board77

In my Rangering duties I recently became aware of the "All-Emailees" group which is a list of those members who have not requested that no mail be sent to them. I accidentally sent the mail about Ratification votes to All Users and was told by my Ranger buddies that I should have sent it to the "All Emailees" address. Now, in this case it was a simple mistake on my part, but it got me thinking.

Why do we have members who do not want to be notified about boardwide issues? I understand the RP identities, but I can't understand why any other member would not want to know what's happening with the board. There are responsibilities that we all must accept on a daily basis. They are what make us value what we have. As my parents always told me "You appreciate it more if you have to work for it".

To give an example, I am a member of the local Musical Society. I pay my membership, I buy whatever shoes, socks or makeup is required, and I take part fully in the society. When I'm asked to sell raffle tickets, I do it, not because I enjoy flogging raffle tickets to my work colleagues, but because it is one of my responsibilities as a member of the group. There are others who continually return their raffle tickets unsold, but they still get raffle tickets every year because nobody accepts that these people have the right to take without giving.

Here, we don't have raffle tickets, we have votes. Sure, not everyone is going to vote. That doesn't mean we should stop asking. Being a member here should be a two way street. You get to be a member of a democratic board, run by the members, for the members. In return, you get occassional emails asking you to participate in that process. I don't think anyone should be allowed to "opt out" of that process. It's the price you pay. The price you pay for not having to ever worry about being banned on a whim. The price you pay for the people who spent months crafting this environment for your benefit. The price you pay for the fact that your vote has the same weight as the founders of the board even though you choose not to exercise it.

I would like to make perfectly clear that I am speaking as a single member, not as a Ranger. I am simply asking why we facilitate people who are not prepared to give the board the same respect that it offers them. Why do we have members who have all the rights and none of the responsibilities? How will we ever reach a quorum under these conditions if the trend increases?

Please, I want to know. Why are we willing to accept this?

Alatar

Alatar, I sympathize—I agree that asking people to tolerate a few emails is not much.

However, at least some of the people who have opted out of the All Emailees group have actually left the board—they don't consider themselves members, and they don't want to to be reminded of it.

Because of the way the board software works, we can't just delete people from the memberlist if they've ever posted at all—because then all their posts have their name stripped off and are marked as being made by "Guest." This does serious damage to the board.

Arranging it so they don't get mass board emails is, I think, the best compromise.

In the Forum Management forum, Alatar wrote:

My own feeling is that we need to rethink the issue of refusing to delete members. What benefit is there in keeping a member who no longer wants to be here?

I can answer that question easily enough. Assuming it is someone who has posted here, if we delete a member, their presence is wiped out of the entire history of the board. All of their posts will be credited to "guest". It would be a distortion of our history that I for one would not be happy to see.

If it is someone who has never posted then they should certainly be able to be deleted.

Edit: Beat me to it this time, Primmy me dear.

I know of one person who's active who complained about being spammed by emails. I don't see how that was ever possible as this board has never sent out that many emails. Also, it's not spam. Spam is random advertisements. B77 emails actually have importance.

I can see both sides. I agree with people who are no longer active here not receiving emails...though it might be nice if they say they are no longer active so that way we can subtract them from the active users when figuring out a quorum. As far as active members go, I agree with Alatar. It's the price you pay for being part of a member-run board.

Before replying, a question -- how is it that someone is opted-out of the e-mail group? I can't see where there's an election in my profile and I don't recall that coming up as a separate item. Does the fact that I don't wish to have my e-mail address appear mean that I've opted-out? I received two "ratification" e-mails over the last few days, so at first blush it does not seem to be the case, but it's also possible that a different Ranger also sent the message to the "wrong" list. If by marking our e-mails to not appear is equated to a "do not e-mail" list as far as official communications from B77 is concerned, we should make that clear (assuming, of course, that it has not already been done so and I just missed it, which is a very real possibility).

As to the question at hand, I certainly can see reasons why someone may not want to receive e-mails from B77 -- for example, they may only have a business e-mail address at which they may not wish to receive a significant number of non-business e-mails, or they may have a personal e-mail address that already gets cluttered with too much e-mail to handle, or (if to be on the official e-mail recipient list you need to allow your e-mail to be shown) they may have an e-mail address that provides more personally identifying information than they want to share. In my case, I created an e-mail address solely for purposes of registering at B77 -- of course, like the thick-headed person I am, although I prefer not to have my e-mail address and name floating around, I nonetheless created that account using (naturally) my real name.

