At 02:07 PM 7/25/01 -0400, Andrew J Jenkins wrote:
>The problem, as I see it, with traffic in multiple locations is that it's
>end result is fragmentation of the group and
Meeting in committee is hardly "fragmentation." The records of the
committee are open to the public and will remain so, and anyone who wishes
to join the discussion may do so. Further, the committee will report back
to this list and anyone who does not like its recommendations will be free
to express it.
I don't know that Mr. Jenkins is aware that I was elected chair of the
Protel Users Association. I am the "owner" of record for the Protel-users
yahoogroups lists, but I only hold those lists as trustee for the
association; my decisions regarding them are subject to association review,
and not only can I be overruled by the association, I *have* been overruled
in one case.
Every organization which has accomplished something significant has learned
to divide and delegate responsibility. Not everyone wants to participate in
every activity, and we are already bleeding subscribers to the Techserv
list, people who unsubscribe simply because the volume of mail becomes too
much. I spoke to a number of these at the last PC Design Conference West.
(There is a list, protel-users-announcements, which is a *very* low traffic
list, and I recommend that anyone who would like to receive association
announcements without maintaining active list subscription(s) join that
list. A piece of mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] will
accomplish it. It's a moderated list specifically to keep it from receiving
traffic which is not association-sponsored.)
I know that some of us, even some of those who have been active in
association affairs (such as Mr. Wilson, who has done a great deal and who
deserves our gratitude), dislike the proliferation of lists. Some
organizations similar to ours have a single list, but have required subject
headers, and people can set their subscription preferences to include or
exclude particular subjects. That's another way of accomplishing a similar
purpose.
However, requiring that all users receive all mail is the same kind of
error as was made by many cooperative organizations back in the seventies:
everything was decided by the entire organization. Problem was, it was very
difficult to get everyone to agree, and a single argumentative person could
effectively prevent anything from being done. In the end, the organizations
went according to the decisions of those who could afford the time to sit
through long-winded plenary sessions. And, usually, after a few years, the
organization was gone.
I'd prefer to have an opt-out system, where everyone was subscribed to all
the lists, and then could opt out of the ones not of interest to them. If
Mr Jenkins had his way, it would seem, *we couldn't opt out.* Is this
really what we want?
Techserv has periodically popped in here to stop discussions it deemed
off-topic. Originally, the yahoogroups lists were started for two reasons:
(1) to provide a backup list for when the Techserv list was down, which
happened too many times.
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
(2) to provide a place or places to discuss or announce matters which were
against Techserv policy, such as announcements regarding protel license
resales (protel-users-resale) or miscellaneous discussion (protel-users-misc).
If you want to talk fragmentation, it would be in the recent founding of
the Open Forum by Techserv, which was a direct duplicate of
protel-users-misc. *That's* fragmentation.
Response to protel-users-library has been substantially greater than was
the response to any other of the accessory lists. In less than one day, 17
users have joined. There has been, as yet, no discussion on that list; I
assume that it will start up when the energy being spent here quiets down.
Yahoogroups lists have archives. The only reason that we have an archive
for the Techserv list is that one was started on yahoogroups.
(Protel-users-PEDA-archive). On the same day that this archive was opened,
there was apparently activity attempting to start up an archive on the
Techserv site. It was not completed.
An archive ("minutes") is essential for a working committee. If the minutes
of a committee are filled with material irrelevant to the purpose of the
committee, they will be next to useless. That's why we need a separate
list. It is for order, not for fragmentation. Discussion lists are great
for asking questions of a broad audience and for discussion. They are *not*
so great for making decisions.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Abdulrahman Lomax
P.O. Box 690
El Verano, CA 95433
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