response 157 of 203:

Aug 23 20:14 UTC 1999

Steve and Jan are right - under certain circumstances, know the tallies
both before and after changes would compromise secrecy. I didn't think
of that, and won't do it again. Sorry about that. (This situation has
never come up before.)

Now that Jan's updated the voter list, I'll go tally the official
totals. Stay tuned...

response 159 of 203:

Aug 23 22:08 UTC 1999

still the vote shows the membership was not nearly as unanimous as the
board was regarding this issue--  I think  it indicates the board
inaccurately guaged that there would have been a stronger consensus for
their action that there in fact was.  This is an argument for why there
should have been a member vote on the original resolution, regardless
of whether it would have passed.

response 161 of 203:

Aug 23 23:10 UTC 1999

Quote from #0:

    As a Grex member, I move that the following resolution, adopted by
    the Board on July 27, be rescinded:

    In the event that Michigan Public Act 33 of 1999 goes into effect,
    all public access to Grex shall be suspended, with the exception
    of an informational web page, pending the formulation of new policies.

Someone please tell me how this was worded to persuade people to vote yes,
and how this is an "abuse" of parliamentary procedure. I'm assuming that
Markus is using the same definition of "abuse" as NetHack does: a form pf
cheating that isn't expressly prevented / prohibited.

I think that the wording used (the stuff afterwards wasn't part of the
motion, rather it was advocacy) was as neutral as possible, and that the
"abuse" may have lied in the original resolution, since the way it was
recorded is a bit misleading in that it sounds worse than it is.

And I'm not trivializing the issue by comparing it to a game -- although
NH's definition has painted the clearest line I know of between abuse and
cheating.

response 163 of 203:

Aug 24 13:35 UTC 1999

Wasn't the resolution, was worded, not a double negative?  In English, a
double negative is supposedly a positive, but en Francais, ce n'est pas
vrai.  Even in Shakespeare's time, a double negative meant something
different.

As worded, this resolution was very much taking something out of
context; the original measure passed by the board was concerning the
outcome of the preliminary hearing, and I don't think the board
necessarily expected that they should be bound by this measure with
regards to the outcome of the january hearing.

This resolution may also be unenforceable.  What we have done with this
court challenge, is we have basically asked if the MPA act can be
enforced against grex.  Everybody expects and hopes that this answer is
"no", and so far even the courts have agreed.  In the unlikely event
that the courts change their mind, though, this would cease to be true,
and we expect that if the courts do reverse their position, that they
will give us much more specific guidelines as to what we can & can't do.
In that case, those guidelines would tell us whether grex, as operated
today, were compliant with the law, or operating in reckless disregard
of the law.  If the latter were to be the case, the board might well
have no choice but to shut down, and since michigan law has precedence
over member resolutions, Dave's member resolution would not alter the
board's responsibility, implied and express, to uphold the law.

I'm a native english speaker, and reasonably well versed in logic, and
even I had to read this resolution very carefully, several times, to
convince myself that "no" was the answer most consistent with my opinion
on the matter.  I think many people not as well versed in the context of
this resolution might have had a much more difficult time deciding how
to vote; as worded, the resolution very much suggests that grex is in
danger of "shutting down" (an opinion on which anyone informed on the
matter would realize was a very unlikely outcome.)  The resolution also
doesn't convey any of the risks that not shutting down might mean, such
as possible seizure of the hardware, board members in prison, etc.  I
think it's very telling that the voting ratios amongst members and
non-members was quite different; it was quite clear that the
non-members, not as well versed in the matter, were more likely to vote
"yes".  Grex staff also got one message, from a non-member, who was very
confused about what the resolution meant--being a non-english speaker,
this person was having a lot of trouble parsing the logic of the
resolution to figure out what "yes" and "no" really meant.

This resolution in some ways typifies the worst features of RRO.  This
is the risk in any sort of parliementary process, that it can entangle
everyone up in irrelevant webs of nonsense that only interest people who
enjoy the process, and drive good people away away in disgust, while
real matters of importance don't get resolved.

I think this resolution really sent out the wrong messages to the grex
user population.  It portrays the board as "evil guys" bent on shutting
down grex, and implies that they somehow don't have the best interests
of grex in mind.  Evidently a lot of people saw through this, but it
also sends out a 2nd message, in some ways even more poisonous, that the
people involved in running grex get caught up in stupid and
time-consuming political arguments concerning irrelevant legal minutia.
None of these are healthy for grex.  We *want* people to think of the
board as being on their side.  We want people on the board to think that
they are serving the interests of the users, not acting in active
opposition to the users.  We want people to trust grex enough to send
grex money.  We want people to care enough about grex's future to get
involved in discussions on how grex should be run.  This is what grex
has always been about, and because it's really a pretty rare idea out
there in the natural order of things, we need to care and nurture this
idea, not seek to find ways to drive wedges inbetween the users, the
members, and the board.

response 165 of 203:

Aug 24 17:47 UTC 1999

Hm.  I don't see a double negative here, and the motion in #0 had
nothing to do with Robert's Rules of Order.  Maybe mdw's mother was
frightened by it.   8-)
        I'm also quite surprised at the outcome.  Of course, I could
buy Marcus' argument that folks were confused by the wording, in
which case I could say that most of the voters opposed what the
Board had done.  But making that argument would be wrong.
        Let's see.  If we add the members' and the non-members'
votes, together, then of all the Grex *users* who expressed an
opinion, the votes were:

To rescind the resolution:        14 + 67 = 81  (42%)
Not to rescind the resolution:    27 + 74 = 101 (58%)

The Board is certainly not evil.  42% of the users involved did,
however, feel that the Board needed a collective backbone transplant.

response 167 of 203:

Aug 24 23:05 UTC 1999

Yup.  It's easy to stand on principles when you're not the person who might
get hauled into court.

response 169 of 203:

Aug 24 23:32 UTC 1999

re Markus, the motion was to riscind a resolution to suspend operations.
Rescind the resolution, no more suspension of operations. Even though I do
know some parliamentary procedure (Helps alot in Model UN), I didn't have to
think twice about what this meant. The only demographic who could have
problems would be the foreigners, and they make up a *very* small percentage
of the voting membership, and the margin was wide enough that they wouldn't
have made a difference if they had misconstrued the motion.

response 173 of 203:

Aug 25 00:57 UTC 1999

I get the feeling Markus is getting pretty pissed now.... This may be
semantics, but then again your claim of using parliamentary procedure to
influence the motion is *also* semantics, and simple binary yes/no type stuff
can also be negated simply -- the negation (at least the decision to implement
it) is also a simple binary yes/no type thing, and its effect is also binary.

response 175 of 203:

Aug 25 06:20 UTC 1999

I had trouble with the wording, in fact I had to change my vote (when I
re-read the wording carefully and understood what rescind meant!).

I'm certainly not dumb either.

response 177 of 203:

Aug 25 15:07 UTC 1999

You don't need Robert to tell you what the resolution meant. The motion said,
"Do you want to stop the board from shutting down?" ipso facto.

response 179 of 203:

Aug 25 18:37 UTC 1999

... ipso facto stoping the board from shutting down.

response 181 of 203:

Aug 25 19:36 UTC 1999

The resolution to suspend operations did not mention that it only
applied to a particular court hearing.  Maybe the Board would like
to pass a *new* resolution stating what will happen in the future
if we lose a round in court.  I would hope that this resolution
would receive public discussion before it comes before the Board.