SIGNED,

NIESZCZĘSNY MIEJSCOWY STRACHAJŁO

TORN, the rangers have access to every single person's email address. So nothing you do by hiding your email is going to keep you from getting emails. A system has been set up where the rangers place people in groups. There is an 'email' group so that rangers can send everyone on that list emails. The purpose of it was to prevent RP IDs from receiving emails.

The board software knows your email address, TORN, and in general Rangers sending out emails just press a button and tell the board which groups to email. It's automatic.

People concerned about the recent volume of emails should keep in mind that the charter process involved a lot of discussions and votes. Now that that process is coming to an end, we can expect far fewer boardwide votes and concomitantly fewer email notifications.

I think the Rangers are aware of the need not to overload people—that's one reason votes on the charter were generally put up in batches.

I'd suggest that people considering asking to be removed from the email group wait and see whether the level is more tolerable now that the final batch of charter votes is underway.

Erunáme wrote:

I can see both sides. I agree with people who are no longer active here not receiving emails...though it might be nice if they say they are no longer active so that way we can subtract them from the active users when figuring out a quorum. As far as active members go, I agree with Alatar. It's the price you pay for being part of a member-run board.

As far as inactive people notifying B77 to be subtracted from the e-mail list, recall that we had a brief discussion a few months back about whether people should be permitted to formally drop their membership from B77 -- it occurred during a larger discussion about whether people who request to be banned should be banned. I was strongly of the view that people should be permitted to formally leave B77. However, it became quite clear that I was in a small minority, although perhaps that was because the issue was mixed up with the more emotionally charged issue of disgruntled posters using the banning mechanism to take a "parting shot" at B77 on the way out. [I admit that there may have been other factors involved as well, such as whether the full removal of a poster's account would automatically result in all such poster's posts disappearing, which I agree would be a problem -- you should be able to leave, but perhaps you shouldn't have the right to erase all evidence of your having been here in the past]

I still believe that people should be free to renounce their citizenship, which perhaps is tantamount to what you seem to be advocating, although your suggestion would be a quieter form of it. This issue, by the way, has been touched upon in at least one other context during the charter drafting process, with respect to determining the required quorem for B77 votes -- however, if I recall properly, the issue was skirted by basing the calculation on the number of posters active during the past 60 days, rather than in creating more static categories of "active" and "inactive" posters.

As to "price you pay" issue, I admit I'm a little uncomfortable with being forced to allow receipt of e-mails (and, btw, does CAN-SPAM have anything to say on this topic? Even if CAN-SPAM wouldn't prohibit a requirement that posters agree to receive e-mails [although it is conceivable {if it applies} that B77 would need to get some informed consents, or at least formally make receipt of e-mails a condition of membership], it just seems to fly in the face of good internet etiquette, IMHO -- how did you like THESE nested parentheticals?). However, I don't think I'm uncomfortable enough to forcefully fight it.

SORRY -- I SEEM TO BE IN A RAMBLING & LARGELY INCOHERENT MOOD TONIGHT.

Sorry to follow myself (but perhaps someone else will post while I type), but I'm a little confused, then, about this whole discussion. As I understand Eru & Primmy, the default setting for B77 is that every registered poster is on the "e-mail" list and the only way to get off is to ask a Ranger? And, apparently, some people have asked to be taken off the e-mail list? And that people have been complaining about receiving too many e-mails from B77? What is confusing is that I have received very very few e-mails from B77 (apart from the short period during which I darkened the charter drafting committee's days), so either I have somehow gotten myself off the e-mail list (and only received a couple of recent e-mails because of Rangers using the wrong list) or some people have an extremely low threshold for feeling as if they are receiving too many messages (or, as a third alternative, these posters have not checked their preferences in their profile regarding receipt of e-mails when receiving PMs or when a reply has been posted on a thread).

I don't think anyone has said that no one can ever renounce membership on this board.

However, we really can't delete people's names from the memberlist, if they've posted. That would mutilate the person's posts and make threads hard to follow. People can certainly leave, and stop getting our emails, but they don't have the right to damage the board on the way out.

It is now not possible for someone leaving the board to be banned on request—we now have procedures for banning in the charter, which in most cases require a hearing, require a jury to find that the person has committed a bannable offense, and require a vote of the membership confirming the ban. So that issue is blessedly dead.

Alatar wrote:

I would like to make perfectly clear that I am speaking as a single member, not as a Ranger. I am simply asking why we facilitate people who are not prepared to give the board the same respect that it offers them. Why do we have members who have all the rights and none of the responsibilities? How will we ever reach a quorum under these conditions if the trend increases?

Welcome to the world of democracy.

The right to choose is important to all, the right to refuse to choose is also important in a truely democratic system.

If you make people vote because they have to vote because its the rules, that immidiatley takes away the right to choose. You are imposing on them, and that is not what makes a democratic system.

Many people don't vote because the simply do not have a opinion on the question, they do not care or they do not want to judge. It is not what they do, they are not people who ebjoy voting.

However, I do have a bit of a dig to make on behalf of the Role Players who have alternative id's the the 'There and Back Again'. We do get the aditional e-mails in respect of votes for these id's, who have no voteing rights as they were created origionally for RP.

Its not a biggy, I just delete them when they come in

I would assume that anybody who gets mail like that would also just delete it, or if they are really worried about it, they would have all mail from B77 source refused. Easy to do really

Dindraug wrote:

Welcome to the world of democracy.

The right to choose is important to all, the right to refuse to choose is also important in a truely democratic system.

If you make people vote because they have to vote because its the rules, that immidiatley takes away the right to choose. You are imposing on them, and that is not what makes a democratic system.

Many people don't vote because the simply do not have a opinion on the question, they do not care or they do not want to judge. It is not what they do, they are not people who enjoy voting.

What Din said.

Because I am most definitely in this group, and won't hide the fact. I don't enjoy voting. I am having less and less time and inclination for it. Period.

It's the downside of democracy. Some people exercise their right not to vote. In the world of the messageboard, benevolent dictatorships are, in many ways, somewhat easier to run.

Din, a couple of the recent emails went out to the wrong list by accident. The list made for emailing doesn't have RP characters on it. It shouldn't happen again.

As for voting or not voting, of course that's each person's decision, and the system has been designed to work with only a minority of voters. (Reluctantly—a lot of the committee really resisted setting up a system that doesn't require a large percentage of the board to vote, but we were persuaded that that is unrealistic.)

This system will work fine, as long as those who don't speak up or vote are comfortable with accepting the decisions of other members. (I do feel frustrated when someone who's chosen not be involved in the process complains about the results as if they're some dictatorial imposition sprung on them out of nowhere—please note that I'm not referring to anything anyone has said in this thread.)

But everyone will still get notified of boardwide votes. There might, after all, occasionally be an issue that a non-voter does care about.

In the world of the messageboard, benevolent dictatorships are, in many ways, an oxymoron.

You know what, that was a really daft - and possibly tactless - thing for me to say.

Just ignore me.

Put it down to board burnout.

No, really, ignore me.

Over and out, Di

There's nothing wrong with what you said, Di.

My grumping was about something entirely else.

And I was merely being pithy. But you're not alone in burnout land. See?

Ax and Di, you need to go to the beach.

Prim honey, not for a minute did I think you were grumping at me.

I was grumping at myself.

Primula_Baggins wrote:

As for voting or not voting, of course that's each person's decision, and the system has been designed to work with only a minority of voters. (Reluctantly—a lot of the committee really resisted setting up a system that doesn't require a large percentage of the board to vote, but we were persuaded that that is unrealistic.)

Yes, it is unrealistic. Whoever persuaded the committee was bang on the money.

Quote:

This system will work fine, as long as those who don't speak up or vote are comfortable with accepting the decisions of other members. (I do feel frustrated when someone who's chosen not be involved in the process complains about the results as if they're some dictatorial imposition sprung on them out of nowhere—please note that I'm not referring to anything anyone has said in this thread.)

That is absolutely fair enough, and that is totally my position. I am choosing NOT to exercise my vote and I want to make it clear that I AM perfectly comfortable with accepting the decisions taken here.

If I'm not, then it would be my own silly fault for not voting. Period.

I may be a freeloader but you won't hear me bitching about any of the decisions you guys have taken.

Quote:

But everyone will still get notified of boardwide votes. There might, after all, occasionally be an issue that a non-voter does care about.

True enough - I think that's entirely reasonable.

You've all worked damn hard on this and I do appreciate it.


Ax ... who HASN'T been to Burn-Out Land?

Been there more times than I can count.

And yet I still love this crazy cyber-world.

Di of Long Cleeve wrote:

You know what, that was a really daft - and possibly tactless - thing for me to say.

Just ignore me.

Put it down to board burnout.

No, really, ignore me.

Over and out, Di

I disagree; as I've mentioned to you, I think it was a perfectly reasonable thing to say. As long as a majority of members disagree, it will be a minority view to be sure , but it's certainly a reasonable view to express.

Ax - I currently belong and have belonged in the past to many Internet groups, chats, communities, and messageboards in which the benevolent dictatorship system has worked just fine IMO. I don't think it's an oxymoron just because it seems to have failed with such a bang on TORC.