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| Author |
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| 25 new of 97 responses total. |
davel
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response 50 of 97:
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Nov 8 10:57 UTC 1996 |
In any case, Catriona is correctly citing the info anyone, even kerouac, can
read in the instructions for filing Form 1040, & it's been that way for some
years now.
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kerouac
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response 51 of 97:
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Nov 8 17:22 UTC 1996 |
Yes I did askmy sister and no her son does not have a SS#...probably
should but I guesss she's not one to read the fine print on a 1040.
I *was* from a divorced family and only got a SS# because
a high school teacher of mine handed out the application forms
during career week.
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birdlady
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response 52 of 97:
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Nov 8 19:23 UTC 1996 |
It's not fine print. I have to sign and put my social security number on the
middle of the 1040 form every year when my father does taxes. I forgot the
line number, but it's smack dab in the middle of the front or second page.
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mcpoz
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response 53 of 97:
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Nov 9 01:06 UTC 1996 |
I guess if you wanted to give up claiming the kid for an exemption, you could
decide to not get them a SS number.
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steve
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response 54 of 97:
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Nov 9 04:01 UTC 1996 |
Keep in mind that the regulations for kids having SS numbers have
gotten "worse" in the last several years. You still don't have to have
your children have SS numbers when they are young, but you can't
claim them as dependants anymore, unless they have the numbers. A
sneaky and underhanded way of forcing most parents to get their kids
SS numbers early in life.
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brighn
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response 55 of 97:
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Nov 9 20:57 UTC 1996 |
What's so wrong with having a SS# if you don't make any money anyway?
And how does th e gov't know a child exists with out a SS#? Without required
SS#s for dependents, people can (and have) fabricate dependents.
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aaron
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response 56 of 97:
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Nov 10 17:10 UTC 1996 |
Just to clarify -- your problem with kerouac is that he tends to focus on
peripheral or irrelevant issues, and argues with people long after it is
clear that his efforts are fruitless?
Oh, excuse me. Please don't let me interrupt your discussion of social
security numbers, or your argument over style with kerouac.
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mdw
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response 57 of 97:
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Nov 10 23:54 UTC 1996 |
I certainly don't care if he gets distracted by irrelevant issues. I
suspect he finds the concept of a member-operated public access system
fascinating. Unfortunately, I think the realities of operating such a
system, the process of consensus building, & perhaps even some of the
basic principles of group dynamics don't jive very well with his
perceptions of the universe.
In a way, it's kind of interesting. Many of his arguments over how grex
"ought" to be structured seem to come from perhaps an overexposure to
the structure of the federal government. Possibly that kind of
structure is necessary when one is talking about a really large scale
administration, but I don't think they scale very well to a grex size
organization. We are fortunate (in a way) that we have a wonderful real
life example of just such an application - m-net. There, we can see
meetings run according to RRO, separate staff vs. board, and a
wonderfully baroque bureaucracy run amok. There, we also see a very
confrontational board vs. everyone else situation, a staff that barely
functions, serious financial problems, serious technical problems,
&etc&etc. Almost point by point, we have a wonderful example of how
*not* to do things. It's really hard for any of us who have listened to
the arbornet woes, to take kerouac at all seriously.
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rcurl
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response 58 of 97:
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Nov 11 00:51 UTC 1996 |
I refute your conjecture. I know *dozens* of very fine volunteer
organizations that run meetings with RRO, have separate staff and board,
and have no confrontations, serious financial problems (apart from needing
more money 8^}), or &etc&etc. You are tarring a whole world of fine
organizations with the brush soiled by one. What grex doesn't want is to
get into the same position as m-net, but their problems are *not* due to
any of the things you name.
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eskarina
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response 59 of 97:
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Nov 11 02:17 UTC 1996 |
I think what Marcus is saying is that despite m-net's "wonderful" structure
with a separate staff and board, and other things that kerouac has suggested,
the system doesn't run perfectly. Kerouac has suggested these things in order
to improve how grex functions. Marcus is pointing out that even with these
wonderful things in place, you do not end up with a perfect system. I don't
think he meant to tar all systems run under that type of system. Hardly any
problems in the world are a result of just one cause. They take awhile to
form, and longer to solve.
