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Grex > Coop > #337: proposal to open the membership | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 43 responses total. |
kentn
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response 1 of 43:
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Feb 10 21:02 UTC 2013 |
What by-law changes do you propose?
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jep
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response 2 of 43:
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Feb 11 03:12 UTC 2013 |
I have not gone through the by-laws to list the ones that need to be
changed. Is there a definitive current set of the by-laws? If you
search the WWW page, you eventually can come to a set that refers to 7
Board members and membership fees of $60 per year.
Meanwhile, I hope it is okay to start the process with a general proposal.
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rcurl
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response 3 of 43:
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Feb 11 05:17 UTC 2013 |
"money to pay the bills" is not an issue anymore? Has Grex no costs? That's
great, if true, but doesn't that mean no hardware repairs or upgrades?
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kentn
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response 4 of 43:
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Feb 11 12:45 UTC 2013 |
We have bills to pay periodically. And there is always the chance that
some repair is needed, even in new hardware. At some point in the
future our situation might change. It would not be wise to let our bank
balance run down significantly just because we (mistakenly) believe we
have no expenses now.
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kentn
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response 5 of 43:
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Feb 11 12:49 UTC 2013 |
Re: bylaws, what URL are you using, jep? Here is what I see when I pull
up the bylaws on our web page (under Governance):
ARTICLE 3: BOARD OF DIRECTORS
a. The Board of Directors (BOD) shall consist of five individual
members of Grex, and shall include a chairperson, a secretary, and
a treasurer.
No SEVEN member board there.
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rcurl
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response 6 of 43:
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Feb 11 20:42 UTC 2013 |
In coop the previous bylaws (7 directors) is item 26 and the current bylaws
(5 directors) is item 325.
Both versions do not say how officers are chosen, although saying three
of the directors will be officers (chair, secy, treas). I suppose the
implication is that they are chosen among themselves. However members
can run for the Board with no intention of being officers. What happens
then (perhaps, literally, nothing, as we seems to be the case)? Somehow
the election process needs to ensure that there will be 3 potential
officer candidates among the nominees. An alterntive is to have the
Directors elect the officers from the membership, and not require that
they be elected directors. If that is chosen, then it needs to be
specified whether the officers do or do not have a vote on the Board
(and the Directors only need to choose a chair from among themselves).
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gelinas
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response 7 of 43:
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Feb 12 00:38 UTC 2013 |
I do not support opening the membership to verified users. One of the tests
of the viability of the organisation is the support of the membership. Not
just financially but in service, too. We lowered the number of Directors to
make it easier for the membership to support the Board.
The conference system is not the entirety of grex, or of Cyberspace
Communications, Inc. However, it is the linchpin of the governance of both.
People who do not participate in the conferencing system cannot affect the
governance. Including them as 'members' will not inspire them to vote, to
run for election as a Director, or in any other way to support the
organisation. All it will do is increase the number of members, making it
even harder to get anything done. I was going to say, "Achieve a quorum,"
but the only only thing for which a quorum is required is to bring proposals
to a vote: ten percent of the current membership must approve voting on a
proposal. We currently have some four thousand users. If we make even one
tenth of them members, we need forty "ayes" in this item to bring the
proposal to a vote. The good news: they wouldn't become members until after
the proposal passed. Since the voter list tsty provided for the election had
sixteen names, we only need two 'ayes' to take the matter to a vote right
now.
As a side note: I consider the experiment of non-local Directors to have
failed. We have not been able to get them to meet, and the Treasurer, at
least, must be local to Ann Arbor, to check the mail and the bank. If the
only local Director does not have the time to be the Treasurer, the
Corporation is in trouble. As we can all plainly see.
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jep
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response 8 of 43:
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Feb 12 02:21 UTC 2013 |
re resp:5: I eventually found the bylaws by going to this site:
https://www.grex.org/faq.xhtml
and searching for "bylaws". I did a fair amount of searching to find
anything. I didn't find a page called "Governance". Our WWW page is a
efficient means of concealing information, though it looks friendly.
Ah, I found "governance" on that page. It contains a link to item:2 in
this conference, which includes this:
ARTICLE 3: BOARD OF DIRECTORS
a. The Board of Directors (BOD) shall consist of seven individual
members of Grex, and shall include a chairperson, a secretary,
and a treasurer.
How can I get the current set of bylaws? I guess I stumbled across a
different "Governance" page than you did. If you can give me a link, or
a universally usable set of steps that will get me directly to the
bylaws, I will probably read them.
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mary
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response 9 of 43:
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Feb 12 02:39 UTC 2013 |
https://grex.org
about
Cyberspace Communications
Bylaws
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kentn
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response 10 of 43:
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Feb 12 16:29 UTC 2013 |
I've updated the item number in the bylaws link in faq.xhtml.
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gelinas
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response 11 of 43:
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Feb 13 01:19 UTC 2013 |
Interesting journey, jep. I looked at the main page:
http://www.cyberspace.org/
I saw a green block, with white text, "Welcome to Grex". Below it, was a
brown box, with text about Services and "Become a Grexer." Along the right
side, another brown box had text about Accesssing, Fress Services, Help
Support, More Info, Frequently Asked Questions, and Also Cool. The section
entitled "More Info About" included Our Web Site, Our Governance, Our
Computers and Staff, and Our History. The link that is "Our Governance" took
me to a blue page that included a link to "Bylaws," which took me to
http://www.cyberspace.org/cyberspace/bylaws.shtml
So I don't know what you were looking at, nor why you could not find what you
wanted.
