Re: tlug: Re: 3 questions

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

On Sun, 22 Nov 1998, Joe Marchak wrote:

> This thread (and the cross-postings thread in tlug-admin before it) 
> degenerated from a technical discussion to very much an advocacy
> discussion.  You may have started out with something related to linux, but
> it digressed to the point that it was no longer appropriate for the tlug
> main list.   If you go over your posts, and Uli's subsequent posts, you
> will see what I am referring to.

All I can say is that either I'm prematurely senile or you don't know
what you're talking about, because I made exactly one reply to Uli's
post, in which she asked three specific questions that were technical:
how does a material tracking system work, where can a person get
software to operate it, and how would a person simultaneously mirror it
to other sites.  My response (which provided technical answers to
those technical questions)  was my first post to the TLUG list on
any topic at all in *3 days* (and the one 3 days before was not in any
way concerned with anything written by Uli, either).  Hardly what I
would call "my posts and Uli's subsequent posts."

I don't know what you're talking about on this cross-posting thing,
either.  I have never (knowingly) cross-posted anything on TLUG, ever.
If anything like that happened, it was because I replied to something
that someone else cross-posted and failed to notice that they had done
so. I do not believe in cross-posting and have a general policy of not
doing so unless there is a really clear reason why there should be an
exception in some particular case.

If you have any evidence to prove me wrong, please present it now.

> This is of course only my opinion, and it can be argued.  We should argue
> it.  When we argue it, the arguement should also be on tlug-advocacy,
> where I am more than willing to get into details with you.

Definitions of "technical" aren't advocacy issues, they are
administrative issues.   Such a discussion would be totally
off-topic to advocacy.  Additionally, since I do not and will not carry
tlug-advocacy, I do not authorize anyone to quote me, in whole or in
part, on tlug-advocacy.

> decision.  But if you are going to try to bring non-technical discussions
> into the other lists, I will have to voice my strong opposition to that,
> since it is a step backwards.  

I have not brought any such discussions into the main list since a
policy prohibiting them was established.  If you think I have, let's
see the evidence.

> The cross-postings thread on tlug-admin between you and Tim was a real
> indicator of what will happen if we don't strictly follow the rules that
> we have.    

I neither started nor ended that thread, so I can hardly be blamed for
posting to it.   Moreover, discussion of tlug-advocacy *policy* properly
belongs to the tlug-admin list, not the advocacy list.  To discuss
policy on tlug-advocacy would be decidedly off-topic. That is, 
a violation of the rules you want to strictly follow.  Tlug-admin
is where policy issues are supposed to be discussed.  That's why it was
established in the first place.

> http://tlug.linux.or.jp/guide/tlug_user-guide.8.html:
>       " There is an important distinction between tlug and 
>         tlug-advocay.  The main list is for technical 
>         discussions only"  (only is in bold font)
> 
> This seems very clear to me. 

And what I wrote was very clearly technical, with a short opinion
attached, something *many* posters to the list write without
any commentary from you.  I expect the same treatment, so you are going
to have to either back off on this or start jumping everybody's shit
equally.  I'm not going to tell you which to choose, but please do
choose one.  

> I'm sorry we have to disagree on this issue, but it's been too much work
> to get where we are to start going backwards.     

We're not going backward, because I wasn't writing advocacy.  I
addressed the technical points of Uli's post, and I violated no
regulation by also including a feasibility assessment and a concrete
example of how such a system would have been useful already.  Those were
two brief passages of at least a semi-technical nature contained in a
technical post.  No one has ever stated that such things are not
allowed, and indeed they appear on TLUG all the time and nothing is
said, so there is no basis on which to argue that such a thing is
prohibited.

Jonathan











----------------------------------------------------------------
Next Nomikai: 20 November, 19:30   Tengu TokyoEkiMae 03-3275-3691
Next Technical Meeting: 12 December, 12:30 HSBC Securities Office
----------------------------------------------------------------
more info: http://tlug.linux.or.jp Sponsors: PHT, HSBC Securities