|
|
| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 470 responses total. |
sidhe
|
|
response 200 of 470:
| 
Apr 27 14:45 UTC 1996 |
I must concur- it's difficult enough to care to read this one.
|
kerouac
|
|
response 201 of 470:
|
Apr 28 00:19 UTC 1996 |
Mary, I agree with your definition of coop, but that is YOUR
definition of it. There is no policy stated anywhere that
defines coop or says who owns it. There is nothing stated that says
coop is different from any other conf. This is why nephi and ts
could not be compelled to change the login screen even when most
of the active coop participants stated loudly that they wanted it
changed, and why they could not be compelled against their will
to participate in an election.
You want to have your cake and eat it too. You dont want
bureacracy and meta-discussion yet when its convenient you want
the assumption that things are spelled out more than they are.
This is a conf like any other conf, system issues are discussed in
the garage conf, the info conf, the grexnews conf, the newsletter
conf. It would be wrong to single out coop for special treatment.
Either designate all those confs as official and set up uniform
policy for them, or accept that this is nephi and ts's show.
Its not like you couldnt form an alt coop or a coop 2 or something
As for the fw conf idea, I dont know why its any more of a
"meta-discussion" conf than the grexnews or info confs...those
could easily have been part of coop, but they exsist on their own
and nobody complains about splintered discussions. Besides thats
what linking is for isnt it?
|
carson
|
|
response 202 of 470:
|
Apr 28 05:39 UTC 1996 |
re #195: those are trade secrets that come with experience, or lack thereof.
|
chelsea
|
|
response 203 of 470:
|
Apr 28 13:00 UTC 1996 |
Perhaps you are right, Kerouac. Co-op sure didn't start out
that way, as the fairwitness' conference, but there sure aren't
a lot of folks jumping in here to disagree with you. So maybe
I'm still stuck in the old "concept" days and life has moved on.
|
remmers
|
|
response 204 of 470:
|
Apr 28 13:26 UTC 1996 |
Re #201: No, it's not strictly Mary's definition of Coop.
The current role of Coop was arrived at by user concensus in
the very early days of Grex. A few weeks before Grex opened
to the public in 1991, the founders called an open meeting
to discuss the structure of the system. As Grex had been
well-publicized on other local conferencing systems --
e.g. M-Net and U of M Confer -- there was a good turnout.
At that meeting, some decisions were arrived -- by concensus
of those present -- regarding conference structure. These
were:
- there would be three "official" conferences: Agora for
general discussions, Coop for discussion of the policy,
and Staff, a closed conference for dealing with day-to-day
technical matters and security problems. An initial slate
of fw's for Agora and Coop was chosen at that meeting.
- all other conferences were to be created on user initiative;
in general, requests for new conferences would be granted
without formal vote after allowing some time for input on
the request in Coop.
At the time these decisions were made, the board didn't yet
exist (although the corporation did), so formal minutes never
got written down. But the structure *was* arrived at, and the
role of Coop defined, via a deliberation process open to anyone
who was interested in participating.
Perhaps the structure should be re-affirmed by the board so
that it will become part of the official minutes and there
will be something in writing to refer users to, particularly
those who weren't around in the early days and don't know the
history.
Personally, I like the present structure and don't think it
should be changed. In any case, since it was arrived at
"officially", it shouldn't be changed unless there's a clear
concensus that change is what people want.
|
remmers
|
|
response 205 of 470:
|
Apr 28 13:30 UTC 1996 |
(A couple of typos in the above: in the 2nd paragraph, "arrived"
should be "arrived at", and in the 1st sub-paragraph after that,
"the policy" should simply be "policy".)
|
popcorn
|
|
response 206 of 470:
|
Apr 28 14:12 UTC 1996 |
I agree with Mary and John: co-op is the official conference where system
policy is discussed and decided. Things like garage and info are not.
It may not be in writing anywhere, but that is the system policy.
