From: gwlester@cpu.com (Gerald W. Lester)
Newsgroups: comp.org.decus
Subject: Re: EXECUTION of DECUS Standards
Date: 21 Dec 92 15:46:39 GMT
Reply-To: gwlester@cpu.com
Distribution: usa,local
Organization: Computerized Processes Unlimited, Metairie, LA, (504)-889-2784

In article <16DEC199215040710@carat.arizona.edu>, jms@carat.arizona.edu (A virtually vegetal non-entity) writes:

And I which to point out errors in Synder's reply of 16-Dec:

>I just wanted to point out some errors in Lester's note of 15-Dec:
>
>In article <1992Dec15.192557.13119@cpu.com>, gwlester@cpu.com writes...
>>In article <1992Dec14.151045@mccall.com>, tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot) writes:
>>>
>>>It should perhaps be made clear to the membership that they only get to vote on
>>>the membership of the BOD. Other representative units of DECUS are elected
>>>solely by the leadership. 
>> 
>>	It might avoid some confusion, but the statement is **WRONG**!!
>>At least the L&T and 3P SIG chairs are elected by the general membership at
>>their respective Open SIG Steering Committe meetings members (not restricted
>>to leaders) present.  
>
>Nonsense.  An election has to have some basic elements to make it other
>than a fraud.  This would include pre-notification (i.e., "there is going
>to be an election") and open voting at least.  Having an election which
>no one knows about and only people who happen to be at a particularly
>uninteresting meeting at a national Symposium is NOT an election.  It's a
>farce.  Now, if there were pre-announcement, nominations, campaigning,
>and an ability to absentee-ballot, that would be different.  
>
>Gerald: face it.  Terry is right, and you're wrong.  No amount of
>nit-picking (as I'm sure will continue in this conference) is going to
>change the facts: the leadership is a small number of people in a society
>which cannot even decide what it means to be a member.  Decisions are made
>by the leadership, not by the as-yet-undefined members of the society.  
>
>You can make a value judgement about whether that's good or bad, but the
>point is it's true.  And asking Terry to become an active leader just to
>express his opinion is complete nonsense.
>

Joel:
	Should we then also limit all issues to what can be expresed in a 3.5
second sound bite and get the media to attempt to dig up bits of the canidates
personal background (and give their cat a nevous breakdown) to make it a *REAL*
election.  I'm sorry Joel, I must consider these elections valid and not a
farce.

>
>>	You are very much a minority.  The news letter subscription was about
>>2% of the membership and a good number of subscribers had/have either or both
>>DECUServe or DCS accounts.
>
>2%?  Where did you get that number?  If we figure that the membership is
>composed of the entire DECUSCOPE mailing list, put it back at 15%.  Which
>doesn't count pass-alongs.  But does include about 20,000 people who are on
>the mailing list but have no current (or probably even past) interest in
>DECUS.   
>

Joel, the numbers were (last time I looked) that we had about 60,000 members,
with about 2,000 *PAID* subscriptions to the newsletters.  That comes out to
3.33...%,  Now to get your figure of 15%, we either had about 7,500
subscriptions or we only have 13,000 members.  Can you please suply the RAW
numbers you used to get the 15% figure (also break paid and free subscription
out).