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rcurl
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response 60 of 97:
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Nov 11 06:10 UTC 1996 |
Thank you for mediating the issue, Eskarina! There are, though, some around
here that are simply anti-organization, even though that it not itself
the cause of problems. I, on the other hand, am accustomed to successful
organization. Grex's system is fine for what it does, and m-nets was fine for
what it was trying to do - their problems lay more in internal personal
conflicts than in organization.
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aaron
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response 61 of 97:
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Nov 11 16:40 UTC 1996 |
First, Arbornet does not have a separate staff and board.
Second, although Arbornet is *supposed* to follow RRO at meetings, you don't
have to attend many meetings to realize that this will not be possible until
an Arbornet president bothers to read RRO. I will grant you that Arbornet
is excessively bureaucratic.
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mdw
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response 62 of 97:
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Nov 12 00:41 UTC 1996 |
There may well be excellent organizations of the nature Rane describes.
Never having seen them, I can't really speak from personal experience
there.
I have, however, seen a lot of computer conferencing systems, & the
group dynamics that result from such a system. In fact, there are a lot
of different ways a computer conferencing system can be run. Depending
on the goals and experience of the organization, styles of operation of
such systems can range from very closed & controlled, to very open and
free. However, for a system of the type of grex, I would assert that
there is not as much choice as might appear on the surface. A lot of
styles of running things turn out to be incompatible or actually
inimical to the things you need to do to attract and keep a vibrant
online community.
To put it simply, grex is *very* different from most traditional
organizations, in possessing a very active online community. *Any*
administration, that ignores the needs and desires of the online
community, is guaranteed to run into conflict sooner or later.
Technically, Aaron is right. Arbornet does not have a separate staff.
That is because the staff of m-net are part of m-net, and not arbornet,
and that m-net and arbornet are two separate organizations. But the
difference is actually a moot point, because even though the arbornet
board has spent a lot of time "educating" people that arbornet and m-net
are separate things, in point of fact, the major thing arbornet does
*is* m-net, & the board probably spends 90% of their time & effort
dealing with m-net things. At the one arbornet board meeting I went to,
I was amazed at how much time & effort the board spent on technical
minutia, where they were clearly out of their depth. They spent quite a
bit less time worrying about financial decisions, or on major
policy/administrative decisions. There weren't very many actual staff
people present. One scurried out fairly rapidly near the start of the
meeting, after a discussion about a kernel bug ended. Another spent
about 15 minutes being told "no" by the board president in the middle.
It must have been excruciating to have been the object of that process.
I heard afterwards that the meeting I went to had gone "better than
average".
Group dynamics is funny stuff. One of the weird things is, that with
any group of people, the whole is, quite literally, more than the parts.
The group acquires its own distinctive flavour, and takes on a life of
its own. The characteristics that define that group are quite capable
of surviving even a complete replacement of all the members of that
group. Those characteristics don't have to reflect the actual wishes
and intentions of its members. In fact, with groups of any size, it's
common to find characteristics that don't reflect the wishes of most or
even all the actual members. It can be very difficult for a group to
*change* their characteristics. Habits can be very hard things to cure.
So, yes, Rane is right in that `internal personal conflicts' is a
problem with m-net. But they aren't just incidental bad luck. They are
very much part of the group dynamics of m-net, & very much
institutionalized into the structure of the organization. The arbornet
board has done a very good job of insulating themselves from the needs
and desires of the m-net community, and it shows. The m-net community
does not trust the arbornet board, and that shows. There is a very
separate feeling between the m-net staff & arbornet board, and that
shows. Rane believes that RRO is incidental to this problem. I don't.