None of which answers my objections to the proposed change, of course.
Oh. I had a wild thought, which led me on to something interesting. I tried
http://www.grex.org/
This time, the background was blue, and the box that was on the right was
now below the scroll. It still provided the same information I found above.
We should probably make sure that both main pages use the same text and
layout.
Still, I've not seen answers to my objections above.
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kentn
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response 12 of 43:
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Feb 13 01:40 UTC 2013 |
It's a width issue in the page I think. If you make the browser window
too narrow, the right hand box goes below the rest of the page. I
changed it to our winter colors. Next will be spring colors, then
summer colors. We don't have autumn colors yet, though.
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kentn
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response 13 of 43:
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Feb 13 03:41 UTC 2013 |
See if it is better now. I tweaked some of the widths and other
settings a little (mainly to bring them into line with our summer
pages).
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jep
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response 14 of 43:
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Feb 13 18:18 UTC 2013 |
Thanks all. I'll have to review this when I am not at work. If I can get
the current by-laws, I'll post something more specific. If not, I'll ask
again.
I'll go through the item to answer questions, too.
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gelinas
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response 15 of 43:
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Feb 14 00:50 UTC 2013 |
Yes, it looks better. Thank you, Kent. :)
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kentn
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response 16 of 43:
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Feb 14 00:50 UTC 2013 |
You're welcome.
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cross
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response 17 of 43:
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Feb 14 21:50 UTC 2013 |
resp:7 It's the lynchpin only because a few folks say it is; that
doesn't mean it *has* to be. For that matter, that doesn't mean
that it REALLY is. Change any document that makes reference to the
conferencing system to NOT make such references.
Also, regarding non-local board members.... Really? It seemed to
me, when I was on the board, that it actually worked well. I think
that the recent inability to get people to actually meet has been
with all-local board members. If anything has failed, it has been
the Ann Arbor-based board membership.
I see no need to dissolve the organization. I *do* see a need to
combine forces with M-Net (and whoever else wants), but that's
separate.
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gelinas
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response 18 of 43:
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Feb 15 04:03 UTC 2013 |
The members are supposed to talk to one another about the governance of the
Corporation. If they aren't communicating here, where are they
communicating? Those folks asking for validation or verification are going
to communicate with the other members how? And where? And, most
importantly, WHY? How are they to even know that they now have membership in
the Corporation, or what that membership means? If you want to influence the
governance of Cyberspace Communications, Inc, this is where you have to act.
We had five board members, only one in Ann Arbor. Somehow, the other four
never managed to meet. Yup, it's a failure of the local board members.
NB. We still only have one local board member: tsty. Everyone else lives
elsewhere. Kent is the closest, but he has to travel to meet in Ann Arbor.
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cross
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response 19 of 43:
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Feb 15 15:01 UTC 2013 |
If you are within 30 or 40 miles of Ann Arbor, I'm considering you
local. Who is on the board now for whom that is not true?
It's easy to get people to communicate via some mechanism other
than the BBS. Start a mailing list; put notices on the web page;
perhaps use a web-based forum. It's clear that the traditional
PicoSpan-derived BBS has failed.
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mary
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response 20 of 43:
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Feb 15 15:43 UTC 2013 |
Run its course, maybe. But it's had a good long run. And if you'd enjoyed it
for as many years as I have... Well, hardly a failure.
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cross
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response 21 of 43:
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Feb 15 16:15 UTC 2013 |
Failed in the same way that a car engine fails if it runs out of gas. But
hey, now we're arguing semantics, in good Grexian fashion.
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kentn
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response 22 of 43:
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Feb 15 20:49 UTC 2013 |
I'd like to see a newer, web-based forum if we can get one. We can keep
the old BBS running for those who like that sort of thing (in line with
our previous discussions of running text-based apps in parallel with
web-based or GUI). But more web-based services would help in terms of
getting us onto more devices including tablets, possibly. Perhaps a
forum and blogging might go hand in hand if the application supports
both.
I'm within 30-40 miles and so is TS. I don't think ryan, glitch, and
ball are, though.
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gelinas
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response 23 of 43:
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Feb 16 00:39 UTC 2013 |
ball is the one I've not been able to remember for three days. :(
We are on the web, by way of back-talk. I don't see it bringing in new
voices. Am I just deaf?
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kentn
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response 24 of 43:
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Feb 16 15:26 UTC 2013 |
It's an old interface. Time to try something newer.
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jep
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response 25 of 43:
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Feb 18 02:04 UTC 2013 |
I have noticed a fault in the bylaws as posted at:
http://www.cyberspace.org/cyberspace/bylaws.shtml
ARTICLE 4: ELECTIONS AND TERMS OF OFFICE
a. BOD members shall be elected to two-year terms, that begin
on January 1 of each year. Terms of office shall be
staggered, with 4 board positions being filled beginning in
even-numbered years and 3 in odd-numbered years.
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