board77

voted.

Yay! Poll is open... voted

_______________
Resident witchâ„¢

Voted . . . and all I can say to Voronwe is and and thank you.

Woke up from a nap,
experienced another earthquake the second in five days, and

voted.



Just another day in California.

No earthquakes. Voted anyway.

Voted, and what Prim said.

Many thanks to Voronwe for this one!

Am about to vote.

I voted yes, even though I don't believe the terms of transfer need to be acceptable to me. As I said, I'm just the babysitter. Everyone are the actual parents.

I have voted in favor, and I think the plan is a good one -- thanks, you formerly umlauted wonder.

HOWEVER (you knew there had to be an "however", being that it is the Resident Miserable Poltroo you're dealing with), one of the clauses brings to mind an issue that we have previously discussed in a very different context (and, because of the context, I think a general concensus was arrived at which -- in my view -- was not very satisfying).

The Clause: will have voting members consisting of all persons who register a primary screen name at board77 and are eligible to vote for the Mayor under the by-laws regarding a binding vote of the membership

The Previous Discussion: without wishing to drag up old fights (and so I won't provide links), we had had a discussion about whether requests by members to be banned would be honored. The general concensus that I recall was that bans would not be issued upon request, and that members wishing to stay away from b77 should rely on their own will power to refrain from further posting. Many posters seemed to take the position that the b77 machinery should not be used to further the cause of a member's protest against b77 (I admit that this is a simplified and perhaps not entirely fair take on this argument)

My Concern: During the earlier discussion, I was of the view that members should be able to formally withdraw from membership for whatever reason they may have for wishing to disassociate themselves from b77. For example, I had a very real concern back when there was serious discussion about a major skull-and-crossbones warning about ToE, which would probably have caused me to reluctantly walk away from b77. Also, b77 could at some point in the future come to be something quite different from what it is today, and I see no reason why someone should be forced to be a "member" in perpetuity regardless of what b77 were to become. There needs to be a way out. I personally don't think the desire to avoid being "used" by some disenchanted member who wants to make a final dramatic statement before huffing off is a sufficiently compelling reason to make us all members in perpetuity, regardless of our desires. I would hope that b77 is a strong enough community to survive being "used" from time to time.

What I'm saying, then is: Once the corporation is actually being set up, there ought to be a way for someone, for whatever reason, who does not want to become a member of a corporation in perpetuity to bow out. For example, I certainly don't face any kind of conflicts-of-interest standard so draconian that I would need to step away, but it is possible that someone now or in the future could find themselves in a position where they really would rather not be a voting member of a California not-for-profit mutual benefit association. There needs to be a way out.

I would think leaving and never coming back (along with asking admins to remove them from the all users usergroup so they wouldn't get emails) would be the way out. That's the way out of other message boards and I don't see why here should be any different. Ceasing to be active is certainly "out" to me.

Except that you would still be a voting member of the organization (if I am not completely mistaken) -- as to whether other messageboards have formal ways of renouncing membership, I should point out that other messageboards have not taken pride in establishing a democratic governance embodied in a very detailed code of law, so I'm not sure if the comparison gets you very far, really -- and I also don't understand what the real harm is in allowing someone to formally sever ties

TORN, it has been my opinion (thought we haven't actually gotten to this in convention so far) that having articles which establish a quorum and the requirements of a binding vote will also require us to do member purges (de-activations) on some routine basis. We will not have the luxury (as some messageboards have) of pretending to have 40,000 members when we really have 40.

Most people who leave will not even do us the courtesy of saying good-bye much less storm out in a huff.

This is certainly one of the more serious discussions the next committee will have to undertake.

Jn

TORN, you raise a very good point, and one that we won't be resolving at this point. I do hope that you play an active role in the discussion when we get to that point.

I promise not to snap at you.

Voted.

I will defer further discussion on this issue until the appropriate time, with the short comment that it was always nice to see the re-emergence of long-lost souls from time to time sporting names from the distant past.

I agree discussion should be deferred, but I did want to post one idea before it left my tired brain—possibly we could remove people who have not visited the board for X months from the All_Members group. We can't purge them from the user list because that strips their names off of all their posts. But taking them out of All_Members would get them off the email list, etc.

We could even create a group called Inactive Members that had posting privileges only in, say, BikeRacks so people could ask to be activated again if they returned.

All_Members could then be the basis for our quorum count.

Just a thought.

Its a good thought. All_Members could be not only the basis for our quorum, but the legal list of voting members of the corporation.

Thanks for sharing that thought, Prim.

For the legal list we'd have to add Special Permissions. Anyway, I'll drop this now. I was just afraid when it came time to discuss it I might have forgotten it (too much work, too little sleep, in a fog).

Edit: This would also give us a mechanism for handling requests to be removed from the board—just take them out of All_Members.

sheesh how many more of these polls have I missed....

Where's my 'I voted' sticker?

Voted. and thanks to Voronwe.

In addition, I'd like to say that I agree with TORN. Not that I foresee ever wanting to completely dissociate myself with b77, but if the need arose. . .