response 151 of 190:

Oct 26 22:45 UTC 1995

   I agree with that.

response 153 of 190:

Oct 27 01:47 UTC 1995

sidhe:  "asking him to review his words carefully is a form of censorship,
if this is not how he would prefer to do things"?  Oh please.  Asking someone
to do something is most certainly different from forcing them to do it.

And by the way, kerouac, you didn't address any of Valerie's points, either.

response 155 of 190:

Oct 27 06:54 UTC 1995

You were indeed mistaken, Kerouac, when you came to the conclusion that
Grex was communal public property. The way Cyberspace Communications is
incorporated ensures that (1) the corporation owns Grex, no one else does,
(2) It is a non-profit corporation and must follow the Michigan Law which
applies to such corporations. This is not a matter of loose language in
the bylaws.

CCI operates Grex for the public good. The public is entitled to use Grex,
but not to own it or control it. The members control it through the 
CCI board, and member initiatives. That is how it works.
The wording of the Articles of Incorporation, Michigan Law, and the Bylaws,
are all quite clear to me on these questions.

If you think it should work differently, you are entitled to your opinion,
and you are entitled to try to persuade others. I respect your opinion,
in fact, but I disagree that it should work differently.

response 157 of 190:

Oct 27 13:11 UTC 1995

Re 148: Then I guess you have a different view of the co-op conference than
I do.  You talk about "good, solid, constructive debate".  I don't see the
co-op conference as a forum where people should be practicing their debate
skills.  The goal of the co-op conference is to deal with running Grex.  Not
debating.  Debate in the course of running Grex is very much welcome and
encouraged.  Ideas for improving Grex are very welcome.  But debate for the
sake of debate, or "scoring points" off your opponents, is not the point of
the co-op conference.  I've heard three or four people mention that there
was a topic they would like to bring up in co-op, but lately the 2 or 3
people who snipe so much in co-op make it too unpleasant to bring up business
here unless it's *really* necessary.  One staffer says that every time he
opens his mouth he gets flamed.  He doesn't talk much here anymore.  Do you
really want to keep the discussions so flaming hot around here that you scare
people away?  Personally, I would really rather not see that happen.

response 159 of 190:

Oct 27 20:49 UTC 1995

  Valerie...point taken.  And I have not said that staff are a buch of
nazi control freaks.  What I have said is that staff may have slightly
too much paranoia about the average user.  Steve thinks that if the
voting process was open, all the nonmembers would vote themselves
open 'net access and all the privledges they dont have.  I honestly
think that anyone who cares about grex seriously would take the time
to make informed decisions.  I, for instance, used to think that way
but after seeing examples like nether, where noone uses the confs 
because all the ports are occupied by people using the board to go
somewhere else, I now realize that such a open policy might really hurt
grex.  I sp4ecifically said that noone should vote who hasnt used 
grex for a while and hasnt taken the time to find out what grex is all
about.  

I have worked on many voter registration drives, and what I always
tell people is "if you are going to vote ignorantly, dont vote, if
you are going to vote this way because somoene else says to, dont vote.
the only good vote is an informed vote"  And I think most people who do
vote make informed choices.

My only concern is that staff may be conveying the attitude that they
dont trust average users to be informed.  It is true that the average
user isng toing to have the tech expertise to deal with many of the 
hardware and software issues, but it is also true that anyone is
capable of making a good decision if the issues are put forth clearly.

response 161 of 190:

Oct 31 22:13 UTC 1995

Just a point about bylaws, articles and the law: each is implicit in the
one before. That is, the articles state some specific facts about the
organization of CCI, but the *law* is implicit, so the articles cannot be
understood fully without reading the law. Likewise, the articles and law
are implicit in the bylaws, and the bylaws cannot be understood fully
without reading the former. It has to be this way, or it would be
impossible to read the bylaws.

response 163 of 190:

Nov 2 15:41 UTC 1995

I used to have a boss who required us to write documentation that way.
The person who replaced him calls it "describe the entire system in every
single sentence" style documentation.  It's impossible to read.  Very
long-winded, too.

response 165 of 190:

Nov 2 23:42 UTC 1995

I'm not buying it, sidhe.  I think if Valerie or I or you find certain 
responses unhelpful, we have a right to say so.

response 167 of 190:

Nov 4 16:57 UTC 1995

Users would have to be defined as members, for that to "fly" within our
corporate framework. "Members" have privileges in law that non-members do
not, and never the twain can mix. But "member" is just a word, and its
requirements can be broad enough to include users. 

