[clug] Scope of list

[Brad Hards]

Hello Daniel,

On Wednesday 16 September 2009 13:59:18 Daniel Pittman wrote:
> Gah.  The last couple of weeks have messed with my head; I had a twitch of
> "...but I didn't /mean/ to attack you" when you said ‘defend’ rather than
> ‘discuss’ or whatever.  *sigh*
I don't think it was an intentional insult, but it probably does reflect at 
least some of the members of this list. Your approach comes across to me as 
somewhat superior, and that is adversely affecting my perception of your 
intentions. That is reflected in my comments below.

> ...Jacinta, I have not done much by way of presentations around the place,
> etc.  On the other hand, a quick check of some stats tells me that I have
> been subscribed for around 1 year, 16 weeks, 1 day, 9 hours, 30 minutes,
> and 58 seconds, give or take propagation time.[1]
Of which this (and the other statistics I've omitted), are an example.

> So, lots of discussion, and apparently I am either very verbose, or a
> reasonably significant contributor to the discussions over that time.
More contributions will come across to some people as valuable insight, and to 
others as overbearing. Posts from people we know (e.g. from face-to-face 
discussion) are probably easier to interpret.

> *nod*  On the other hand, we just had an annoyingly divisive discussion on
> the list, which never helps.  This could be a brief reaction to that, or it
> could be that it would have happened anyhow, or...
Of which you (and others, both from Canberra and from other locations) made a 
lot of posts that included divisive content that probably wasn't well 
received, partly because some members lacked familiarity with what you are 
trying to say. If those same words had come from Chris Smart (for example), we 
still might not like them, but we'd know where he's coming from.

> *nod*  For what it is worth, like David Schoen, my reason for being here is
> that it is a good list, with interesting discussion, and without some of
> the social issues that make other lists less interesting to me.
I think it was a good list. Unfortunately there has been a radical loss of 
trust in some of the people posting. I'm not sure how to fix that. 

Perhaps we just need a clug list, to coordinate the meetings and then just 
send people to non-locale specific lists. Perhaps we need an invite-only list 
for random technical discussions. [I recognise that those are inherently 
contrary to the concept of greater diversity which was the catalyst for the 
problem, but this is almost down to a "anything is better than nothing" type 
situation].

Brad

FWIW, I wouldn't normally consider sending anything to another LUG list. I see 
a LUG as a place for people to work together to solve problems. Its the 
together part that builds trust and confidence. A LUG isn't just a place to get 
answers from an oracle.