RRO is descended from the rules of conduct for the US congress. Those
rules were very much designed to discourage interaction. Even in the US
congress, most of the decision making happens somewhere else. Even in
its denatured form as seen at an arbornet board meeting, it still
succeeds most admirably in that goal. Now, I wouldn't go so far as to
say that RRO *caused* the problems on m-net. Indeed, to find the
*cause*, you'd have to go right back to the days of Mike Myers. A very
sweet guy, but the way he let m-net go, put a twist on on the group
dynamics of m-net. That twist has survived several complete changeovers
of m-net staff and administration. RRO is not a cause here, but it's a
symptom of that twist, and it's one of the things that reinforces the
twist - that enables the twist to survive even a complete changeover of
the group that comprise m-net.
Kerouac is coming from an environment of close exposure to the federal
government. That means he's coming from the succesor to the background
that produced RRO, and so not surprisingly, he shares that same "twist".
It's the sort of twist that leads to an administration that ignores the
needs and desires of the online community. And it's the sort of twist
that is guaranteed to lead to conflict, as we see on m-net. Ironically,
I think kerouac sees that twist as being the solution to such conflict,
whereas I think most of the rest of us see that as the start of such a
conflict.
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rcurl
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response 63 of 97:
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Nov 12 06:07 UTC 1996 |
Marcus was doing fine until he came down on RRO 8^}. Robert wrote RRO *for
social groups*, because nothing suitable existed. He wrote it to adapt
parliamentary law "in its details to the use of ordinary societies"
(Robert, ca. 1874). Of course, Robert's Rules are now so pervasive, that
Grex follows them in general outline, though winging it often because the
lesser common provisions are simply unknown to most of the board.
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eskarina
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response 64 of 97:
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Nov 12 06:12 UTC 1996 |
What exactly is RRO?
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janc
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response 65 of 97:
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Nov 12 06:45 UTC 1996 |
RRO is the standard book of procedures used to run business meetings. Grex
kind of vaguely follows them in its board meetings.
I think one of the unusual things about Grex is that it depends on having lots
of highly skilled volunteer work done on a daily basis. Most other
non-profits I know of either pay their workers, or require mostly relatively
low-skill work, where volunteers are easily replaced. It's a basic fact that
you can't expect to be able to order around volunteers like you can paid
employees. To keep volunteers working, you have to ensure them all very high
job satisfaction. If you get very hierarchical and bureaucratic, only the
guy on the top of the pyramid gets to have any fun. So we strive for a very
egalitarian structure, very loosely defined, with as few rules as possible.
This is one of the biggest diferences between Grex's approach and Arbornet's
approach. Arbornet is hard pressed to find people willing to serve on the
board or staff. Grex has plenty of people willing to do either job. We're
clearly doing *something* very right, and I think it is our anti-bureaucratic
egalitarian approach. If you want to be topdog, you'll have a hard time on
Grex, but if you want to be a useful member of a reasonably effective team,
Grex is a great place to work.
I don't think RRO has much to with the issue. It wouldn't hurt to operate
by those rules at all. But if we wanted to do a bunch of people would have
to learn the rules, and many of those people would very much dislike doing
so. I don't think the benefits that follow from more formally following RRO
are enough to be worth the unhappiness it would cause some people.
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remmers
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response 66 of 97:
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Nov 12 14:57 UTC 1996 |
RRO is short for "Roberts Rules of Order."
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popcorn
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response 67 of 97:
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Nov 12 16:37 UTC 1996 |
Re 62: Marcus, the way I read aaron's comment was that the board and staff
of (M-Net/Arbornet/whatever) are not separate entities, but rather that
there's some overlap between the board and the staff.
(Disclaimer: I have little idea who is in either group right now.)
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pfv
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response 68 of 97:
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Nov 12 19:52 UTC 1996 |
The overlap is Borg-Discretionary...
When the Borg doesn't want the responsibility, they name the staff
as the arbiters and implementers..
When the Staff finally decides to do something, the Borg will try
to legislate the actions or gets bent because it "Violates the
Mission[or Goals or 501c3]".
We are still awating the Borg to contact krogers and get the
coupons that will yield 10% of the value to Arbornet (week 2?).
And, in a recent exchange in policy, Bruce has decided that
Filtering out certain Abusive-Sites must be a Staff Decision.
