Subject:
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Re: Request For Comments: Proposal to set up a club for UK Fans of LEGO
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.uk
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Date:
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Wed, 12 Jun 2002 15:39:52 GMT
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Viewed:
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1025 times
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Thanks for this, Kerry. It raises a lot of good points. Apologies for you
getting your own personal copy of this.
More comments below.
In lugnet.loc.uk, Kerry Raymond writes:
<snip>
>
> A lot of these things can be done without formalising anything. A lot of these
> things can be done on LUGnet already.
*some* of these things can be done.
At the moment the UK online community *is* based at loc.uk. In itself this
is a fragile situation, as lugnet is a privately run affair and has no
guaranteed existence. At the moment, any communicating or negotiating with
organisations must be done by individuals, with no guarantee that they will
be backed up by anyone else. Some of us have already hit this problem.
And what about all those people who haven't found lugnet, or who found it
and didn't like it? Wouldn't it be good if we had another avenue of contact?
It might not even use the internet.
>
> Formalising things has a price (in a number of ways). Subscriptions (as noted
> above), plus a burden of administrivia to keep track of membership,
> subscriptions paid, minutes of meetings, motions proposed and seconded, votes
> taken, blah blah blah.
Strangely, some people *like* this sort of thing :-) Not many, admittedly.
The need therefore is to keep it simple.
There doesn't have to be a lot of admin, though. And a well thought out
constitution should be able to prevent most of the nightmares described
here.
>
> Basically it provides an opportunity to argue among yourselves over largely
> irrelevant things, and generally create ill-feeling and unpleasantness. Before
> long, you will inevitably be called upon to decide on such weighty topics as:
<snipped list>
> You might think I am joking, but my experience of many "community groups" is
> that they rapidly lose sight of their original common interest and get bogged
> down over the administration of the group. Most of the issues above are all
> real issues (or UK/Lego re-interpretations) that I have seen thrashed out at
> great length at committee meetings (yes, people really do argue about the
> fairness of charging the same price for black tea vs white coffee!). The end
> result of this is usually a split of the group over the most ridiculous of
> issues into two (or more) separate groups, who will then argue over who has
> rights to the original group name and the original bank account. Before you
> know it, there will be the Highlands Black Tea Lego Group, the Midlands
> Bionicle-Hating Lego Group, the Inside-the-M25 Lego Alliance (No ZNAP Please),
> the British Public Schools Lego Builders Group (No Oiks Please), and Lego
> Lovers For A United Ireland (Green Bricks Only).
This does seem like a lot of very negative experiences, which I thank you
for sharing. As I said above, there is a lot that can be prevented by having
a well written constitution, and these experiences will inform our process
if we get that far.
>
> I would urge you to think seriously about why you want to formalise things,
> and avoid it, if at all possible.
We have done a lot of thinking, and can see no reasonable alternative. But
that's what this thread is for. As Lawrence Wilkes has pointed out, this
appears to be an annual question in loc.uk, having been asked for at least
the last couple of years. The answer has always been 'no', probably because
most people fear the litany of disasters you described above.
Some of us now feel that if our community is to grow, we do need to be more
organised. The people doing the talking to other organisations need to know
that they've got some backing from everyone else. This isn't the case at the
moment.
Even if this proposal doesn't lead to the formation of a club, I hope we can
learn something more about the nature of the UK community, and try to move
forward on that basis.
Thanks
Tony Priestman
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