Re: [atlarge-discuss] STRAW POLL...

[espresso@e-scape.net]

At 07:40 -0400 2002/09/09, Walter Schmidt wrote:
>   ...but there is such a thing as Mail-List Etiquette
>
>One doesn't TYPE IN CAPS as it is considered shouting. One doesn't
>initiate a Poll on a mailing list without prior acknowledgment.

If I offended anyone's sense of e-decency, please forgive me. 

All I wanted to do was gauge the opinion of the group on one possible way out of dispute standing in the way of our getting on with our organizing. 

The lack of interest in my proposal --for or against-- speaks for itself. To me, it confirms my sad suspicion that relatively few people here have thought about what the Panel is and is not able to achieve under the present circumstances and what we as members need to do about it. (That suspicion, by the way, was partly founded on the prior lack of response to Joanna's Web-related job descriptions.)

>Talking about email mail-list etiquette - one should take the time to
>remove unnecessary Cc:s, one should take the time to "edit" quoted text so
>it is at a minimum, and when one is "just" agreeing or disagreeing with a
>previous post, there is no need to quote the "whole message."
>
>And, no - these are not my "rules." Having posted my first internet email
>in 1978, these are the "rules of the road," taught to me over the last 24
>years by others...

Personally, I'm with Walter on this. Working with limited time and hard-disk space, I am driven not-so-slowly nuts by multiple copies of messages, especially when each contains several earlier postings quoted in full.

>On a list "of size," a poll request could generate hundreds of messages,
>traffic that can best be handled other ways - and this type of (what is
>sometimes called abusive) action is one reason lists go moderated.

Actually, if I had thought that at all likely, I wouldn't have asked. In practice, there seem to be about two dozen people who might conceivably have cared to respond. As for the rest, I did *not* ask for "reply to all" and the list is set up so that "reply" directs the response to the sender of the original message, not the list. Had there been hundreds of responses from others, they'd have come to my own mailbox and I'd have gladly compiled the results for posting to the list. In fact, I've received none at all off-list and only Joanna, Jeff and Joey actually responded, aside from yourself.

I think it's safe to say the experiment reflects a widespread lack of interest in doing something to affect what happens either to the Web site or to the organization. 

This is not the first time I've been involved with a group where almost everyone subscribed to the discussion list was lurking in the background and waiting for the moment when somebody else will have done all the work needed to get the organization onto a firm footing. Last time around, I and a number of others worked very hard for over two years, fielding off recurrent heckling from a handful of others who didn't think we were producing results quickly enough. 

This time, I'm really not prepared to do that. I don't mind working hard but I do mind wasting my efforts. Where we stand right now seems to be:

- there has been no agreement on how votes within this group will be conducted
- Joanna can't call a vote on a name for lack of the membership list but, if she does, she is open to reproaches for acting without a mandate
- the Panel as an entity has unclear responsibilities and little means to take any steps on behalf of the group, even if it could agree on those steps
- Joop doesn't want to be webmaster any longer but nobody has stepped forward to fill the position, or those of the solo designer and writer
- the Web Working Group can discuss things amongst themselves but have no authority to do anything about anything (which seems also to be the case for our other working groups) and are unlikely to obtain either authority or guidance on this list
- we seem to have a grand plan for organizing the Internet users of the world into a viable constituency to elect representatives to Internet governance bodies and send position papers to relevant authorities, but we ourselves have not yet reached the point of organizing ourselves.

I'd dearly love to be wrong about all of the above, and I know that within our group we have the brains and talents needed to do something meaningful. Would it be okay if I suggest a possible way out of this impasse? Namely...

There's no reason why a discussion list needs to be a free-for-all or why an informal grouping of people with different interests and temperaments can't conduct itself civilly. Successful lists usually do have a set of explicit rules -- shorter or longer, stricter or looser, as the group prefers but written down and agreed upon. Editing posts or not, what is and is not acceptable behaviour ("no flames" or "anything goes"), whether to change subject lines when the topic changes or leave them in the same thread, etc. are the basics. What is and is not a legitimate topic deserves some attention, as does the point at which two-person debates should be taken off-list.

Would somebody here like to take a stab at writing a set of simple guidelines? 

Would our Panel care to suggest an agenda each week so that we can focus on solving our problems and determining who will do what when?

Since Joey has kindly set up a "social club" list separate from this one, could we not use this one for really collaborating with one another on the At Large project we're trying to realize?

It's just my opinion but I really think we need to organize ourselves before we can be in a position to organize anybody else.

Regards,

Judyth


##########################################################
Judyth Mermelstein     "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC           <espresso@e-scape.net>
##########################################################
"The international community is a work in progress. Many 
strands of cooperation have asserted themselves over the 
years. We must now stitch them into a strong fabric of
community--of international community for an international 
era." --Kofi A. Annan, Secretary-general of the UN and 
recipient of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize.
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