|
|
| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 184 responses total. |
robh
|
|
response 50 of 184:
| 
Dec 11 09:54 UTC 1994 |
Actually, I'm wondering if the motd could be reworded, as I've gotten
asked by at least five non-members how to vote.
The sad thing is, they were going to vote for me... >8)
|
chelsea
|
|
response 51 of 184:
|
Dec 11 14:23 UTC 1994 |
When Grex started allowing membership perks we set this in motion. You can
call $60 a year a gift, a donation, dues, a miracle or whatever, but when
you make it the only way someone can gain a valuable service you will end
up with a whole lot of folks giving in order to get that service. We are
going to have a difficult time getting a quorum for votes. A very
difficult time. If not in this election then one just around the corner.
Now we could go into denial about this and do nothing but beg for voters.
We could amend the bylaws moving us farther away from the co-operative
concept and more into the corporate model requiring less and less input
from members. Or we could once again look at the philosophy of voting
rights being the only tangible benefit for those paying dues. This would
mean, for now, eliminating outgoing FTP for members. Ya'll know what I'd
do.
|
mdw
|
|
response 52 of 184:
|
Dec 11 15:23 UTC 1994 |
Re #49 - actually, grex is NOT a freenet. Firstly, freenet is a
trademark, and as such, it's *owned* by a national organization that
controls how that trademark may be used. (Actually, it may be a service
mark, but that's just a technicality.) Ie, freenet is just like "Ford"
or "AAA". We need to be *very* careful not to call ourselves a freenet
because of that. Secondly, in terms of original design & concept, grex
never was, & is not a freenet. Freenets, in original design, are
supposed to be funded entirely by governmental & commercial grants,
supposed to be free to individual users, and are generally supposed to
offer "basic" services such as e-mail, telnet, & access to a variety of
internet database resources, such as gopher. Group communications are
not a key part of freenets - and certainly not community based groups.
So read access to usenet would have fit within the original design, but
I'm not sure that even posting access was considered important. Unix
shell access was certainly NOT considered important, & most freenets
still run a menuing system that was designed to offer easy access to
just the basic stuff. That menuing software is, btw, sold for a fairly
hefty sum by the central freenet organization.
So how does grex differ: firstly, it's member supported and run. It was
a specific goal that it only be beholden to the actual users of the
systems, and not to anybody else, be that gov't or a commercial
business. Secondly, we wanted the system itself to be as "open" as
possible. The open newuser is the first part of that; most freenets
require users to send in a piece of paper mail before they will enable
an individual account. Users can get complete shell access (including
the compiler) right off; that, too, is very different from freenets
where shell access is generally considered a very exclusive privilege.
And thirdly, we saw ourselves as very much a group communications
resource - a specific place where a community of users would grow. If
you look on a freenet, you are very insulated from the other usrs on
that freenet. You don't really have any sense of who else is on the
system - the only people's names you're really likely to see are the
people "in charge of" the system, and even then in only the most formal
fashion. Here, on grex, it's rather hard to avoid encountering other
users, and indeed, we do quite a bit to encourage that kind of
interaction.
|
popcorn
|
|
response 53 of 184:
|
Dec 11 16:31 UTC 1994 |
Re 47: Bill - anybody, member or not, can reach Grex by telnetting in.
One (currently free) way to do this is to dial your local merit number
(in Ann Arbor, that's 763-6520 at 1200 baud, 998-1302 at 2400 baud,
998-1303 at 9600 baud, or 998-1304 at 19200 baud), and, at the "Which
Host?" prompt, type um-gomlink. Log in as "mlink". Choose the first
menu option on the first menu, which should be something like "search
through the mlink menus". Tell it to search for "grex". Then hit enter
and you're in on Grex.
Another way in from the "Which Host?" prompt is to type msu-gopher,
log in as "gopher", and choose menu options 13, 5, 7, and 8.
Also: if you get your money to danr before the 15th (that's when the
polls close), I believe you can still become a member in time to vote.
