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First, my apologies for starting something which has led to a fair amount of
confusion, dismay, and in some cases hurt feelings in the community. One
person has even voluntarily left the community because of it.
This calls for a brief "reset" and a clarification of goals and intentions
with regard to the lugnet.admin.council discussion group.
As you know, one of the conditions of use (of LUGNET) is that people keep
the regular discussion groups clear and clean of auction noise -- a condition
which has worked marvelously well over the past 18 months. From time to time,
however, someone inevitably forgets or posts a misplaced auction announcement
accidentally (or on purpose, maybe just for fun or just to see how far they
can push things).
In the past, I've noticed and commented on perhaps two dozen "transgressions"
of this type -- with success, for the most part.
Recently, there was one particularly "gray area" posting that I came down too
hard on someone for making. (It was his fourth such problematic post in the
past year, so I assumed he was doing it on purpose.) This led to a noisy
debate (thankfully, away from the "real" groups -- it was in .admin.general)
which eventually led to some interesting insights.
One of the more positive results of this debate was unanimous agreement that
the then-current Terms of Use document was insufficiently clear on the issue
of auctions. (It left a few gray-area issues up to personal interpretation,
rather than properly defining them in black and white.) The now-current
Terms of Use document clarified this a bit, but there is still room for
improvement.
It was clear during the debate that there were a variety of opinions on what
measures, if any, should be applied for someone who purposefully or
accidentally spams a non-auction group with auction noise. If it were all
up to me (and some people say it is, but I don't think that's a wise position
for me to take), someone would get the boot once it was clear that they were
doing so non-accidentally. But the crux is figuring that out.
It never hurts to give someone the benefit of the doubt, certainly at least
the first couple of times, but clearly we all can imagine cases in which
enough is enough.
The easy cases to deal with are the mild-problems and the really-bad problems.
It's the ones in the middle that are the tough ones -- they can take a lot of
time and energy to solve effectively.
As the community grows, it becomes increasinly challenging for me (time-wise
or otherwise) to judge accurately what to do in medium-problem cases. And
especially when things lie in a gray area, many brains can be better than one
brain, provided that they can reach a resolution.
This naturally leads to the idea of a "council."
The WWWebster Dictionary <www.m-w.com> defines the word council as follows:
Main Entry: 1 coun·cil
Pronunciation: 'kaun(t)-s&l
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English counceil, from Old French concile, from Latin
concilium, from com- + calare to call -- more at LOW Date: 12th century
1: an assembly or meeting for consultation, advice, or discussion
2: a group elected or appointed as an advisory or legislative body
3a: a usually administrative body
b: an executive body whose members are equal in power and authority
c: a governing body of delegates from local units of a federation
4: deliberation in a council
5a: a federation of or a central body uniting a group of organizations
b: a local chapter of an organization
c: CLUB, SOCIETY
It is definition #1 -- "an assembly or meeting for consultation, advice, or
discussion" -- which I am seeking to establish by means of the lugnet.admin
.council discussion group.
The group is part of the .admin subtree because it is a LUGNET-specific group
having little or nothing to do directly with LEGO discussions, and it contains
the word "council" to reflect the purpose.
The charter for the lugnet.admin.council discussion group (created three weeks
ago) is as follows:
lugnet.admin.council - Administrative advisory council: discussion,
deliberation, arbitration, recommendation, reconciliation, etc.
I'd like to emphasize the word "advisory" there. Thus, the purpose of the
group is to advise (make recommendations to) LUGNET administration on issues
relating to the community. The purpose of the group is not to form a clique
of "eliteists" or roaming newsgroup vigilantes.
The purpose of the group is therefore to *think about problems* -- tricky,
hard, complex problems which require many brains -- and to recommend solutions.
Hypothetically speaking, the group could have been created as a private and
exclusive mailing list, but that's not my style. I believe that openness is
more helpful to the community and more consistent with its founding vision.
(This isn't to suggest that 100.00% of all delicate issues ought to be dragged
through the air publicly, especially where someone could get hurt, but simply
to say that, when possible and reasonable, most stuff tends to benefit from
openness.
An undesirable side-effect of openness, however, is that intentions and
motivations aren't always clear, especially where negative feedback is
concerned. For example, if I burn someone for spamming a theme-discussion
group with auction announcements, the reasons for that are clear: upholding
the Terms of Use and sticking to the vision for the site, and I have nothing
to lose -- I'm just "doing my job." But if a "council member" burns someone
for the same, it's conceivable that their intentions could easily be
misunderstood. It all depends on how one goes about it. And that's why
this "council" thing needs to be developed slowly are carefully.
