Without, for obvious reasons, getting into the specifics... you'd be surprised at who all is a member of this list. And others. (I was shocked when a certain public official from a certain regulatory agency posted a comment to another reflector last week... had no idea he was a member. But I digress.)
Many amateurs who would be considered public figures, such as elected or appointed ARRL officials and/or ARRL staff, essentially "lurk" on this and other reflectors... so yes, they do read most of the comments (which on some other reflectors can get REAL nasty). However, if and when they choose to reply, they usually do so privately. Why? Simple. There has to be a distinction between their personal, private thoughts and comments... and those that they make on behalf of the organization (be it the ARRL, FCC, QCWA, RAC, etc.) in an offical capacity. Their private musings may not always agree with the organization's policies. And they're human, something we tend to forget. For example: Let's pick on Wayne N7NG, who is no longer an ARRL staff member. Yes, he was a member of this reflector during his time in Newington, as a few of you also know. Wayne on many occasions made private comments to me about certain reflector posts (no, I'm not going to tell you which ones). But, and this is important, they were intended as amateur-to-amateur (and I would hope friend-to-friend), not ARRL Staff Official Policy to Reflector Administrator. In a very small handful of cases, I would sometimes refer (indirectly) to his comments in a public post -- and always with his prior knowledge and permission. In every case, this was done this way explicitly to prevent someone from waving his post as an "official" change of policy or procedure. My personal rule of thumb [and this is NOT reflector policy!!!!!] is and remains: Under normal circumstances, before repeating a private post to a public reflector, unless it is clearly understood otherwise, I check with the sender to get their permission. A lesson I learned the hard way, many moons ago, from VE1DX. This avoids any problems with whether or not a private post was intended to be public. 'nuff said. Go work some DX and then come tell us about it! 73, ron w3wn administrator, dx chat Subscribe/unsubscribe, feedback, FAQ, problems http://njdxa.org/dx-chat To post a message, DX related items only, dx-chat@njdxa.org This is the DX-CHAT reflector sponsored by the NJDXA http://njdxa.org
