Michael Sokolov wrote: > 2. Every person without exception who expresses an interest in $TOPIC > and is able and willing to attend and participate in events in > $GEO_AREA has an entitlement right to be a member of the group. No > person who expresses interest in $TOPIC and shows up at the physical > events may be denied group membership for ANY reason, even if that > person is a terrorist, a serial killer, a cannibal, a child molester > or the world's most evil, most horrible and most disgusting person.
Just to be clear - this group is not about terrorism, killing people, cannibalism, child molestation or any other evil,horrible,disgusting thing. This group has always been 100% focused on Linux, GNU, Open source software, Free software, open & compatible hardware, and related subjects. (The related subjects means software like Windows or Mac OS or proprietary Unix is discussed from time to time, etc. but still is about the technology and how it relates to our central theme.) The whole point for the group's existence, including participation on the mailing list is that there is a common interest on that subject area. If someone is involved, and they are a child molester or serial killer or whatever in their private life, of course we don't know about this, we don't care, and we don't get involved in their private life. So I don't know where you are getting some idea that we are restricting people based on some "type" of person being screened out or being deemed an unacceptable person based on who they are. That is just simply not happening. We have never placed any limit on "who" can participate in the group. We only require every one that participates to adhere to "how" we participate as a group. > 3. No group member may exercise any dictatorial powers over any other > member. In particular, no member can ever ban or remove any other > member from the group, and no member may ever restrict or moderate > any other member's speech under any circumstances for any reason. This type of "no dictatorial power" concept is something that only exists in two places: 1: a group that has no stated topic, and encourages random discussion on any subject, a group that exists to simply engage in silly, non-sequitur style banter, a group that allows bashing/flamewars of others, etc. 2: a utopia where everyone stays on topic and always participates in a way which matches the group definition (in our case: Linux, GNU, open source software, free software, open & compatible hardware, related subjects). Michael, I know you aware that our group is focused on it's stated topic (Linux, GNU, open source software, free software, open & compatible hardware, etc.) I'm sure you also understand that with 100 members in a group, it's likely that some one or more of them will occasionally want to post content to the list that is not related to the stated topic of the group. I'm sure you understand that there are people that might want to take down the list or ruin its value for others. How would you prevent the 1 person from ruining the experience for the other 99? Explain how it wouldn't turn into something that you actually don't want to participate in based on your understanding of the group when you signed up. Without having any power to control things, there would be nothing to prevent a subscriber from just polluting or spamming the list with random garbage, which would not be of benefit to the other members of the group. Since we have a stated topic, and if the situation warrants it, someone will have to moderate things - this prevents discussions from going offtopic and ruining the value of the group for everyone that is a member. Michael I hope you eventually understand - YOU get a better group because of it having a focus, and because there is an expectation of following that focus. You don't get e-mails to your inbox everyday talking about developing software in C# with Microsoft Visual Studio. You aren't getting e-mails to your inbox everyday where someone is advertising proprietary software instead of free or homegrown software that you prefer. I think you do see the value of the group having a clearly defined objective. But if you don't want this, or you don't agree with the group keeping a focus like this, I encourage you to leave and join one of the many unmoderated sites on the Internet where you are free to discuss things unrelated to our group's topic, etc. Thanks. _______________________________________________ LinuxUsers mailing list LinuxUsers@socallinux.org http://socallinux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxusers
