On Aug 6, 2009, at 1:34 AM, Alan Dayley wrote:

> Another thread about the sonoran penguin and making a theme for the
> website surfaced some discussion about the governance of PLUG.  I'd
> like to enlighten that a little bit.

Personally, I'm on this list to ask and answer questions related to  
free software.  I rarely make it to meetings.  I just want a place to  
connect with smart technical people.  PLUG (and this mailing list  
specifically) are exactly what I'm looking for in that regard.  Who  
runs PLUG doesn't concern me in the least.  I would happily contribute  
some money for servers, domain renewals, etc, if it were asked, but  
I'm not interested in more structure, governance, bylaws, and such.   
If you are, by all means proceed.  It just doesn't strike me as a high  
priority.

I would definitely prefer fewer political topics on the list, but I  
think the costs of more regulation would be higher than the benefits,  
so I'll continue to filter out the stuff I'm not interested in.

This isn't because I don't care about politics, culture, law, and  
other issues which come up.  (I've responded to a few of those kinds  
of threads, but more often I end up deleting a half-written response  
which doesn't say what I want it to.)  I mainly avoid those threads  
because I think an email list is a pretty poor place to have real  
discussions of complex issues like this.  A format like this serves  
mainly to let people trumpet their pet theories and bicker  
unproductively without actually hearing each other.  Those among us  
who want to talk in more depth about those kinds of things would be  
better off making plans to get together in person regularly.   
(Stammtisch, anyone?)

It's fun to argue politics!  It's just not fun to do it online.  The  
kinds of nuance you can fit into a face to face discussion are  
infinitely superior to email.

alex