Re: [ga] Message from the Chair

[Ellen Rony <erony@marin.k12.ca.us>]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

>>The purpose of the GA list is to allow discussion between GA members on GA
>>matters. It is not itself a decision-making body.
>>
>>Note: Neither list claims to be an authoritiative listing of the members
>>of the GA, but when a mail is sent to the announce list, it is considered
>>to be published to the GA membership.
>
>There were two assumptions that I saw as invalid:
>
>- That the GA is identical with the membership of the ga discussion list
>- That the GA is not a decision making body
>
>There needs to be a decision sooner or later about how the GA makes
>decisions, but this decision has, IMHO, not been made, and the list rules
>should not prejudge that - either one way or the other.
>


Mr. Alvestrand:

I read the "it" in your assertion differently, so I thank you for the
clarification.  That notwithstanding, the assertion of what constitutes
membership in the GA does not belong in a discussion of mailing list rules
because it is an overarching principle .

I continue to maintain my stand that the nomenclature chosen, ga@dnso.org
for the filtered version of the list and ga-unfiltered @dnso for the
everything submitted version contains a bias.  The more descriptive,
unbiased approach would be to name the two lists ga-filtered@dnso.org and
ga-unfiltered@dnso.org, so that people could decide for themselves which
version they felt was the one true version on which they choose to
participate.  Otherwise,  believe people will subscribe to the shorter name
on the assumption that it is the general all-inclusive version.

And that raises the question of how we respond to messages if I am reading
the unfiltered version and you are not.  All headers would have to read
ga-unfiltered@dnso.org, would they not?  Now there's a  reason to give the
shorter name to the all-inclusive version.


BTW, if you assert that mail sent to the announce list is considered to be
published to the GA membership, then ga-announce@dnso.org = the GA
membership, does it not?

The problem with having a number of lists comprising the GA membership is
that there is no one place to gather.  You will never be able to have an
all-inclusive discussion for the GA, take any votes, or make any decisions
if you don't bring all the voices together on one list.  Right now there
are, arguably, at least eight lists that could collectively comprise the GA
(consitituencies, GA, GA-announce).  How can you gain any consensus on
issues from that distribution?  It's like the  horse that was designed by a
committee:  we know it as a camel.

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