When the lugnet.admin.council newsgroup was created, I picked a few names
of folks within the community which had stood out over the months as people
(a) who had opinions I knew I trusted (not necessarily always agreed with,
but trusted nonetheless), AND (b) who appeared to keenly understand the values
and visions which make up the foundation of LUGNET, AND (c) had shown (by
active participation) a willingness to become involved in a variety of
community issues and debates. There are many more people I would have placed
on the list if it weren't for (c) but it was important to look for people who
have been noticably active and were willing to spend time.
Several people recommended that I publish a list of who these people were.
And I didn't hear anyone object to the suggestion, so here is the list I came
up with (3 weeks ago), in alphabetical order by last name:
Steve Bliss <blisses@worldnet.att.net>
James Brown <galliard@shades-of-night.com>
Tim Courtney <tim@zacktron.com>
Shiri Dori <shirid@hotmail.com>
Frank Filz <ffilz@mindspring.com>
Richard Franks <spontificus@yahoo.com>
Gary Istok <gistok@umich.edu>
Eric Joslin <eric@thirteen.net>
Larry Pieniazek <lpieniazek@novera.com>
Jacob Sparre Andersen <sparre@sys-323.risoe.dk>
Jeremy Sproat <jsproat@io.com>
Mike Stanley <cjc@newsguy.com>
(It just happened to work out to 12 people -- I didn't try to artificially
limit the list.) I believe all but three wrote back enthusiastically. (The
others either didn't write back or declined for reasons of time commitment.)
Here also is a copy of the invitation, for anyone curious or concerned...
_______________________________________________________________________________
Subject: lugnet.admin.council
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 20:18:31 -0500
From: Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com>
In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> [...] I suggest Todd send mail to the people he'd like to see on this
> council, [...]
OK, Hi!
If you're receiving this email, it means you're invited (no pressure -- it's
all up to you) to participate in the new group lugnet.admin.council as a
council member. Exactly what that will mean is still pretty fuzzy, but
we'll figure things out as we go. Most likely, it means volunteering time
to understand and help solve troublesome issues which pop up on LUGNET from
time to time. Many people already do this now, but the difference here is
that issues would be delegated to the council, the collective decisions of
which would carry a very large weight (as opposed to any one random person's
voice possibly lost in a chaotic flamewar, for instance).
I've addressed this message to myself and then BCC'd about a dozen people.
You're all seeing the same message, but you don't see the whole addressee
list.
The consensus on recent discussions today seems to be that it would be
helpful to have someone act as "chair." I'm not sure whether "a chair" is
actually necessary or whether it would simply be better to have volunteers
to "micro-chair" individual issues, but I'd certainly feel comfortable with
a single chair (who might choose to delegate sub-issues, etc.) if there were
a clear consensus on who it should be and if there is also someone who
clearly _desires_ such a role, and has a clear idea of the role (whatever it
may evolve to be), and also has the time.
--Todd
_______________________________________________________________________________
As noted in the e-mail, exactly what it will mean to be a "council member" is
something not yet fully defined. (Actually, it's hardly defined at all still
at this early stage.)
At this point, since lugnet.admin.council is an open newsgroup that anyone
can post to, I'd like to welcome any and all input, opinions, concerns,
suggestions, flames, or fears (especially fears) that you may have regarding
the council newsgroup or the idea itself of having a "council."
Again, the general idea is to be able to delegate or share certain time-
consuming and often delicate administrative duties, with the ultimate goal
being to solve rather than to create problems.
Some have suggested that it may be too early to create another admin layer
such as this -- that it is just asking for a bureaucratic mess. I believe
that is a very valid concern, and something we need to be careful to avoid,
but I also believe it is better to start early and plan carefully rather than
to put something like this into place when it's already too late. The size
of the community has grown approximately 5x since it started 18 months ago,
so try to imagine how things might be another 18 months from now, or another
36 months from now. At some point, we have to bite the bullet. I think the
time is now -- "nip it in the bud" -- but if you disagree, feel free to say
so publicly without fear of being frowned upon.
OK, back to your regularly scheduled program! (Admin stuff should only take
up 1% of the noise here. :)
--Todd
[followups to lugnet.admin.general]
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