[wplug-plan] [Fwd: [wplug] RE:one more question for today]

[Bill Moran]

Brian Sammon <wplug-plan-list at brisammon.fastmail.fm> wrote:

> > I sent this guy a stern note and removed his membership to the 
> > wplug at wplug.org list.  We have to take a hard line stance against people 
> > talking about hacking on the mailing lists.
> 
> This is news to me. 
> 
> Don't we need to announce a policy before we start enforcing it?

As a member of the bylaws rewrite comittee, I want to make some comments
on this.  I'm CCing the bylaws mailing list, as this is relevent.

First off, I want to commend Jonathan on his handling of this issue.
To my knowledge, there is no official posted policy on what is
unacceptable posting to the list.  Thus, Jonathan had to make a
judgement call.  When he did this, he kept the best interests of
the group at large in mind, and acted without undue delay or any
other sort of fscking around.  When the OP sent an apology, he
responded politely and reasonably by reversing his decision.  I
don't think anything that he did was unreasonable.  The fact that
I disagree with his judgement call is unimportant, because (by
defination) you don't call for a vote or have time to mull things
over when you make a judgement call.  The more important thing
(to me) is that he had his head in the right place when he made
the call: protect the group.

Now.  My understanding of the current bylaws is that the only
way to reverse a judgement call like this is unamamous consent
of the board.  Also, the only people who can currently set list
policy is the current board (by unanamous consent).

What follows is probably mostly of interested to Bylaws comittee
members:

With regard to the new bylaws, we've touched on this issue a number
of times: how do we handle delegations of things (like mailing lists)
to non-board (i.e. non-elected) people?  Where does a delegated
person's authority extend to, and where does it end?

I think we should take Jonathan's actions as an example:
1) Delegated individuals _must_ have the right to make judgement calls
   to protect the group and ensure it's safety.
2) Judgement calls should not be constantly brought in to question, but
   it must be possible to correct someone who is Doing It Wrong.  Thus,
   I suggest that it requires a 2/3 vote of either the board, or the
   entire membership to reverse any decision made by a delegated individual.
   The result will be that judgement calls are not called in to question
   unless a large number of people see a problem.
3) Once the new board is elected, it will be important for them to establish
   policy on subjects such as this.  I think we should explicitly state
   that it is the board's _duty_ to devise policy to ensure the successful
   continuance of WPLUG.  We should also state that such policy must be
   approved by the membership!

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com