IMHO the issue with this group is too much of a "RTFM" attitude which scares away normal people and secondly lack of transparency. I know from someone involved about the facts & thus I am stand corrected about my opinion regarding "using the list as a means to promote commercial activity" but that's just my personal opinion and so far no "official" communication has been made and thus as a list member I am also in the dark just like other members. Lack of communication & lack of even simple guidelines makes the group unlike any community run group. It took me around a decade to speak up in this group, though I liked the group, I was afraid of getting abused for asking a doubt or coming up with a innovative suggestion like someone did about porting windows libraries to GNU & *NIX platforms.
Few points: 1. Can the list have a basic policy / guidelines like the USENETs ? 2. If the above is not possible, there should not be any moderators. 3. Sorry to note that the moderators in this list act like "spammers" as they are anonymous & no one knows their names or location or anything of that sort ! 4. If the list & moderators are busy, which is quite understandable, just have a self moderated list. I don't think there is anyone in this list who are not mature enough to do a self moderation. 5. Though I personally understand the reasons and limitations for suggesting one location for the meetings, I still suggest the list to open to new ideas, accept venues by having a simple guideline that makes sure that no-one misuses the community name. Needless to say, free doesn't always means free as in free beer ! (At the same time, if its easy to have one venue for the events than coming up with guidelines, perhaps that is the right way but the communication is still pending.) 6. Also, freedom liberty means keeping enough room to new ideas and open to discussions IMHO. I just want to suggest that lets be a practical group & than following any manual religiously ! It will be my last and final e-mail on this matter & I just wanted to put forth my thoughts and clarify my stand since I had posted to the group regarding what I personally felt about the reason behind suggesting a particular venue. I didn't mean to hurt anyones feelings or start a flame war. PS: I had to do a cross posting as I wanted to make sure that what I wrote above is published somewhere & not lost in moderation. On 7 May 2014 15:21, Thomas Vazhappilly <thomas...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> My Suggestion is make available this history related to how all these >> things happened and also it would be unfair to criticize without this >> knowledge. > > > Thanks for sharing the 'ancient' history of ILUG-COCHIN. > We've got almost same history during the regular meeting of April. > And what we have to do immediately is documenting it in our website for make > it available for future members. > >> >> One other thing which I have noted to be the culture of the meeting and >> mailing list is that when some users become verbally active bordering on >> tough language, the rest of the users become silent to avoid a flame war. > > > If those flame wars are meant for restructuring / repairing / correcting the > system - it is good and will be well appreciated. Even if it's otherwise, it > is still good for guiding the system towards a correction level. This is my > thoughts. Since it is a big group, there may be lots of other guys having > different thoughts. ILUG-COCHIN has a wonderful tradition over 15+ years. > And I hope it will be glittering again, correcting the issues. > >> >> My idea is also not to create a flame war, but just some suggestions to >> show that we functioned like one big family and generally did not have any >> difference of opinion about it. I do not believe it should change now. > > > Change is inevitable. Impermanence rules the world :-) We have to change, > maintaining our love and respect intact, inside the fraternity and towards > the community. > >> >> I know all the people who are involved in bringing this group to where it >> is now, I know there is no lack of transparency in any of these people, many >> things may not be complete when expressed in the mailing list and there fore >> I do not consider it the best medium for exchange except to fill in some >> gaps here and there. > > > Right medium is always direct meeting (ツ) > >> >> My hope is that people will be more considerate to others and end all this >> confusion. >> >> Though the people in the mailing list would not generally react to tough >> language, even quoted from a third party, I have found that there are strong >> views about it and need to be considered. > > > -- > THOMAS.M.VAZHAPPILLY > > _______________________________________________ > Indian Libre User Group Cochin Mailing List > http://www.ilug-cochin.org/mailing-list/ > http://ilug-cochin.org/mailman/listinfo/mailinglist_ilug-cochin.org > #ilugko...@irc.freenode.net _______________________________________________ Indian Libre User Group Cochin Mailing List http://www.ilug-cochin.org/mailing-list/ http://ilug-cochin.org/mailman/listinfo/mailinglist_ilug-cochin.org #ilugko...@irc.freenode.net