Letters to the Editor

The debate continues..

By: Jerry Schwartz
To: Darrell Salter
Re: R14 - Let it Alone!

Hello, Darrell...

Dec 11, 2000 at 17:21, Darrell Salter wrote to Jerry Schwartz:

JS> That would certainly be my opinion. A regional policy can't bind the other RCs.

DS> Where was that opinion when Jim and Dallas thrust P4 on the RCs and changed this election?

P4 is not a regional policy. I agreed to it when I joined, and every other sysop who joined since its adoption was supposed to do the same thing. P4 is binding on everyone, regardless of Region.

I know you don't accept that, but you must surely understand that the rest of us do. Knowing that we believe P4 to be binding upon us, why do you insist that we should deny it?

JS> However, either they bind the RC of that Region, or they aren't binding at all (in my opinion).

DS> Regional policies only affect that Region. They have no place among the RCC. But that isn't what happened, is it?

DS> 2) If all RCs must agree to sysop-level voting, then ALL RCs must agree to any and all forms of voting, including RC-voting on a sysop-representational basis. Since R12C is NOT in agreement with the current election scheme, the current election must not proceed and must be halted immediately.

JS> Here we part company.

DS> I knew you'd want it both ways. :)

JS> because the situation is not symmetrical

DS> Why isn't it?

JS> and the assertion in your first sentence is neither self-evident nor supported.

DS> It's very self-evident. If it isn't supported, why?

JS> If one Region's policy can't bind another Region's RC, then clearly nine Regions' respective policies can't bind the tenth RC; I think you might agree with that, especially if you stop to think that those nine policies might contradict one another.

DS> Exactly. They have no place among the RCC and have no validity as regards this elecsham.

JS> Where we differ is that, in the absence of any ability for some of the RCs to unilaterally bind the others, we have to fall back on whatever is already considered binding on us all: some pre-agreement.

DS> P4? Do all Regions agree to be bound by P4? I don't think so.

JS> All of us, except you, consider P4 to be such a pre-agreement.

DS> Not just me, give your head a shake.

I was referring to the RCs; I haven't heard any of the others renounce P4.

JS> P4 specifies that the RCs elect the ZC;

DS> I'm well aware of what it says. The fact is that it is non-binding and irrelevant, has never been Sysop-ratified, and is simply a tool used by RCs to attempt to force Sysops to conform to their will. This elecsham is a perfect example of why P4 was tossed out with yesterday's trash in my Region. This elecsham is another fine example of P4 being used as a big stick by the RCs to elect yet another ZC from their ranks with no direct Sysop voice.

JS> but it is silent as to how they make up their minds.

DS> How convenient.

JS> So any number of us could decide to conduct a sysop-level vote within our respective Regions without any new agreement, policy, or whatever you wish to call it.

DS> As long as Sysops realize that the RCs are the superior Sysops that really call the shots.

JS> For that reason, while we could not on the spur of the moment bind one another to conduct a plebiscite we also could not, on the spur of the moment, bind one another not to do so - within our own respective Regions.

DS> You just made my point. P4 is not binding. Why then are we being forced to have a P4 election instead of a Sysop election?

You say it is not binding. I say it is. Does that make me dishonest? ignorant? When I joined this organization, I agreed to abide by its rules. When I joined my current employer, I agreed to abide by its rules. When I joined a community theater group, I agreed to abide by its rules.

Did I always agree completely with those rules? No - but I made a choice: I could either join despite any misgivings I might have, try to get the rules changed, or leave. I've made different choices under different circumstances, depending upon how strong my feelings were and how much I wanted to join each organization.

Never did I join an organization with the express intent of disregarding its rules entirely. I have no right to do so. I would no more join FidoNet and renounce P4 than join the Catholic Church and renounce canon law. It would make no more sense than declaring myself to be a bird with the anatomy of a mammal.

(17685)
Fri 15 Dec 00 9:14p
By: Jerry Schwartz
To: Darrell Salter
Re: ZC Election Procedures St:

Hello, Darrell...

Dec 11, 2000 at 18:24, Darrell Salter wrote to Jerry Schwartz:

JS> Representative (non-proportional) democracies, such as this one, are common even among mammals. The European Union, for example, is currently embroiled in this very issue. The U.S. Senate is structured this way, as are many of the controlling committees of NGOs and the United Nations. Organizations as diverse as NATO and Amnesty International govern themselves without "one man, one vote" in any literal sense. So whether or not FidoNet should is a legitimate matter for debate, whether you personally think it should be considered or not.

DS> The difference of course being that such organizations serve their members, not the other way around like in Fidonet where the tail wags the dog.

Not every citizen of the United States believes that the U.N. serves him or her; that may be true in Canada as well.

JS> Many people do not believe that simpling walking away accomplishes anything. What did you accomplish, other than to guarantee that none of the other RCs would thereafter consider anything you said?

DS> Hardly. Ever sat in on a meeting between union reprentatives and management officials? If you're offended by my style you wouldn't last 10 seconds with some of those people, on either side. Both sides are free to get up and walk out if they perceivee the other to operating in bad faith.

