[atlarge-discuss] Re: Procedures Re: Jeff's [atlarge-discuss] How does the ietfdo it?

[espresso@e-scape.net]

At 19:34 -0700 2002/10/23, Jeff Williams wrote:
>espresso@e-scape.net wrote:
>> >> On the contrary, relatively few committees whose members are there to achieve a common purpose allow themselves to be blocked and disrupted by infighting.
>> >
>> >  Name three.
>>
>> Well, within the Editors' Association of Canada alone, there are a national executive, executives of five regional branches, and quite a number of standing and ad hoc committees in the regions as well as the national organization. At any given point in time, perhaps two or three of those groups are going through a bad patch while the rest get on with their work.
>
>  Really?  Hummm?  Perhaps you have some URL references and hard
>data to support these examples?

I do, but as you can well understand, I am not in a position to give you access to information restricted to members of the organization in question.  I can assure you that the organization has existed for over 20 years and that almost all of its activities to date have been organized by committees of volunteers. The same is true of the Montreal chapters of the Society for Technical Communication, the Canadian Authors' Association, and various other non-profit organizations I have had dealings with. I am sure any one of us could find similar examples of successful teamwork in their own home towns.

>  So instead of a Chair directing or "Guiding/directing" a WG/Committee,
>that Chair should or would be best to ask lots of questions that
>will help guide the WG/Committee members to guide themselves.
>This approach makes for a much more productive, intelligent,
>and interactive exchange of ideas that engenders both participation
>and reaches better conclusions/recomendations, not to mention
>almost always hashes/flushes out more complex and difficult
>issues and considerations in a more palatable and expeditious
>manner.
>
>  Of course Judyth or anyone, feel free to disagree with what I just
>stated at any time.  I personally, am always open to good insight.  >;)

Most committees in the non-profit world are collaborations among people who have volunteered their time to accomplish some particular task. They do indeed ask questions, come up with answers and thrash out their differences -- usually without any need for a heavy-handed Chair. However, it is the Chair's job to make sure agenda items are dealt with in a timely manner, priorities and deadlines respected, and meetings not allowed to degenerate into aimless chatter or endless recriminations. 

The point is that it's the Chair's duty to keep the committee on track. A weak Chair dealing with a lazy or obstreperous committee is the worst possible combination because the committee's work will never get done. 

A good Chair steers the discussion back to the matter at hand when it's necessary but does not cut off productive discussion or try to force his/her own opinions on the rest. In fact, in many organizations the Chair does not vote except in the case of a tie -- it's a means of keeping the position as impartial as possiblem with the Chair open to the ideas of others while retaining just enough authority to make sure the committee does its work properly and on schedule.

>  Perhaps you should resign than Judyth?  I hope not.  The most difficult
>person on any committee in my experience is usually the most valuable
>unless that person is obviously being obtuse or spouting out utterances
>that make not sense what so ever.  Than and only than, should such a person
>be expelled or requested to resign.  So far I have seen none that
>fits those basic criterion?  Have you Judyth?  If so than just say so
>plain and simple and be able to back it up!  Backing it up, BTW is
>very legally important is such situations.  So be advised, that is legally
>advised...  But if not Judyth, than what seem to be irritating you so
>greatly?

Actually, I have offered to resign from this group -- more than once -- and other members were kind enough to ask me not to. Apparently, at least some of our fellow-members believe what I say makes sense, so I'm hanging in and continuing to try to contribute something useful. 

I am, however, very tired of your combattive approach to whatever others say. If you would like to sue me for saying so, as you seem to be hinting in the above paragraph, by all means do. You have provided (and this group has archived) more than enough evidence for my defense. 

Our fellow-members will eventually decide what they want and vote for it. If they don't, "tant pis" (French for "so much the worse for them") -- there are other means to the same ends.

>  What duties specifically does the WG-Outreach have presently?  So far
>as I know, there are none.  There IS however a perception that we
>should/need to get on with gaining members, hence the WG name...

You and everyone else on this list received Richard Henderson's quite comprehensive list of things the WG-Outreach should look into, and you've received at least one more copy of it on the [Outreach] list yesterday.

