[H-GEN] Network access at meetings

[Clinton Roy]

On 7/21/05, Ben Fowler <bjf at bjf.id.au> wrote:
 
> That's great to hear, but my open question to the club, and especially the
> Executive is: there never was a full explanation of the original problem
> posted either to the mailing lists or website properly outlining the problem,
> and furthermore, executive members wouldn't be drawn on why it happened,
> and what exactly happened.  Can we have a full explanation please?

Like the rest of us, you're waiting for the secretary to post detailed
minutes of the executive meeting where we discussed the issue. One of
the executive who went to the final meeting with ITS will also have to
do some a quick summary, as the secretary wasn't present there.

> >From where I'm standing, I think this ongoing lack of frankness from the
> Executive is troubling.  I'm not saying it's deliberate, homembers.wever, I _am_
> saying that secrecy-by-default is not a useful or helpful policy, and in
> the long run, can't be helpful for fostering trsut between the executive
> and club at large.  
There is no secrecy-by-default policy, I just don't feel that it's
proper to take over the role of the secretary of communicating the
problem to the club. I have, however, explained the situation on irc,
in personal email, in person at the meetings many, many times. We even
had an open to all members pre-meeting before our meeting with its to
get input from the members.

As to it being a long term problem..there's just not that much that
goes on in the executive that requires exposure. Prior to the network
access issue, there's hasn't been a non-administravia post to the exec
mailing list for a long time.

> I recall a certain member of the Executive boasting
> about the number of times the minutes of Executive meetings had been
> redacted, and at the time, it struck me as silly and self-indulgent.

That's a fairly serious claim against the executive as a whole, and
not my experience at all. You should definitely take that up with the
executive member in question, and if not satisfied other members of
the executive. Of course, the only way to ensure this doesn't happen
is to have more members coming to executive meetings.
 
I'll decline to answer the rest of your email given I think you're
totally off base with your initial assumptions.

cheers,
-- 
Clinton Roy
www.humbug.org.au  - Brisbane Unix Group
azure.humbug.org.au/~croy/blog - Blog