*sigh*
NOBODY knows wtf is ever really happening at Mnet.
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mdw
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response 69 of 97:
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Nov 13 01:05 UTC 1996 |
Hm. Converging items? As I just said in the next item, RRO was
codified by a military general. Things in the military are rarely
decided by consensus. Not surprisingly, RRO is not a very good vehicle
for consensus building.
There are things that are important for consensus building, that RRO
either simply doesn't allow, or doesn't encourage. Those things aren't
important in the military. You don't need to build a consensus before
charging down a hill and impaling your collective selves on sharp metal
sticks. If you did spend that time, you might decide it was more in
your collective interest not to charge down the hill, or the enemy might
well charge up the hill, impale you on sharp metal sticks, and render
the whole discussion moot. If you use RRO to decide things, you tend to
end up with small groups of pissed off minorities, who didn't vote for
and don't agree with the decisions that were made. That's not a
disadvantage in the military. Pissed off soldiers are more likely to
succeed at impaling enemy soldiers on sharp metal sticks, than calm and
relaxed soldiers.
However, grex is not the military, nor is m-net. Pissed off users are
less likely to contribute money and become members. Pissed off staff
people are less likely to spend a saturday afternoon working on getting
the system up, instead of watching football. Pissed off board members
are less likely to seek out the facts necessary to making good decisions
on other matters.
That's not to say RRO would make any sense for the military, or that all
(or even any) of the problems on m-net are due to RRO. But the problems
on m-net are definitely the sort that even an assiduous application of
RRO would not cure (or even help in the slighest), and the limitations
of RRO are no accident, but an obvious historical consequence. There
are some very good ideas in RRO. It's just neither a panacea nor a
necessity.
Actually, we've been through the whole RRO debate before; uh, wasn't
this the item that people wanted to use to shred kerouac (in a virtual
sense of course)?
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davel
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response 70 of 97:
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Nov 13 14:37 UTC 1996 |
(Better watch those sharp metal sticks, though ... speaking virtually, of
course.)
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rcurl
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response 71 of 97:
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Nov 13 18:30 UTC 1996 |
In one breath Marcus says RRO was written for military purposes (where
things "are rarely decided by consensus", and in the next breath he says
RRO would not "make any sense for the military". In fact, RRO were written
by a major (not a general) in the Corps of Engineers, and in his career he
explored railroad routes in the west, superintending river and harbor
improvement (he later was in charge of the development of Galveston
Harbor). If anything, in his life, his career was most like an m-net staff
member (though getting paid) - so be a little more sympathetic. Anyway,
the main motivation for Robert to write RRO was a church meeting he
attended and in which he made a fool of himself trying to help in the
conduct of business. Sound familiar? He wrote RRO to assist consensus in
social organizations.
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rcurl
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response 72 of 97:
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Nov 13 19:27 UTC 1996 |
I had to log back in as the revelation hit me about why Marcus has a problem
with RRO. It's professional jealousy. Both Marcus and Robert are competent
and dedicated engineers, who work for large bureaucracies, and who have
sideline hobbies of writing tools for social communication and consensus
building, Picospan and RRO, respectively. However RRO has been a much
greater commercial success!
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mta
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response 73 of 97:
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Nov 13 20:09 UTC 1996 |
<laugh> That is an interesting insight, Rane.
However I think Marcus may have meant not that RRO was created *for*
the military but that it was created *with a military mindset*.
Whether he intended it so or not, Robert very likely was influenced
at least to some degree, by his military career and the concerns of
effciency over concensus important to the military.
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janc
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response 74 of 97:
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Nov 14 00:14 UTC 1996 |
I've done lots of meetings under RRO, and I don't see the military mindset.
Try offering an unfriendly amendment to your commanding officer's order. RRO
is designed to be used in meetings of people who are essentially equals, for
people who have an interest in talking to each other, but who also want to
get decisions made. Not a military thing really. However I don't agree with
Rane that they are really oriented toward consensus building. They are built
around the notion of majority rule, not consensus. There is a difference.
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