Who Owns This Group?

[Guest guest]

Hi Yvonne:

 

Thanks for your message. The only correction I'd offer concerns your

comment, "You guys own this list and you guys set the rules."

 

That's not strictly accurate. In the technical sense, owns the

list and we exist solely at their technological pleasure. In the

absolute sense, Devi owns the list; she's our president and CEO. In

the day-to-day sense, all of the members own the list -- without a

constant flow of people posting, reading, discussing, meeting,

arguing, debating, praising, exchanging, and so on ... the Group

would be nowhere and nothing; just a bloated mailing list laying

dormant and inactive in cyber-limbo.

 

I hope none of this sounds precious or falsely modest. I am quite

sincere when I say that we, the moderators of the group, are not so

much the owners as the janitors or custodians -- or, at best *gasp!*

middle-management. Our job is merely to make sure things run

smoothly; to clean up messes; to clear the lobby of suspicious

characters; to spruce up the place every couple couple of weeks; to

deliver various papers and files to the departments where they

belong. The rest is up to you and to all of the other members.

 

As for enforcing the rules -- well the "rules" were set by the

members too (click on "Polls" at left to see what people are

interested in seeing here). And also, as I said in my last post, our

basic working assumption here is that when people join a Group on a

particular topic, that topic is what they want to read about and

discuss. Too much "off-topic" stuff, or massive over-posting by a

single member (another situation we've had here in the past), or

attacks on other members or groups ... these things do nothing to

advance our purpose, tend to alienate and bore members, and tend to

deaden group discussion, and is therefore kept to a minimum when

possible.

 

Climbing off my soapbox, I remain ...

 

DB