Re waybackthere: I agree that if someone wants a fair witnessing conference,
it should be created. My comments above were about how much use I'm guessing
it will see, not about whether or not it should exist.
|
dang
|
|
response 207 of 470:
|
Apr 28 15:34 UTC 1996 |
It was always made plain to me that Agora and Coop were special system cf,
and not normal one. (Staff too, but that didn't affect me... :) There was
always Agora, the "main" cf, Coop, the "policy" cf, and the rest. I had
always assumed it was offical and written somewhere. At any rate, it appears
it was official, if not written, and I like it the way it is.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 208 of 470:
|
Apr 28 16:25 UTC 1996 |
The weakness of consensus is illustrated in the above. Times change and
people move on (and new people move in). The knowledge of a consensus is
lost, and indeed a past consensus may not be today's. There is some
agreement above with an old consensus, but no test of the current
consensus. This, of course, is the reason for writing things down. But if
they are not written down, they cannot be claimed to be policy if anyone
does not agree. When Valerie writes "It may not be in writing anywhere,
but that is the system policy.", she is speaking only for some small
(unspecified) group of users that are more or less in control of things.
That's not even consensus.
|
kerouac
|
|
response 209 of 470:
|
Apr 28 22:31 UTC 1996 |
rcurl is right. There is no way that users like myself who have come
along later, and users like ts and nephi who later became fw's of
coop, can be expected to be aware of earlier unofficial consensus's
of earlier members. Some of those members arent even around anymore.
Grex isnt new anymore, so it cant be assumed that even a majority
of current users are aware of the working assumptions of the founders.
So while it may not have been necessary in the good old early days,
I think it now is necessary to have a board vote on which confs are
official and not the domain of the fw. Had this been spelled out,
perhaps the mess with ts and nephi and the login screen would have
been avoided. They obviously assumed that they could fw this conf
the same way other fw's do their confs, basically taking advice but
reserving the right to make final decisions to themselves.
This should be on the agenda at the next meeting. It would just be a
simple vote to make agora, coop, info and any other conf that
deals with system matters (the intro conf for instance) as "official"
It can be stated that the users of those confs have the right to
determine the methods of choosing their fw's, but that anyone
designated to be an fw in an official conf has to be approved by the
board. The Board would explicitly leave fw decisions to the users of the
official confs other than to rubber stamp them. But reserving the
"rubber stamping" right also would give the Board the mechanism to
request an fw of an official conf step down if the users of the conf are
revolting.
This would clear up a lot of confusion. Somewhere along the line there
will be other fw disputes in coop and agora and having those confs
defined as "official" in this manner will make things less complicated.
|
selena
|
|
response 210 of 470:
|
Apr 29 02:36 UTC 1996 |
Well, I think a FW conference is just plain stupid- so let it happen,
and wither and die like it deserves to. It'll most likely become nothing
more than a kangaroo court for poeple to gang up on unpopular FW's.
|
chelsea
|
|
response 211 of 470:
|
Apr 29 03:15 UTC 1996 |
tsty and nephi both knew it was not "their" conference when they
took the job.
|
popcorn
|
|
response 212 of 470:
|
Apr 29 03:22 UTC 1996 |
Re 208: Rane, when I was in fifth grade, I had a teacher who assigned
everybody in the class to write down exactly how to make a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich. Then he brought in peanut butter, jelly, and bread, and
proceeded to follow people's directions. One set of instructions said to put
the peanut butter on the bread, so he did: he put the entire unopened jar on
a slice of bread. Then it said to put the jelly on the other slice of bread,
so he put the whole jelly jar there. Then it said to put the pieces of bread
together to make a sandwich. He did that, and the jelly jar fell through the
bread. It wasn't a very edible sandwich.
The next set of instructions said to open the jar of peanut butter, scoop some
out, and spread it on a slice of bread. He did that. Since it didn't say
what tool to use to spread the peanut butter, he spread it with his sock.
Nobody would eat that sandwich either.
His point was that it's impossible to describe anything without a lot of
assumptions about how things are customarily done. Ditto on Grex. Yes, maybe
it would be good to try to put everything in writing, but there is always
going to be something else that somehow wasn't written down. No sense
stressing out about it or pointing fingers. If someone really wants to write
down how everything about Grex is done (which is what the co-op login screen
attempts to do for the co-op conference), I think it would indeed be a useful
document. Though it would necessarily be incomplete.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 213 of 470:
|
Apr 29 06:24 UTC 1996 |
Necessarily. Written decisions are guide-lines, and they may be well
spaced, but they still keep actions within some bounds. The consensuses
were also, but not recorded. If consesuses are meant to provide such
guide-lines, writing them down does nothing more except establish them
for future reference.