I've rarely heard of any negotiation where the parties disagreed but did NOT accuse one another of operating in bad faith. I think Hallmark has cards for that. Saying it doesn't make it so.

JS> Would it have been practical to pick an interim ZC at random from the nodelist? I don't think so; we would have chosen someone we knew, someone we knew could handle the job without any learning curve (since the whole point would have been to make a quick transition), and someone willing to do the job. Who do you think that would have been?

DS> Dave Hamilton?

JS> There are people complaining now because two of the sitting RCs are candidates; can you imagine what the volume level would have been if either had been appointed interim ZC?

DS> Why select an RC at all?

Does Dave have all of the necessary processing in place for producing a Diff, folding in the necessary updates from other Zones, and so forth? I don't, but I've had years of experience with the necessary tools. On the other hand, there are plenty of NCs who are baffled by MakeNL, and follow their predecessor's batch files by rote.

JS> You know my opinion of appointing an interim officer who is forbidden to run (at least in the case where the pool of potential candidates is small); can you picture the scene if a sitting RC were interim ZC and also a candidate in the election?

DS> Why select an RC at all? You make it sound like collecting, at most, 10 files and running MakeNl on them is some big deal.

Well, perhaps I'm a little more dense than most but it took me awhile to get MakeNL running right at the Region level; in fact, I found a small glitch in my processing just recently after all this time.

JS> The less nasty alternative was an immediate election.

DS> In my opinion, the only alternative that made sense.

JS>> Despite the opinions of those who said an election could be done in plenty of time, here we are with a schedule which will barely give us a new ZC by Christmas eve; and personally, I consider the schedule just about right. (My rule of thumb, based upon experience, is that administrative stuff such as our regional echo, the Snews, and the Diff only move once a week.)

DS> This election could have been over already and done as a direct Sysop vote. 50% + 1 wins the day. Done deal until next time. Again, no big deal. Is that what we have? No. We have this gawd-awful sham instead.

You are ignoring my comment about timing. Regardless of the mechanism, the timetable would have been about the same give or take a few days. What we didn't have was time to slug it out over the issue of Zone-wide voting.

DS> Have you not considered that the very same sysops that are likely to vote in this RC-level vote could just as easily have voted directly? Why didn't that happen? Because Jim Cannell didn't like who his Region voted for last time? Sorry, that's just sick. That the RCs went along with it is sicker.

See above. I'm quite aware that they could have voted directly; it was the time that would have been wasted arguing about it that we couldn't spare.

JS> Remember, we had a firm deadline imposed upon us by David. With him set to exit right after New Year's Eve, and a new ZC being named right before Christmas, there will be a large amount of work to be done at a time when many people are travelling or otherwise engaged. If we had delayed the election by futher discussion, or if we had shortened the schedule, we would have made a bigger mess than we have now.

DS> Nonsense. If you had started immediately by allowing Sysops to vote directly to an EC, instead of pissing around, it would have been over.

JS> If we had bypassed determining the will of the sysops with regard to the election, you mean? Remember that little feedback session we went through?

DS> long ago. When I saw that the RCs were going to screw the Sysops I walked away. You should have too. This kind of shit is the last thing

JS> I disagree, at least for myself. You made a different choice. Just as it is your right to make a choice that I would not, it is my right to make a choice that YOU would not. I still believe that I will have more influence over what comes next than you will, largely because I did not choose to leave the table.

By: Jerry Schwartz
To: Dave Hamilton

Hello, Dave...

Dec 10, 2000 at 09:30, Dave Hamilton wrote to Jerry Schwartz:

JS> Remember, the existing rules allow (even encourage) any RC to publicly summarize the gist of a discussion, to seek either input or support; but the condition is that individual opinions not be readily attributable to individuals (i.e., no quoting).

DH> There is nothing wrong with the idea behind those rules. In fact, there was nothing inherently wrong with the echo in the first place.

DH> The reason those rules were created was that there was potential for abuse prior to their existence.

DH> The current argument for revision is that there has been abuse using them.

I don't agree with your statement there. I'm not sure what you believe constitutes abuse, but I've heard two major issues: Darrell believes his actions were misrepresented by the other RCs; and a Zone-wide plebiscite was proposed and then abandoned.

The latter is a pretty simple case: the RCs considered an idea and dropped it. The matter was hardly a secret, as everyone seemed to know with milliseconds.

It's been said that opening the echo wouldn't interfere with the RCC's deliberations. If that were literally true, then nothing would have been different. In any case, I don't consider it "abuse" to consider an idea and reject it, regardless of the reasons. If you believe it was abuse to not have a Zone-wide plebiscite, then that's your opinion; but it wasn't abuse of the echo nor its rules.

Remember, my justification for keeping the echo closed is so that the RCs can exchange opinions without every trial balloon causing a public uproar. If there is no public uproar, then there will be no public influence on the discussion beyond what could occur with the rules as they are.

