[clug] The harsh realities of CLUG

[Jim Croft]

> their experience of
> the CLUG was of an intimidating bunch of know-it-alls with a whole motherboard
> of chips on their shoulder and an intolerance to anyone who broke the
> unwritten and arbitrary rules of the list.

Did something prompt this?  The list seems to have been relatively
benign of late. The characterization seems a bit harsh.  As a newbie
know-nothing, I have alwaysfound the list, or more specifically, its
contributing participants, to be helpful and generous with their time
and knowledge.  True, some of the discussions get a little spirited,
but that is what 'free, as in speech' is about... :)

The most intimidating about CLUG is the supersaturated pizza orgy at
meetings - truly frightening... life threatening...

> But I think we can probably open our horizons a little to add some other forms
> of modern internet social interaction.

Probably a good idea. Facebook and Twitter are not difficult to set up
and use.  The issues of implementation are social not technical -
people have to want or need to use it.  I suspect there is a cultural
change thing involved.

> The other problem I see is that at the moment the CLUG website is a very fixed
> format based on very fixed ideas of how what should be there.

Ah... the problem with the CLUG website is...well... the website
thing.  So over websites.  So 1990s.  Can't comment, can't annotate,
can't contribute.  This is no big deal for everone because I have
nothing to say.  But it is a big deal for me because people who might
have something to say can't say it there.  There website looks fairly
simple and there appears nothing on it that could not be represented
almost identically in a wiki, say Foswiki, Mediawiki, etc.  This could
rapidly expand the contributor base and make it a more responsive and
a deeper resource base for new Linux users...

jim

-- 
_________________
Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft
'A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point
of doubtful sanity.'
 - Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)