Guest Editorial

Z1C Election
Arguing with Success

Arguing with Success
The Z1C Election
Douglas Myers, 1:270/720
doug@mdtnbbs.com

Gee... just when I thought the Z1C election was going well, I'm hearing complaints that it's degenerated into pointless bickering. This bickering, I'm told, is the reason there shouldn't be public elections on Fidonet. Just to be contrary, I'd like to argue that the bickering is exactly why we should hold these elections as a regular feature.

The Benefits of Bickering:

1. So long as there's bickering going on, it makes lie of the argument that the sysops of Fidonet don't care.
2. Fidonet brings bickering to a high art. The early rounds of bickering in the Z1_ELECTION echo were started by Andrea Santos, who is probably the most qualified bickerer Fidonet has to offer. Andrea's posting is normally responsible and literate, giving her a high degree of personal credibility which is difficult to dismiss. Moreover, she's active as a Network Coordinator of the South Florida Net, so it's difficult to dismiss her as a non-contributor. And she's been persistent and focused in her questions: who decided that the voting for Z1C will be determined by a secret RC only vote. She can't be ignored, and she's been getting answers.
3. Bickering has brought the RCs out of the woodwork and into the public echoes. A few short weeks ago, I was complaining here that the Z1C election didn't seem to be happening. Though I think that Andrea's questions were more effective than my own editorial in bringing about action... the RC's did act. Now there's a timetable, a set of procedures, and some of the RCs are even posting publicly about the election.
4. The RCs are bickering back. I list this as an advantage because of the insight it brings for those of us who would know the folks charged with running Fidonet.
5. The bickering has actually brought about personal commitments on the part of the RCs to conduct an open and honest election beyond the bare requirements of either P4 or the stated election rules.
6. The bickering has caused us all to rethink some of our cherished notions: should the ZC answer all the mail addressed to him, how should the RCs represent their regions, what is the quality of a person who would be ZC, how important is the ZC position to the NC's and end nodes...

The Z1C election is going well. No one is getting exactly what they want, folks are noisy and it promises to get even noisier. Ross Cassell is saturating us with the same old message in multiple conferences. All is well :)