Re: [ga] Message from the Chair

[Patrick Greenwell <patrick@stealthgeeks.net>]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2000, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> At 23:35 24.01.00 -0800, Ellen Rony wrote:
> >Roberto,
> >
> >You say you want to take action
> >" to give a voice to those who are not part of any Constituency, and that
> >therefore do not have any other forum for presenting their views"
> >
> >But the rules you support include a pesky little rider saying that the GA
> >is not a decision-making body.
> 
> Ellen,
> I told you this once before:
> The rules I suggested say that the GA *mailing list* is not a 
> decision-making body. 

I believe Ellen is saying that she disagrees with you Harald, not that she
doesn't understand that particular aspect of your proposal. 

At this point it is very unclear to me if the GA is defined by the mailing
list membership or not. On the one hand, Ellen has provided excerpts from
an NC meeting where it was voted that it was. However someone else
(yourself or Roberto I believe) stated that this was later changed,
however I haven't seen anything concrete to that effect. 

Could *SOMEONE* who believes the latter to be true please either point
me to or provide corroborating documents to this effect?

In any case, previous emails from yourself and or Roberto indicated that
the expression of an opinion on the proposal was just that, an *OPINION*
poll, and NOT a vote. I do not question your or Roberto's 
intentions, in fact, I thanked you for giving us a document to
focus on, however it appears very disingenous to turn what was
obstensibly a proposal and an "opinion poll":

    a) On a document which contained several hotly
       contested provisions 

    b) Where you were the sole entity deciding what, if
       any revisions were made

    c) Where the numbers for and against were so close 

    d) Where there have been specific claims and *admissions* of "voter
       fraud"

into carte blanche for the proposal in its entirety including immediate
implementation. 

I'd say that I am one of the strongest proponents for removing the ability
of the disruptive to destroy whatever productive discussions may occur and
scaring off the "reasonable people" that the GA needs so desperately in
order to be "legitimate," however assuming dictitorial powers based on what 
was supposed to be an "opinion poll" is not the way to do it. 

Personally, I didn't formally express an opinion by using the voting
mechanism because based on earlier statements to that effect, I believed
this only to be an opinion poll and not a "vote." There were also
discussions regarding changes/amendments, that made a simple "yes" or "no" 
completely inappropriate. 

I'd like to take people at their word, however events such as this make it
very difficult. I'm very curious as to what would have been the course of
action if the "opinion poll" had not apparently marginally favored the
proposal.

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                               Patrick Greenwell                          
                       Earth is a single point of failure.
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