[theforum] list optimisation

[William Anderson]

Martin Burns wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> Merging them *could* work on the strict understanding that if *fast* 
> decisions need to be made, they get made in the time required, without 
> anyone complaining that they weren't consulted...

All it takes is for (mostly) everyone to say "oui" ...

We're in a rut.  Hardly anything proactive gets done, and when it does it's 
by a band of hardcore evolters - this isn't to disparage the work of others 
that's gone before, it's just an observation.  We need less structure, not 
more.  There's no need for working groups, SIGs, etc when there has been 
hardly any traffic on these lists for months, and when there is, it's usally 
crossposts.

We need to find our focus.  We come off as a well-structure organisation, 
when in fact we're just a loosely connected bunch of people managing a 
couple of boxes with some content on it.

My proposal still stands.  People who do content and/or technical 
(sysadmin/dev) go into theadmin.  People who do non-tech/touchy-feely go to 
theprocess.  Everyone meets in theforum.  It's simple, it's elegant.  I 
can't help but feel that the disparate and fragmented nature of our 
subgroups is feeding the lack of initiative that we've seen over the last 
umptyumph months.  The last great push was the redesign discussion in August 
last year, and that fizzled out before we could really act on it - remember 
how we were gonna codevote in October?

There is very clearly a small group of people within evolt.org who do most, 
if not all, of the heavy lifting - again not to disparage others, merely an 
observation.  Given that there is only a small group of people actually 
*doing anything*, there is no need for a structure that lends itself more to 
an organisation of tens or hundreds of people working together.  I still 
think the structure as-is would be more useful if there were a couple of 
hundred of us doing this.

Less structure, less complexity.  This means more work on the part of those 
present in theforum to try and *act* on work being mooted, discussed and 
ultimately requiring decision upon.  I don't think that's unreasonable.

-- 
_ __/|  William Anderson      | Brodie: The Force is strong with this one
\`O_o'  neuro at well dot com |    Jay: Dude, don't encourage him
=(_ _)= http://neuro.me.uk/   |  -- Mallrats, (1995)
    U  - Thhbt! GPG 0xFA5F1100 |