If you are advocating for public uproar, with the idea that every time an RC says something that someone disagrees with they should be publicly assaulted in Z1C or FN_SYSOP, then we do not see eye to eye.

The former contention, that Darrell's statements were misrepresented, I simply disagree with. You know what he said, you know what the rest of us said. He believes that it is not the job of RC12 to do more than report opinions which he has been asked to pass on; I believe that an RC should do more than that. He believes that what he did constituted support for a Zone-wide plebiscite; it did, in a very narrow sense, but not in the broader sense of trying to win others over to R12's position.

Quite honestly, since he believes he did exactly what he was supposed to do and no more, I don't understand why he has been so upset. He didn't get what he wanted, but that's got to be something he's experienced before. I don't see any abuse in that.

Regards, Jerry mailto:jerryschwartz@comfortable.com
http://www.writebynight.com

By: Dave Hamilton
To: Jerry Schwartz

DH> The current argument for revision is that there has been abuse using them.

JS> I don't agree with your statement there. I'm not sure what you believe constitutes abuse, but I've heard two major issues: Darrell believes his actions were misrepresented by the other RCs; and a Zone-wide plebiscite was proposed and then abandoned.

Add RCs claiming Darrell misrepresented his region to the RCC and misrepresented the RCC to his region. Add Carol's claim that Darrell's exact quote of Jim Cannell's post re the P4 legality of the election was false. Add Ross's support for Andrea's claim that R12 and R12C pushed for a speedy election.

None of these could be verified without access to the echo for posts and context. All of them were straightened out with that access.

Changing the meaning of someone's post when you paraphrase it is abuse of the system that permits only paraphrasing when trying to report accurately.

JS> If you are advocating for public uproar, with the idea that every time an RC says something that someone disagrees with they should be publicly assaulted in Z1C or FN_SYSOP, then we do not see eye to eye.

I am advocating no such thing. When I first proposed the idea, I suggested that the echo should be read-only and that interested sysops should clarify anything they want with their own RCs.

If a member of the RCC initiates an issue in a public forum I see no reason why responses should not be made in the same forum. This is not related to the privacy of Z1REGCON unless the public statement happens to be about something whose context includes it.

In every public discussion in which I have participated that involved R12C I have privately consulted him before forming an opinion. Every thread.

JS> He believes that it is not the job of RC12 to do more than report opinions which he has been asked to pass on; I believe that an RC should do more than that.

Opinions vary. He would get elected in R12; you might not.

JS> He believes that what he did constituted support for a Zone-wide plebiscite; it did, in a very narrow sense, but not in the broader sense of trying to win others over to R12's position.

Another person's method and effectiveness may have been different. Mine would not have been: I would have forwarded the regional consensus to the RCC in its private echo and debated it with Z1 sysops in a public echo such as this one where presumably the RCC hangs out. A different personality may not conflict as much as Darrell's did. Time will tell.

(17694) Fri 15 Dec 00 10:45a
By: Jerry Schwartz
To: Warren Bonner
Re: Changing fidonet

Hello, Warren...

Dec 12, 2000 at 12:03, Warren Bonner wrote to Carl Austin Bennett:

WB> Can an "Ad-hoc" committee be formed (seperate from the RCC) by
WB> knowledgable sysops to look over those documents and formulate a
WB> Zone One Policy 1.0 to be ratified by a Sysop vote, so the *C's
WB> have a real ratified policy to work with?

In essence, I think that is what Ross was talking about. The committee would initially be composed of those who participated in the appropriate echo, although experience tells us that it would ultimately be a relative handful who put together the final draft. (As Thomas Jefferson said, when the authorship of the Declaration of Indepence was called into question, "It IS in MY handwriting.")

Regards,
Jerry

(17695) Fri 15 Dec 00 10:52a
By: Jerry Schwartz
To: Lesley-Dee Dylan
Re: Changing FidoNet

Hello, Lesley-Dee...

Dec 14, 2000 at 01:21, Lesley-Dee Dylan wrote to Jerry Schwartz:

JS> Doing this when an election is actually pending is much more troublesome, and that's why unanimous agreement was appropriate in this case.

LD> THERE WAS NO UNANIMOUS AGREEMENT!

LD> You just finished stating that there cannot be an election unless there is a unanimous agreement amongst the RCs on how it is to be held. And there WAS NO UNANIMOUS AGREEMENT!

LD> Therefore, there cannot be an election. It is void.

JS> You can take snatches out of context all you want, but that doesn't make your assertion true. What I said, again and again, is that in order to impose a NEW set of rules while an election was imminent it would be appropriate to get unanimous agreement - to the new set of rules. The existing set of rules, by which we customarily operate, is P4. It allows the RCs to vote as they see fit. Some of us see fit to be guided by plebiscites within our respective Regions; that is in accord with P4. It doesn't require any change, any new law.

You may not feel bound by P4, but you are also not required to vote. Nobody is making you do anything you don't want to do. You may ignore the election completely. However, I believe that in due time there will be a nodelist listing someone other than David Moufarrege as Z1C. What you will do when that happens, I have no idea.

Regards,
Jerry