Newsgroups: comp.org.decus
Subject: Re: EXECUTION of DECUS Standards
From: tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot)
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 08:23:09 CST
Reply-To: tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot)
Distribution: usa
Organization: The McCall Pattern Co., Manhattan, KS, USA
Nntp-Posting-User: tp


In article <16DEC199216495941@rover.uchicago.edu>, frank@rover.uchicago.edu
(Frank - Hardware Hacker - Borger) writes:
>In article <1992Dec15.174907@mccall.com>, tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot) writes...
>>Do you know the percentage, by any chance? That's something I've been curious
>>about from time to time. 
>
>	A reasonable SWAG is that, at the end of their life, the newsletter
>	sub base was about equal to DECUServe subscriptions, also equal to
>	DCS accounts, (total, not active.)

So I guess they get the axe next, eh? :-)

>>Another idea would be to dump DCS and put the
>>leadership onto DECUServe with the rabble. That would do some good, in
>>>addition to maybe saving some money, though I don't know enough about that
>>>setup to know if there would be any real savings to that.
>	Would you really like to see 10 or 20 mail messages a day from the
>	small SIGS, more from the big ones, all posted to DECUServe? DCS
>	provides targeted messaging, via mail lists. RUN DECUS using DECUServe
>	urk, choke, ghasp.

Yup. Put all those mailing lists into public conferences and/or newsgroups.
(Mailing lists are a lousy vehicle for conferencing anyway.) Nobody'd have to
read them if they didn't want to but anyone who had an interest in what's going
on could comment and be heard by the leaders and decision makers. Actually, I'd
like to see it out on the net where I could access it, too. In a users's
society, the users shouldn't be barred from any discussion. Conferences (like
newsgroups) are non-intrusive. If you don't want to see them, you don't have to,
and you can join and leave them as your interests and current events dictate,
without having to deal with an administrator to do it for you. And, the traffic
comes pre-sorted by topic (conference/newsgroup) rather than just dumped into a
mailbox in chronological order. 

People keep using analogies to forms of government. If DECUS were a governmental
unit in this state, most everything it does would be illegal. We have the Kansas
Open Meetings law that says you can only have closed meetings for reasons of
attorney/client privilege or the like, and in a closed meeting, you can only
disseminate information, not discuss action, and certainly not make decisions.
Those functions must be done in an open meeting. Also, you have to tell the
public why the meeting is closed and what will be discussed. It may make life a
little bit less serene for the governing body, since people are watching, but it
has sure made our government aware of our opinions. Last time the city commision
here tried to quietly make a very controversial decision, they had to schedule
extra public meetings to listen to people (i.e. they didn't get away with it).

And as in that example, making the discussions public doesn't mean that you
can't do anything until flame wars (if any) die off. The decision makers will
still make the decisions (in the preceeding example, they still made the
unpopular decision; many of them are dogmeat in the next election). By having
the whole process open, the decision makers will know what the members think,
and the members will gain informed opinions about the decision makers. Your
point about finding someone to run things is well taken, but if membership gets
interested in what's going on, you'll have a larger applicant pool, and if
people actually see inside the decision making process, they're more likely to
have an opinion on a leader, and if people don't like a leader, they're apt to
recruit someone to run against him. None of this happens if decisions are made
behind closed doors.

I asked publicly (here) after the Mitnik affair (when he was thrown out of a
symposium) for a list of BOD members who had agreed to do this, and those who
had opposed this. There was a BOD election going on, and I fully intended to
vote against those whose actions I disagreed with (in order not to rehash the
incident, I won't say which side of that issue I'm on). Needless to say, no list
was forthcoming. The only one I knew about was Brindley, and I voted accordingly
on him, but had no information to choose other BOD members except the candidate
writeups that came with the ballot. Members have no opportunity to know which
people vote the way they like, and which don't, so we can't make an informed
choice on the BOD, the only choice we are allowed to make. LDEC picks the
candidates, and that process isn't open either.

Again, I'm not picking on individuals, just the system. DECUS does itself and
its members a disservice simply by the way it does business. DECUServe and the
net are great tools for communication, but neither is used to facilitate the
running of DECUS, (even though one is a service provided by DECUS!). Granted,
these tools haven't always existed, but they do now and should be used
(especially now that the vehicle for written communication has vanished).
--
Terry Poot <tp@mccall.com>                   The McCall Pattern Company
(uucp: ...!rutgers!depot!mccall!tp)          615 McCall Road
(800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041           Manhattan, KS 66502, USA