Organization Poll on the KCLUG Forums

[Adrian Griffis]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 9:00 AM, Steven Hildreth <sphildreth at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think somewhat the opposite is true. Those people who do register and "go
> through the trouble" of voting, by doing so, indicate they have enough
> commitment that they care to the outcome. It's somewhat comparable to a
> electoral process; Those who don't bother to vote, have no right to complain
> about the outcome of the voting.

This makes no sense to me.  First, I've never bought into the argument
that those
who don't vote (whatever they election in question) have no right to
complain.  This
claim is always completely without merit or foundation.  We all have a
constitutional
right to complain but no constitutional duty to vote.  Wishing people
would vote and
dreaming up a punishment of a restricted right to speak for those who
don't yield to
our wishes is just plain silly.

And second, we have an existing list and a subset of people on that
list who want
to impose a duty to cooperate with this vote on everyone on the list.
Where does
the authority to impose this duty come from?  Do we have rules in
place about this?
The fact that some of the people on this list wish we would become more formal
doesn't automatically create a duty for all of us to become more formal while we
discuss whether or not to be more formal.

What if we only had two people voting for moderation and one voting
against it?  Wouldn't
we reasonably have to conclude that we really didn't have much
interest in the idea?
We apparently have had more than three people voting, but how do we
decide how much
is enough to show some real interest?  What principle are we using to
decide if the vote
is meaningful?

We had a proposal for a moderated list in addition to an unmoderated
list.  Surely such
a proposal gives those who want moderation something without imposing additional
restrictions on everyone else.

Adrian