[Gllug] RFC - February meeting

[john]

At the GLLUG meeting on Saturday at the end of the lectures a short 
discussion, about 15 minutes, took place. In the hope of keeping everyone in 
the group informed the following are from my notes.

Any discrepancies with fact are my fault and are easily rectified by telling
me what really happened.
Total at the meeting signed in was 70 (So about 65 attended the lectures)
Total on mailing list tonight is 367


*** The Mailing List

A request for more control over the mailing list was called for.
This was due to the recent Off Topic discussions that have taken place.

Suggestions were made that :-

1) A separate mailing list for Social chat

2) A moderator empower to kill an Off Topic thread

The first proposal didn't make it to a vote, the majority of people thought 
that this won't not work in practice.

With a show of hands about 3 said no to suggestion 2) and 50+ said yes to
suggestion 2)

A third proposal was made in the pub later - A moderator who can move an Off 
Topic thread to a Social Chat list.

There was a request to expand the GLLUG policy on posting messages to include 
details about the subject of off topic postings. Currently the policy only 
concerns advertising postings.

There was then a request for topics for talks. It was suggested that we are 
lucky in having a wide knowledge base and should be able to give a  talk on 
just about anything could be done. The practicality of this is that If 
members want it all they need to do is suggest it.


***The Web Page.

The next discussion concerned the website.

Some wicked, ruthless, evil individuals (Steve, Mike, Richard - I know who you
are and have your IP's logged) do not realise the blood, sweat, time,
bandwidth, and coffee consumption that goes into crafting the GLLUG website
(For those that have not realised - I do the website :-)  )

The website is regarded by all as not living up to its potential. And yes I 
do agree.

Suggestions made were for a Notes & queries, and submissions sections on the
web site.

There was also a general request for suggestion that could be done to
improve the web site.  So, any suggestions?

Offers to host the site elsewhere have been made.
We have had offers to do some scripting with PHP and Perl.


The following comments were also made in the meeting.  Other comments could 
have been made in the pub, I hope others will take the initiative to make 
sure they are noted for the rest of us.


* We need a bigger lecture theater.

* We need a way or place to leave the theater without disturbing the lecture- 
Some people like to drift in and out depending on who relevant the lecture is 
to them.

* Request for the installation and network areas to be closer to the lectures.

* There was a discussion on what makes the group GLLUG - is it the lectures, 
equipment sessions, pub chat or mailing list?

* Request for talks to be more practical and not as much theory.

* There was also a discussion of where the group should be going/heading? over
 he next couple of years. Should it encourage advocacy more or remain in the 
freeform it currently is in.

At this point I am afraid I retired back to Colins' to drink more and play on 
a computer.

As this hopefully will generate some replies but is more about the group and 
not Linux can I suggest we all have the "RFC" in the subject line and people 
use a filter if they do not want to read.

John S

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