You need to be a member for 3 consecutive months, including the current
month, in order to vote. So, if you're not currently a member, you'd need
to pay for 3 months of membership to be able to vote.
|
kentn
|
|
response 54 of 184:
|
Dec 11 16:55 UTC 1994 |
Given that 3-month requirement, how many members out of the total
membership are eligible to vote in this election (at this time)?
And what is our total membership?
|
remmers
|
|
response 55 of 184:
|
Dec 11 19:19 UTC 1994 |
I'm not sure if Dan R. will have have any updating of the voter list to
do, so I'm basing my statistics on the current voter list:
There are 82 eligible voters. Only 32 have voted. The quorum is 55.
Oddly, 73 ballots have been cast, so there are more non-members voting
than members. This is very strange. In past elections a few
non-members have voted -- probably just to see what the vote program
looked like -- but non-members running it in such large numbers is
unprecedented, unless the voter list is *way* out of date (and I doubt
that it is). I wonder why this is happening, and if these people are
aware that their votes won't count. I thought the vote program made it
clear what the eligibility requirements are.
It's not clear to me what changes Rob would like in the motd message
(which I didn't post). The appeal is clearly addressed to members and
tells how to run the vote program.
I just sent a reminder mail message to everybody in group 'voters'
about the election (including jep -- the bylaws contain no concept of a
non-voting member, and I don't think anyone had the authority to
exclude him from the quorum). Beyond this, I don't want to be involved
in any "arm-twisting" to get people to vote -- I think it would result
in uninformed votes being cast and some ticked-off members, and how
would that benefit anybody? I think the problem is that we're getting
a large group of members who simply aren't interested in Grex
governance, and that's a problem we'll have to deal with.
|
robh
|
|
response 56 of 184:
|
Dec 11 22:09 UTC 1994 |
As I said, remmers, I've had a LOT of people both asking me how
to vote, and telling me that they had voted, when they were not
eligible. Many of the people I talk to on-line seem confused about
the term "member", they assume that if you have an account here,
you're a member. Once upon a time, when people wrote-help me
asking why telnet and FTP would work, I would ask if they were
a member, they'd say "yes", I'd check /etc/group and see that
they weren't, I'd ask when they sent their dues in, they'd say
"Dues? Huh? I didn't send in dues, I'm just a member."
(Now I ask them if they're PAYING members, I hate to sound so
mercenary, but it avoids the confusion.)
In honesty, I don't know how it should be reworded, the only
thing I can think of is "Paying members, please vote!" And
that sounds callous.
Of course, we could just count the non-members' votes... >8)
I repeat my question of an earlier response - what do we do if
we don't get a quorum? Try holding another election? Just accept
the results anyway? Should we consider changing the by-laws to
reduce the amount for a quorum, or (gasp) actually implement
non-voting memberships, or abstentions?
|
srw
|
|
response 57 of 184:
|
Dec 11 22:41 UTC 1994 |
I don't have a problem with the idea of amending the bylaws to
eliminate the need for this quorum of members. Mary has claimed
that this will move us farther away from the cooperative concept.
I don't believe that such a change would do that. Rather it would
accept that there is a role to play for those who wish to support Grex
(for whatever reason) and don't wish to participate in its governance.
The many members who do wish to participate form a strong cooperative base
in my view. I will push for such a change regardless of the success
of the current election.
As for the current election, my interpretation is that without a quorum
of members voting the election will be considered invalid and will have
to be held again.
|
janc
|
|
response 58 of 184:
|
Dec 11 23:37 UTC 1994 |
Hmmm...The motd and John's mail both pointed me to this item as a place
to find out about the candidates. Not much here on that. Mostly just
talking about the mechanics of the voting process. How very Grex. M-Net
usually requires a whole conference for the candidates to have room to
say all they want to say. Oh well, guess I'll just vote for the people I
know.
|
remmers
|
|
response 59 of 184:
|
Dec 12 00:34 UTC 1994 |
That's right -- there's been very little discussion of issues. After
some initial position statements by candidates, this item was quiet for
a long time, and only revived when people started talking about the
vote program and the quorum problem. I'm not sure if the lack of
campaigning is a problem or a non-problem. It's true that on M-Net
there's a lot of campaigning and controversy in board elections,
including a good deal of acrimony and even an occasional scandal.
