that that
*isn't* what we're doing here.
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