Subject:
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Reconsidering .admin.council group
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Tue, 25 Apr 2000 00:11:00 GMT
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[Crossposted to .admin.general & .admin.council; followups to .admin.general]
On 20 Feb 2000, in lugnet.announce, Todd Lehman wrote:
> A new group lugnet.admin.council has just been created for the consideration,
> deliberation, and reconciliation of delicate administrative issues. Examples
> include:
>
> - Terms-of-Use transgressions (for example, gratuitous use of profanity,
> repeated posting of auction announcements in non-auction groups, posting
> information which may violate the rights of others, etc.)
>
> - Recommendations on what to do with "community disruption" issues (for
> example, someone is generally making themselves a nuisance but is not
> necessarily breaking any hard-line written rules)
>
> - General clarification of community rules and guidelines, with concrete
> examples (where possible) of acceptable/unacceptable conduct/content/etc.
>
> For now (and maybe for always) this is a wide-open group where any issue can
> be heard and discussed publicly. (Issues or opinions of a more private
> nature can and should be kept private in the first place or to email only.)
>
> The overall definition of this group is decidedly fuzzy at this point, so
> that it may evolve over time to best suit the community. A couple people
> have stepped forward, for example, to volunteer to serve on some sort of
> administrative panel/committee/council, so this interest is a first step.
>
> Generally, the basic idea behind the group is (for anyone) to be able to
> refer delicate administrative issues to an advisory council for resolution,
> and for the council to be able to review and evaluate the effectiveness of
> administrative actions and policies.
> [...]
In retrospect, creating the lugnet.admin.council newsgroup was a mistake.
The intention was to have a place where delicate or time-consuming issues
could be resolved by some consensus-based decision process, off in a corner,
without cluttering up the regular groups.
The presence of the group, however, continues to send negative impressions
and sadness even today two months after the initial commotion which led to
its creation has long subsided. I don't need to dig up a huge list of URLs
of messages expressing discontent, but I'll point to a couple of the more
recent ones...
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=6130
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=6165
...and I'll include at the bottom of this post a copy of something received
via email in March.
Most of the social issues that arise here are either small things that can be
dealt with quietly and privately or are the result of confusion over the Terms
of Use Agreement. In the past year, we've only had one truly difficult social
issue which didn't fit either those shoes. A council -might- be the right way
to approach something of that nature, but certinaly not if it smacks of
elitism to everyone else, and certainly not if the majority of issues are
really due to simple misunderstandings.
The newer lugnet.admin.terms newsgroup (created 13 Mar 2000 and intended to
address issues regarding the LUGNET Terms of Use Agreement) is a much more
direct way of handling 99% of the issues that might arise here. Unless
there's something I'm missing, nuking the .admin.council newsgroup and
apologizing for its creation is the honorable thing to do.
--Todd
_____________________________________________________________________________
[The following was dated Wed 8 Mar 2000, one or two days after a large
religious debate which was highly visible from the homepage. The message
is published here in its entirety (sans name) with its author's permission.
Others have since expressed similar concerns.]
> Hello Todd,
>
> I thought rather than post anything to LUGNET, I would simply write you and
> tell you directly. I doubt that anyone would notice or care about what I
> have to say, but none-the-less I do not wish to create a scene or cause any
> bad feelings.
>
> I believe I have had enough LUGNET for now. I won't be posting to it or
> participating in it anymore. I find that all of the fun has gone out of
> it. It seems to have developed into more a forum for large egos to vent
> and parade than the forum for discussions about LEGO that it was a year or
> more ago. And no, I don't put you in the category of large egos. :) As
> you may already know from some of my posts, it was your guidance and rule
> of law that attracted me away from RTL to LUGNET. But, as previously
> mentioned, the entire idea of the council has made LUGNET very unattractive
> to me. It's clear from the current debate about the Technic auction posting
> that it's lead to more bickering than ever. I realize that these may just
> be growing pains that LUGNET is going through, but it looks like right now
> there's a lot more pain than growing. I just don't have the patience or
> the time to wade through all the non-LEGO related posts.
>
> It saddens me, that since the creation of the build.architecture group,
> there have been a mere 49 postings to it. While in not all that much more
> time there have been more than 230 postings to admin.council. What are
> people more interested in? It doesn't always seem like it's LEGO. Due to
> circumstances, I have found myself using the web interface more and more to
> read LUGNET. But with all the .admin and .auction postings, I rarely spot
> anything to do with *building* things from LEGO. If you've seen my website,
> you know where my interests are. It just seems to have gotten so hard to
> find anything about that on LUGNET.
>
> There were at least two or three recent postings that absolutely assured me
> that this is the right decision to make. And countless others that simply
> infuriated me. It seemed the more I tried to keep up with the politics and
> the turmoil, the less I understood them, and the less I was thinking about
> LEGO. To be frank, there are individuals who have already made numerous
> postings to the .council group who I simply do not wish to hear judgements
> from. There is a certain amount of hypocrisy that seems to be excused due
> to longevity with the group.
>
> One post in particular, a couple of weeks ago, went entirely unnoticed and
> unchallenged. And yet, while posted to the .general group it had nothing
> whatsoever to do with LEGO, but rather with one person benefiting financially
> from LEGO enthusiasts. It's as though many people are finding LUGNET so
> comfortable that they are willing to ride along on their reputations as
> community leaders. This may work for some, but doesn't sit well with me.
> In the good ol wild west that is Usenet, you are only as good as your last
> posting. Always fair, though perhaps too brutally so for some people.
>
> I have talked to my wife about this, and have apologized to her for being
> wrong about LUGNET. At the time, she questioned why I was sending money to
> be part of this group. I told her because I felt it was the right thing to
> do and that I wanted very much to participate. She agreed with me and told
> me to go ahead with it, though in retrospect I wouldn't do it again. As a
> result I won't be sending any further monies as membership fees or
> otherwise. If this invalidates my membership or results in suspension of
> privileges, I understand. You have a business to run and need to make
> whatever decisions are best for your business. But I cannot, in good
> conscience, continue to support something I no longer believe in.
>
> Sorry to sound so glum about this. Actually I'm quite calm about it today.
> Had I written this letter around the time the .council group was created,
> it would have had a far darker tone. :) I've thought about this, and
> believe it's the right decision. As well, since LUGNET is obviously such
> a large part of your life, I felt it only fair to provide you with some
> honest, open criticism. It's turning (like it or not) into a very
> commercial enterprise. Perhaps this very model explains some of the odd
> goings-on at LEGO. Once a proud family company under the helm of a trusted
> leader. Now? A pale multi-national that can't seem to get it's head out
> of it's proverbial parts bucket.
>
> Thank you for the many hours of great reading and information that I've
> taken from LUGNET. I wish you all the best with it and any other endeavors
> you may undertake.
>
> Best regards,
> [Name withheld]
[The above was dated Wed 8 Mar 2000. Published here with permission.]
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Reconsidering .admin.council group
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| Removing lugnet.admin.council does sound like a good idea, but it might be worthwhile to keep the messages and a pointer to them somewhere. There is some valuable discussion there, though expressing editorial control over what is kept accessible and (...) (25 years ago, 25-Apr-00, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: Reconsidering .admin.council group
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| (...) Is it safe to assume that the "council" itself is also no more? For the record, I think the idea of have a group of people to make decisions on all sorts of subjective & objective issues is a good thing, especially if that group of people (...) (25 years ago, 28-Apr-00, to lugnet.admin.general)
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