Personally, I would oppose this. Its a big world out there, and I think
organizations work best if those (few) interested enough to support the
organization have the power to manage it (within whatever structure is
adopted), while those that do not support it materially, do not. This is
all concerned with "fiduciary duties" and not having too many cooks. 

response 169 of 190:

Nov 4 23:51 UTC 1995

Put another way - of *everyone* is a member (in effect), but no one has
any responsibilities or obligations, who is responsible for being
trusted with the management of the organization?

response 171 of 190:

Nov 5 10:37 UTC 1995

I don't know where kerouac got that idea from.  I don't know of *any*
grex staff member who is doing it with the primary or even secondary
intent of getting something impressive for the resume, or other
professional advantage.  If I wanted to derive professional advantage
from my time, I can think of far more productive ways to spend it than
on grex.  Certainly, being involved with Grex allows me to become a more
rounded professional, and so in that sense, there is *some* value to me
for being here.  But it's far outweighed by the time I lose that I could
be spending on other activities, so it's certainly not the reason I'm
here.  I'm here because I genuinely care about the success of Grex -
*despite* any harm or advantage it might cause me profesionally, not
*because*.

What Rane said sounds exactly like the line of reasoning of the Whigs
around about 1800.  It's fundementally an aristocractic notion of how
things ought to be.

The corporate framework merely provides a skeleton to hang things on.
Even in the most rigid hide-bound top down corporation, most things are
still decided at the bottom, without guidance from upon high.  The
voting framework defined in the bylaws only *has* to be used for a few
few things - elections of the board & changes to the bylaws being chief
among them.

The provision I suggested is inspired by a much simplier but similar
mechanism used in the US constitution.  There is nothing in the
constitution itself that provides for a "limit" on how long an amendment
can be "pending", before it can be "passed".  There is nothing in the
constitution to declare an amendment as "dead" - and there is an
interesting long-term ambituity if an amendment fails to pass at first,
and then some states change their mind - if enough states switch in both
directions, it's possible for the amendment to "pass" even though there
is no one time when the requisite # of states has simultaneously agreed
to the amendment.  This is a constitutional problem which has never been
fixed, but it has been addressed - each amendment that is proposed today
contains a built in timelimit.  Each state agrees to the time limit at
the same time they agree to the amendment.  If an insufficient number of
states pass it before the expiration date, then it doesn't matter if a
state passed it after the expiration date - it becomes moot.

My provision is intended to work in exactly the same manner.  There is a
perfectly adequate working definition of "member" in the bylaws - my
provision requires no change whatsoever to that definition.  In essence,
the members would be voting to poll the users (& giving themselves a 2nd
chance to vote) each time they voted on a proposal with this provision.
By making of habit of insisting on such provisions in anything we vote
on, we can experiment with incorporating an informal tradition of
polling the entire grex user population on important matters, without
the bother & nuisance of incorporating it into the bylaws, & perhaps
needing to pull it out later if it doesn't work quite as we'd like.  You
might argue that that with this scheme, "user" votes don't really count
for much, since the "members" can go back & vote that way anyways.  But
that's not really so, since I'm arguing that the time be sufficient to
give non-members a chance to become members (I can think of few reasons
more compelling to join the system than a compelling wish to change and
improve the system) - and also to give both the membership, and the user
population at large, that chance for a dialogue and the feeling that
this is "everyone's system", not just the members.

Oo, scary hairy word, "fiduciary".  And you're, right, the board members
have a fiduciary responsibility towards the members.  What I'm saying is
that, in fact, the members *also* have a fiduciary responsibility
towards the users at large on the system, as well as, in a lesser sense,
towards the population at large as well.  The reason there is that those
users represent *both* future potential members, and, as this is a
"public access" system, those users represent the actual entire raison
d'etre of this system, as least as founded.  So, in fact, if the members
*were* do to something that were to violate the interests of the
non-member user population of grex, that would also be violating the
future of, and the express purpose of grex.  Now, you may have in mind a
specialized meaning of that very word fiduciary, one in which board
members can be held legally and perhaps even criminally liable for
actions they make which violate the trust they embody; and I'm sure that
sense does not apply.  But that does not make the broader sense any less
applicable - and because the broader sense applies, I see no possibility
of valid conflict between giving users more opportunity to participate
in decision making on the system, & anyone's fiduciary responsibilities.
If you want to be silly about it all, you might think of this as being a
bit like the Elias' Bros contest to decide if Big Boy should stay or go.

response 173 of 190:

Nov 5 11:43 UTC 1995

Wow! This is getting interesting. Keep it coming.