RE: [atlarge-discuss] Real world nominations

["Abel Wisman" <abel@able-towers.com>]

Jan, 

Raising participation, conversation and open and frank discussion about
the topics that perhaps should and certainly could be of importance to
this community, is of a major concern to al lot of people here as has
been shown over the past period and on the GA maillist.

Several ideas have floated before and some came from me, some from
others,.

To start of with, the maillist, as we today know and use it, has its
flaws, certainly, the noise ratio at times can be almost unbearable and
personal attacks are hard to prevent without going into censorship.
Ideally people would "act adult" and censor themselves, but alas, some
subjects are close to the heart and one can become overly passionate
about them, sometimes saying or writing things that one would not have
said after some thought and slightly less passion.
Then ofcourse there is the occasional "agence provocateur" who
skillfully creates reactions like that and or draws the attention away
from the heart of the topic and willingly disrupts serious discussions.

But at all time you have to remain the openess that (f.i.) ICANN misses,
which means that you most likely will have to put up with clutter, noise
and provocation.

Democracy is worth fighting for, and certainly worth wading through
clutter and noise, which can be resolved with a delete button.

The forums in itself as idea are an excellent addition to the maillist,
however experience shows that it is far less effective and
running/maintaining them can be far more simple then some portrait it to
be, there are many easily accesible forae available online, mostly open
source and they give the users the right and possibility to start their
own discussion, which could perhaps (seeing as those would be topic
specific) a very decent alternative.
The greatest danger with a forum however is the webmaster/forum-admin
who can remove postings, block posting, change postings and everything
else you can imagine, which does not exactly gives a great feeling
unless the "admin" is of unquestionable reputation.

A panel should have its own maillist, which imo would need a direct
archiving open to see for all, after all it is the right of every member
to see how the people they voted for are behaving in their chosen
capacity.

For user participation one could add a "chat" to the website, which at
the same time would be accesible over any ircd client, as well as direct
participation on the website (so called java-chat) outside of time-zones
being a pain to overcome their, some interesting discussion can be held
in a so called chat room, we could even consider (if the setup would
prove succesfull) to allow users to open topic specific rooms.

Furthermore if we could use a "php-nuke" like website setup ( there are
better solutions then phpnuke available under opensource ) which would
give the option of running polls on the frontpage with instant result.
They would of course be "straw-polls" and since one can influence them
by multiple voting (unless we would enter the scary and unwanted world
of "residing and lasting" cookies) but they could be indicative of
peoples sentiments.

Daily updates of the website, newsletter, news colums and individual
columns on the webiste, with total and real free speech might also
improve communications, but in the end it will all boil down to the user
perception of the result of the work done.
If we see chance to actually put across an opinion carried by a majority
and defended by those who care most for that topic, have the knowledge
and are able to articulate that knowledge like some did on the WLS topic
in the GA, more people would be willing to  invest time in this group
and certainly a lot more would join.

If you have any more specific questions or prefer a deeper insight in my
above opinion, please feel free to ask.

Regards

Abel 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jan Siren [mailto:sirenj@earthlink.net] 
> Sent: 10 May 2003 17:07
> To: atlarge-discuss@lists.fitug.de
> Subject: Re: [atlarge-discuss] Real world nominations
> 
> 
> Abel Wisman wrote:
> > 
> > Dear all,
> > 
> > After carefull consideration, and looking somewhat into the near 
> > future as in terms of time management, I have decided to honour the 
> > nomination I was honoured to receive.
> > 
> > I will send a short cv at the start of the weekend and make that 
> > available online at the same time.
> > 
> > Thanks
> > 
> > Abel
> 
> Abel, I have noted the thoughtful posts you have placed on 
> this mailing list 
> from time to time, and consider you a viable candidate.  I 
> pose to you the 
> same question that I have posed to Hugh Blair (I am still 
> awaiting his 
> response):
> 
> How would you, as a Panelist, act to raise the level of 
> discourse among 
> the icannatlarge membership, and between the membership and 
> its elected 
> officers?
> 
> This unmoderated mailing list has served as our principal channel of 
> communication, but is flawed, in both obvious and subtle 
> ways.  I personally 
> believe (without estimating the numbers) that some persons 
> who could have 
> been valuable contributors have been driven away, or lost patience.
> 
> Joop's forum has its attractions, but is more demanding on 
> the user, is less 
> universally accessible, and for whatever reason has never 
> gained a "critical 
> mass" of regular correspondents.
> 
> I hope that other nominees who have agreed to stand for the 
> Panel election 
> also address this question.  My vote will importantly depend on the 
> candidates' responses.
> 
> 
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