[GLLUG] War stuff

[Steve Cobrin]

[see comments towards end]

On Tuesday 18 March 2003 14:19, Jason Clifford wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, Steve Cobrin wrote:
> > Both personally and as one of the GLLUG organisers, I fully agree
> > with the below sentiment.
> >
> > > Please if you are going on any political marches not directly
> > > connected to Free Software, do not bring Free Software or GLLUG
> > > into it. Please keep GLLUG for Linux/Unix/Free/Open Source
> > > issues.
> > >
> > > It is in people's nature to make sweeping generalisations about
> > > groups of people. Please do not give them ammunition to further
> > > pigeon-hole the users, supporters and developers of Free and Open
> > > Source Software.
>
> In what respect?
>
> Are you stating that as a GLLUG organiser you want those of us who
> are discussing aspects of the current US/UK agression against iraq
> and trying to arrange our involvement in any protests to stay off
> list or just that you'd like us not to identify our political
> position in this respect with our being Free Software advocates?
>
> For myself I can see the sence in the latter however the former would
> seem to indicate that only "approved" discussions are allowed which
> doesn't seem to me a good thing.

Well, I'd say the latter. We should be careful of getting Linux/GLLUG
linked to Political views outside the confines of IT related issues, as
that could have a negative impact on us, or peoples willingness to come
to us for help.

The merits (or otherwise) of political issues, unless related to
Computing are not relevant in *this* discussion group. There are plenty
of other political activism mailing lists out there.

As for "approved" discussions, we tend to be quite lenient, and hope
 the group is self policing. I do believe however, its pointless having
 non-GLLUG related discussions on the list.

A certain amount of moderation does take place, in case of SPAM, where
the mailing list software tries to detect it, and asks some of us to
authorise it.

Currently we do not stop people from posting to the list, who are not
members of the list (this is sometimes helpful to newbies), I guess
this is always under review.

I guess we reserve the right to kick people of the mailing list, or IRC
channel, if their behaviour is anti-social or not in the interest of
GLLUG. However I can't recall when we last had to do that, usually its
handled by a quiet aside or email, occasionally a flame :-)

but, <sigh>, perhaps its time to spell things out more clearly on the
Web Site or mailing list information at
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug, though personally I'd
rather be spending time preparing for the next meeting.

  --- Steve

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