response 136 of 186:

Nov 29 18:15 UTC 1996

Tsty, you were confusing the "Real name" attached to a account, the
"Conference Name" attached to an account, and the "Who owns the account" name
that is maintained purely by and for the treasurer, and is based on the id
given with the account.  It was this last, which only the treasurer controls,
that was set to the person who registered the convocat account.

response 138 of 186:

Nov 30 07:05 UTC 1996

oh?
  
grep convo /etc/passwd
  
convocat:x:6287:50:Magical Education Council of Ann
Arbor:/home/convocat:/usr/local/bin/tcsh

i guess i am confused - !really confused.

response 140 of 186:

Nov 30 07:49 UTC 1996

Right.  aruba (wrongly) assumed that the account was owned by Kami,
since she'd sent the check.  The account's full name was always
MECAA.

response 142 of 186:

Dec 1 06:43 UTC 1996

aruba?

response 144 of 186:

Dec 4 18:08 UTC 1996

Yes, Mark explained back at the beginning of this whole issue that the 
"situation" of having two voting accounts belonging to the same person 
is a situation that he inherited.

response 146 of 186:

Dec 7 16:23 UTC 1996

Yes, Mark (aruba) Conger

response 148 of 186:

Dec 9 11:48 UTC 1996

Ok, but why?

response 150 of 186:

Dec 29 07:59 UTC 1996

not a bad guess, really. a guess though.

response 152 of 186:

May 12 19:10 UTC 1997

Sorry, didn't mean to leave you hanging TS - yes, the situation with convocat
was one I inherited from danr (i.e., Dan had recorded "Kami Landy" as the name
associated with the convocat account, and I assumed that meant that convocat
was Kami's pseudo.  (I think I heard someone else refer to it as such, too.))
What I did last fall was change the name in the treasurer's records from
"Kami Landy" to "Magical Education Council of Ann Arbor".  I certainly didn't
run chfn on the account (I don't even have the system privileges to do that).

I hope I haven't reopened this can of worms by responding to this item.  :)

response 154 of 186:

May 13 06:34 UTC 1997

A MIchigan non-profit, charitable (501(c)3) is about to apply for
CCI membership. I am on their board and maintain their web page here,
and will likely serve as their "agent" toward CCI. Since as a member
they would get a vote, I am faced with possibly having more than one
effective vote (the other as a private member). I know this is not
desired. Therefore I have been thinking of proposing a bylaw amendment
to create a "non-profit organizational membership", and provide for
them to have a vote *by action of their board of directors*. Any
worms here?

response 156 of 186:

May 13 18:40 UTC 1997

A corporation is a person in state law. 

Organizations can indeed just make a donation. I think this is less desirable
as it is easy to forget to make the donation, but a member is reminded to pay
dues. In addition, there is an element of mutual identification between an
organization and members - a closer sense of member non-profits supporting
each other. 

The MNAC, and probably most non-profits using Grex, would likely not vote,
because the board members mostly would not know the candidates. The main
reason for including the right to vote, even if unexercised, is to not
make a non-profit corporate membership a "lesser" membership. 

response 158 of 186:

May 14 01:49 UTC 1997

Rane, I don't remember Grex ever granting organizations full membership
status with voting rights?  Am I mis-remembering?  Did the organization
kami is associated with ever vote here on Grex? 

I would rather Grex not allow organizations to hold voting memberships. 
If I thought all the individuals who make up the organization's Board of
Directors would follow the events here and each place an informed vote on
how the organization's vote would go, that would be reasonable.  But
that's unrealistic and unlikely to happen.  Instead, the person who is the
contact here would most likely make a recommendation to the Board as to
how the vote should go, and the organization's Board would accept this
advice, making it a proxy vote.  And if this contact person also held a
personal membership he or she would indeed be voting twice. 

We depend on folks to follow an honor system here - one vote per person. 
We ask individuals not hold multiple voting memberships (and they could
with very little effort if they wanted to do so).  I don't think it would
be fair to expect most everyone else to abide by such rules while we allow
a few who are associated with organizations to vote twice with our
blessings.

Keep it simple and fair, please.

response 160 of 186:

May 14 06:00 UTC 1997

I know one person in the local community who is (a) rich, and (b) almost
certainly has several dozen corporations registered under his name.  I
have no special reason to believe this person would wish anything less
than the best for grex.  Nevertheless, I know this person *is* a person
who *delights* in tweaking "the system".  I know, beyond a shadow of a
doubt, that if this person ever got seriously annoyed with grex, and
knew he could buy a lot of votes with his various organizations, that
grex would be sunk.  Fortunately, this person is usually after much
larger fish, like the university of michigan, or the phone company.
Grex is simply too small for him to bother.

Nevertheless, I am absolutely convinced that we do not want to extend
voting rights to organizations.  This is, of course, predicated on the
assumption that we want to serve, first & foremost, the interests of
individual users.  If we extend voting rights to organizations, then we
are giving them a direct voice in decisions that might favour
organizations over individual users.  No doubt, all of the people
involved in the Magical Education Council of Ann Arbor and Rane's
organizations are up front honest and forthcoming folk who would never
ever let personal agendas or corporate interests override those of grex.
Still, it is a *fact* that there are "sharks" out there both in the
for-profit world, *and* in the not for profit world, who are very
successful in terms of advancing hidden private agendas.  These people
often become board members or gain other influential positions within
organizations (almost by definition).  I don't care if these persons
become private members.  I'm not real worried about these people
registering and voting as fradulent "dead people from Chicago".  But, I
don't want to give these people an open door via legitimately
registering as N different corporations.