[Theforum] To log or not to log... and other thoughts.

[A. Erickson]

So, the central issue seems to be logging.

We have archives of everything. For all intents and purposes this is for
record-keeping. We have no secretary keeping minutes of our rolling,
international, 24-7, business-minded gab fest. So we need archives.
Admin, Theforum and Thesite keep archives for this reason.

Thelist keeps an archive for a different reason. So that people can
search it and refer to it as needed. 

Thechat and TOTC keep archives for, I suspect, only the reason that
there's not much reason not to. It's as easy, presumably, to keep an
archive as to not.

This is excepting, of course, all those people who keep up with lists
through their various archives. You people are the exception to the rule
and lets not think about you right now.

Now, if we were running out of disk space or it became unfeasable to
keep that many records, who would we ditch? TOTC and Thechat seem ripe
candidates to me. There's no reason to keep archives other than,
perhaps, for posterity. There's no votes to look back on. There's
nothing really to search. 

Which bring us to IRC.

IRC is a medium that resists logging. You have to turn it on if you want
it. It's fast-paced and lends itself to messages like "huh", "heh",
"LOL", etc. It's not email. I would never type this much or this
formally into IRC. It would take too long. The conversation would be
gone by the time I finished and no one would read it because they'd be
missing the conversation.

Someone mentioned being uncomfortable if there was a tape recorder on
the table at a party. I can understand that. In fact, when we were
recording in Austin, I was uncomfortable with that at points! I even
said so. Once you make a record of something, you lose control of that
information. It could go anywhere. I didn't really know if I wanted some
of those conversations recorded for posterity in relation to evolt. I
still don't know. 

I feel that way about IRC. I don't think that it should be logged in any
fashion. 

However, I think Martin and perhaps others want logging as a sort of
system of accountability. I can understand that impulse.

Back when some issues where getting heated on admin, before theforum, I
was told that the direction of evolt was getting discussed on IRC and
that if I wanted to discuss that I should be there. I showed up
basically for the first time and Thebot told me that I was "busy
tallying votes about how to vote on a vote" which was basically a dig
about the process list. So, I was pretty sure that this wasn't *my*
playground.

So, that can help explain some of my distaste for thebot issue. I want
that shit gone. I think I've made that clear. I don't feel like battling
the issue of tact and taste when that particular problem can be tackled
by removing the temptation to be anonymously snide.

But, I digress.

People need to act appropriately on the evolt IRC list. If ops do that
then that's cool. I don't understand what the op will be tasked with or
how it would work since I haven't had much experience with that. Neither
do I want to be an op. However, I can agree that multiple points of
control are better than one. 

If we have ops and can't keep a modicum of decorum on that forum then
I'd vote it be closed rather than logged. However, I like the IRC room
and want to keep it. I enjoy popping in from time to time and visiting.
I think it's an easier place to have a rolling discussion. I've always
been a proponent of having us do some of our discussions there.

And if someone wants to keep a functional bot then that's fine by me but
it would only be present on a conditional basis and I'd want more
information on exactly what it was doing.

thanks,
amanda

___________________________________
amanda at gawow.com + http://gawow.com