Sorta like political elections in the real world. I'm not at all
convinced that the abundant electioneering has resulted in better
governance for Arbornet than it would have had otherwise, though -- I
suspect the knowledge of the kind of gauntlet they would have to run
may discourage some well-qualified people from standing for election
over there.
Actually, the only major area of policy disagreement on Grex that I
can think of is the extent to which membership should include access
perks. Aside from Steve Weiss, I don't recall that the candidates
have stated a position on that. (Maybe they have; it's been a while
since candidates entered their statements in this item and I don't
remember.) At this the eleventh hour, I'm curious about the
other candidates' positions on this issue.
|
robh
|
|
response 60 of 184:
|
Dec 12 01:29 UTC 1994 |
I did state earlier that I'd like to open up the Internet
perks to non-members as much as possible, as long as it
doesn't overload Grex's resources. Maybe we'll never
have the resources to do that, but I think it's a worthwhile
goal to shoot for. As to specifics, I'm not a hardware
expert, but I certainly want to see things like outgoing
finger, ntalk, and such opened up. telnet, ftp, and lynx
will have to wait until we get that T1. >8)
|
srw
|
|
response 61 of 184:
|
Dec 12 01:37 UTC 1994 |
Outgoing finger ntalk and such have been approved by the membership.
If the staff gets some of the fires under control they will be opened.
I had my say in responses 8 and 10 of this item. Type only 8 and only 10.
I am in favor of opening up gopher and http for lynx, but not ftp and telnet
protocols, btw.
|
steve
|
|
response 62 of 184:
|
Dec 12 01:45 UTC 1994 |
I don't think its odd that we're getting more non-members trying to
vote than members, 'cause non-members out number members by about
70-to-1, based on the size of /etc/passwd.
I'm now of the thought that we need to scrap the 2/3's rule. Just
look at the US voter population overall. Or look at the voter turnout
in the People's Food Coop elections. Same problem. We need to fix it.
|
scg
|
|
response 63 of 184:
|
Dec 12 04:08 UTC 1994 |
You can find my positions on things scattered in discussions off
issues all over this conference, and you can find other candidates'
positions all over this conference too.
I think I've already answered the Internet question in this item,
but I'm not sure. I believe that Grex should open up as much as possible
to everybody, but that we do have to think very carefully about the
bandwidth ramifications of things before we do them. While I can not
support opening up outbound telnet and FTP to non members wiht the
current speed of our connection, in the future, if we have enough
bandwidth, I would support that. I'm not sure what enough bandwidth would
be, but it is something that needs to be discussed very seriously if/when
we get a faster connection.
|
pegasus
|
|
response 64 of 184:
|
Dec 12 05:57 UTC 1994 |
John Says:
I just sent a reminder mail message to everybody in group 'voters'
about the election
I'm not eligible to vote in the election, yet I was sent this reminder
email. Sounds like the list of members is out of date.
Pattie
|
rcurl
|
|
response 65 of 184:
|
Dec 12 06:52 UTC 1994 |
(Some responses ago I was taken to task for using the term freenet
loosely. I am properly chastized and hereafter, when I mean a freenet
under the trademark or corporate name law, I will write Freenet.)
|
cicero
|
|
response 66 of 184:
|
Dec 12 07:40 UTC 1994 |
You know, I meant to bring up this quorum thing a few months ago right after
the vote on the access policy, but then I got busy and forgot about it.
The reason I was going to bring it up was that there is an inheirent problem
with a quorum rquirement in our current situation: It allows a minority
to defeat proposals by not voting. This is not as much of an issue in an
election where if a quorum is not made then the election is just void and
has to be re-done. However in votes on POLICY (like the previous access
policy vote) if the quorum is not made then the proposal under consideration
is not adopted (ie. fails) even though perhaps nobody votes against it!
Fortunately this did not happen in the last vote. Those who were not happy
with the language of the access proposal were responsible enough to register
their opposition with a NO vote, however, the total vote count was low enough
that had those who voted no instead chosen to not vote, then the proposal
which did pass would not have done so.