|
davel
|
|
response 214 of 470:
|
Apr 29 10:10 UTC 1996 |
But this consensus **has** been written down. Many, many times, in many, many
places, words amounting to "coop is the conference where we discuss policy
for Grex" have appeared. I know I've seen it dozens of times myself. If
what you want to insist on is something like minutes for every time people
ever discussed something & came to a conclusion, well, for more recent stuff
the totality of all the prior coops, including all the board minutes, does
a pretty good job. You could make it more complete in that regard, I suppose
... at the price of making it even more difficult to read and to locate what
you want. I really don't think Grex does badly in this regard.
|
adbarr
|
|
response 215 of 470:
|
Apr 29 11:20 UTC 1996 |
But davel. What about the person who just checked in? How/where do they
gain the knowledge accumulated over so many posts? Should they be treated
as less than those who have been around for some time? Why?, or Why not?
|
remmers
|
|
response 216 of 470:
|
Apr 29 11:32 UTC 1996 |
Currently, by reading the login file for this conference. When
Mary was fw, it was mentioned in item 1.
|
davel
|
|
response 217 of 470:
|
Apr 29 14:03 UTC 1996 |
And newcomers are *much* more likely to complain that there's too much stuff
here than that there's not enough, Arnold.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 218 of 470:
|
Apr 29 17:48 UTC 1996 |
Dave, talk is cheap, and consensus is just talk. Someones said this or
that, and someones else said that or this. Talk is all over this place.
Which is the consensus (of whom), and which is not? There is absolutely no
way to tell, unless there is an action under an accepted procedure. The
only procedure around this town is a board act or a member vote. This is
why there are Articles, embossed by the State, and bylaws, OK'd by a
recorded vote with provisions for amendment, and a board, which votes and
keeps minutes ... and so on. Its all a matter of, how do you tell the idle
chatter from the definitive agreement?
Small social groups have their norms and, by meeting often enough, refresh
them by repetition and short-range consensus. It isn't so difficult to
reach and enact a consensus on where to eat lunch. It is much harder to
reach and enact a consensus on where you will eat lunch for the rest of
the year. That's when things start getting written down, and I've even
heard of votes being taken and recorded (here, on Grex, believe it or not,
just on where to eat lunch). It certainly doesn't seem untoward that
policy decisions of greater moment than eating lunch might be discussed
and enacted and recorded, for future reference.
|
scott
|
|
response 219 of 470:
|
Apr 29 21:58 UTC 1996 |
The FW conference discussion went into e-mail.
Now back to your regularly scheduled dispute.
|
kerouac
|
|
response 220 of 470:
|
Apr 30 01:06 UTC 1996 |
The point is that it wouldnt hurt to clarify these things for future
reference. There has been confusion, there probably will be confusion
in the future, because more and more people in the here and now were not
around in the beginning. The laws in the Bill of Rights wouldnt have
much effect if the founders had simply stated those rights as assumptions
and hadnt bothered to encode them as law. All a board vote and writing
everything down does is protect the original ideas. It says that the
board believes in these ideas enough to put their names on the document
and the authority of the board behind them.
One of these days there will be another login screen flap or there might
be a renegade fw in an official conf like agora. Saying these confs are
"official" is saying they are effectively the most important confs on
this system. If they are, the Board should want to protect them.
I dont think this is a big deal, and even it is not absolutely
"necessary" now, it is a good idea.
|
popcorn
|
|
response 221 of 470:
|
Apr 30 04:57 UTC 1996 |
Re 215: The person who just checked in gets the information from reading the
conferences. After sticking around for a short while, most people with some
degree of common sense start to get a sense of how Grex works.
|
adbarr
|
|
response 222 of 470:
|
Apr 30 09:27 UTC 1996 |
Now we have to exercise common sense? Heck. What fun is that?
|
rcurl
|
|
response 223 of 470:
|
Apr 30 17:52 UTC 1996 |
Yeah - no need to know any unix, or even commands - just use the seat of
one's pants (where people often keep their sense).
|
dpc
|
|
response 224 of 470:
|
May 1 00:43 UTC 1996 |
I think there should be only one conference - Coop - where the Grex
"political" types hang out. It's absolutely correct that such beings
shouldn't have to keep track of several conferences.
I must disagree with the claim that something only exists if
it is "written down." A "writing" is better evidence (usually) that
some action has been taken or decision reached than simple memories
of the participants. However, if there is adequate oral testimony
of an action or decision, then the existence of that action or decision
has been verified.
|