> 1) How do you determine "popular acclaim" vs. "elected"?
This is a question of some wider significance in distributed exercises, and writing it off with a simple "by the exercise of social awareness" only applies when everyone or a substantial sample of everyone are in close enough and/or rich enough contact to exchange clues many of which are body language. Nevertheless, it is clear that on-line communities do evolve ways of determining whom they regard as reliable for technical problems and for acting in accordance with the zietgeist of the group. While we discuss deep matters there are at least 4 groups who wish to join the list and our deliberations. Among their options is to join the actual oshca list, and I'd hope they will, but that list is more for discussions of how OSHCA shall run itself and its lists and conferences than for the technical and news content this list has been useful for, so may not suit them. Accordingly, since at least two of us have thought of gateways, I'm carrying out an experiment. If you see a few test emails please excuse me. -- Adrian Midgley (Linux desktop) GP, Exeter http://www.defoam.net/