When I saw the vote totals and realized that this could have happened,
I realized that we have a problem. My suggestion for resolving this
problem is to eliminate the quorum requirement and simply treat non-voting
members as abstaining. I don't see any real problem with this. We don't
really nead a quorum rule, becaus all members have ample opportunity to vote
with our current voting system. With MOTD announcements and mass mailings
going out there is really no excuse for members not to know that there is a
vote being taken. If after hearing about it, they CHOOSE not to vote then
that should be ok, but it should not invalidate the election. They have made
their choices. Those who wish to vote will make the decision. This is in no
way undemocratic.
I honestly can't think of a good reason for having a quorum rule. If
someone elese knows of one let's hear it!
|
rcurl
|
|
response 67 of 184:
|
Dec 12 07:46 UTC 1994 |
Its that cooperative, concensus, thing. The group is supposed to discuss
the issue *until* amost everyone agrees, no matter how long that takes.
This is, however, impractical, if decisions need to be made.
|
remmers
|
|
response 68 of 184:
|
Dec 12 13:20 UTC 1994 |
I disagree with #66. For policy votes, a quorum is appropriate.
When a minority group of members, having no responsibility to
represent the membership as a whole, proposes a change that would
affect everybody, should the burden of rejecting it be placed on
the membership as a whole? I don't think so.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 69 of 184:
|
Dec 12 15:26 UTC 1994 |
I think this is a good point to suggest again that Grex adopt Robert's
Rules of Order as its parliamentary standard. All of these matters are
addressed there, in ways that have been found to be fair and workable by
thousands of organizations. One is always free to adopt special additional
rules, that "overrule" Robert's, but at least RRO provide a first answer
to every such question. In this case, assuming that an on-line vote can be
considered one "in Assembly", every motion made and seconded must be
considered by the assembly (yes, the "burden" of rejecting a proposal
supported by a minority *does* fall upon the majority, or otherwise the
minority would have no voice, and one purpose of RRO is to ensure that the
minority can be at least heard). In addition, as was stated, anyone
(eligible) not voting is considered to have abstained, as they had their
chance to speak or vote, but should not be allowed to stymie the Assembly
by not participating.
|
chi1taxi
|
|
response 70 of 184:
|
Dec 12 23:16 UTC 1994 |
I feel that the Quorum should be reduced from 2/3s to 1/2. This would still
protect against a minority sneaking an issue through. I also feel that the
same amndment should specify that elections not be held during during low
use periods such as U of M shut downs. Or are there few at the U who are
paying members?
|
srw
|
|
response 71 of 184:
|
Dec 13 02:53 UTC 1994 |
I doubt very seriously that it will be a low use period.
|
steve
|
|
response 72 of 184:
|
Dec 13 03:55 UTC 1994 |
Our membership isn't tied to UM folk, as far as I can tell.
I'll agree that a qurom is a wonderful idea, but it isn't working,
is it? I'll happily shut up if I'm wrong. ;-)
I was at another meeting tonight (the People's food Coop) and I
verified that getting a quorum together isn't easy for them either.
Given our disperate membership we'll only have it worse.
|
cicero
|
|
response 73 of 184:
|
Dec 13 07:23 UTC 1994 |
re #70:
Reducing the quorum to 1/2 won't make a difference in the case of
proposals since the quorum is apperently already 1/2 in these cases
and there is already a bit of a problem.
Re #68
Yes, I do think that it is the majority's job to oppose proposals by
minorities that they do not agree with. If a majority does not object to
an idea then why shouldn't a minority that wants it get its way?
At the very least, I think we must provide an "Abstain" option in the
voting program. This would at least allow users who do not wish to vote
to regester this as an active decision, and help us to meet quorum.
|
scg
|
|
response 74 of 184:
|
Dec 13 07:25 UTC 1994 |
Even if we do have a lot of UM people among our members, vacation doesn't
mean a time of less Grexing. Vacation, for lots of people, is the only
time they have when they can spend a lot of time on Grex.
|