You have also seen that a number of us agreed we should look at these things before launching into a worldwide membership drive, -- not least because some of the things in question are the *means* of publicizing and recruiting, which we would need to have in hand in order to do the job when the time comes. Would you honestly prefer that these things not be done? and, if so, why on earth did you volunteer to help do them???

>> In the worst cases, one simply uses that procedure. (Example: one of my fellow-translators suffers from Asperger's Syndrome and could not or would not control his propensity to flame everyone over everything; after repeated warnings, the moderation committee of the list he was impeding finally banned him permanently after due process, and the work of the list continued.)
>
>  Well I am against banning in most instances.

I'm not surprised. But you may be surprised (heaven knows why!) to know that I am, too. It's a procedure of last resort, and there needs to be a fair process whereby a member is first warned and then given a chance to explain his/her conduct before his/her fellow-members decide expulsion is the right thing to do. 

Offhand I can recall only one other expulsion from an organization I belonged to -- an individual who wanted to be President and refused to accept the results of the vote which elected somebody else, who then went on to try to destroy the organization from within. His expulsion was by a unanimous vote, although only a 2/3 majority was required. 

Re: proofreading Web pages
>> You will get no argument from me about that, as long as one of the abilities required of the candidates is literacy.
>
>  I agree here as well. So far I have only noticed a few non english >speaking members that would have a problem with literacy.

For the moment, we need English literacy for proofreading English ... but soon enough we'll need literacy in other languages, too. Please note that I am by no means putting down people who are less literate than others -- I was fortunate enough to have access to a good (and free and public) education but not everyone is so lucky. However, as a professional editor, I would not want a proofreader who couldn't read and write the language in question rather well.

>> One doesn't usually elect proofreaders and fact-checkers in the world of publishing but there's no reason we can't here if we want to.
>
>  Most publishing houses that I have dealt with usually require a Board
>decision on these sorts of positions, especially "Fact-Checkers" >/investigators.
>So in a sense as the members are presently/effectively the acting Board
>of this organization, we would need to vote on such positions.
>
>So the only questions remaining are, how do we check or test for literacy?
>And, what are the minimum requirements for the literacy level.  I know
>that for most US Govt. positions that have a minimum literacy requirement
>that is a rather lengthy exam that each potential candidate must take
>and pass to be considered.  Is that what you envision that we do here
>Judyth?  If not, that what is your detailed answer to my question above?

That's very odd. The board of a publishing house does not normally have anything to do with the choice of production personnel -- usually it's the project manager who chooses the people to work on a given project, and the editor-in-chief or managing editor who hires in-house staff. Amongst other things, most people on the boards of publishing concerns are businessmen with zero editorial experience who think you don't really need editors or fact-checkers anymore since the invention of spellcheckers!

I've never sat the US government exams but imagine they are similar to the Canadian ones -- designed to ensure that people who need to read and write in their work are capable of doing so. For most people, the point is to determine whether they can be hired for the clerical jobs which make up so much of government staffing. To edit documents for publication, one usually needs a *much* higher score than the average -- in fact, more than would be expected of a Cabinet minister if it was thought necessary to test them.

In organizations like this one, people don't conduct extensive literacy testing. What they usually do is ask several people they know to be literate to read over each document destined for publication, on the assumption that as long as each document is checked by 2-3 people. most mistakes will be caught and corrected. After the material is posted, of course, if anyone notices an error they should report it and it should be corrected as soon as possible, but the general idea is to catch the errors before the public sees them.

By the way, in publishing, fact-checkers are not investigators or journalists; they're researchers hired to check the facts in material written by others. They look up dates, place-names, dollar amounts, etc. and telephone people who've been interviewed to confirm they were indeed interviewed and said what the writer quotes them as saying. The idea is to avoid factual errors in what gets published, and to avoid lawsuits and scandals over writers who have plagiarized or made up their interviews and facts. 

Regards,

Judyth

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Judyth Mermelstein     "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC           <espresso@e-scape.net>
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"A word to the wise is sufficient. For others, use more."
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