[New-imc] sum thoughts on new imc involvement ...

[joanne richardson]

hi boud and flow and others at new-imc,

i will put the separate replies you sent to the imc-romania list in the
same digest along with my reply to you - to minimize number of mails &
have everything compacted in one message (some further explanation of this
below). i hope this is ok with you, i will of course keep the entire text
of your messages.

boud, i should perhaps also apologize, since i think my own reply was
somewhat aggressive. focusing too much on what bothered me about your
posts detracted from all the things you said which i think are
constructive and worth discussing on the list as a whole, specifically the
issue about list guidelines and admin approval. in retrospect our mailing
list guidelines may have been too strict because of our hastiness to get
the site up as quickly as possible. after reading some of your mails on
the new imc list, i personally am starting to think that this was a
mistake and that is more important to focus on building relationships in
the group (and getting a larger group) first and through the mailinglist
before putting up the site. i will bring this up for discussion on our
list in my reply.  (you can check the imc-romania list archives this
evening, i will post all the messages in a digest then, and i will reply
in both romanian and english).

flow, i think the idea of having a group of people rather than one
individual involved in each new imc application is a good one - basically
it’s similar to the requests made by new-imc group that there be a group
of admins on each local list rather than one to make things more
democratic. however, and to be honest, i also worry that this will create
even more ‘external’ traffic on a local list. part of my surprise over
boud’s posts was that i didn’t expect that there would be posts by new-imc
members directly on our list, the other part of the surprise was also over
the quantity - 3 posts in two days is more than people who are subscribed
to the list send. if several more people from new-imc get involved and we
get to a situation in which the number of non-romanian posts is exceeding
our own this would potentially distract from conversations about local
issues (for instance we are now in the middle of a discussion about the
lack of anti-war demonstrations in romania).

so to all on new imc, i would propose that the specific process whereby
new imc volunteers get involved in local lists be discussed among
yourselves - whether this is done thru individual direct posts to the
local lists (and how many is too many?), through digests, through the list
contact who can forward things or bring issues up for discussion ...? i’m
all for an open process of communication, but please take into account
that if you start sending multiple english language messages per day to
our list, it might start to cripple other dialogue. especially now when we
are trying to build the list and get new subscribers, it would really suck
if the quantity of non-romanian posts might lead someone to have second
thoughts about joining or staying on the list.

thanks,
joanne