Proposition

[Steve Pomeroy]

On Fri, Dec 07, 2007 at 02:53:18AM -0500, Martin Owens wrote:
> 1) If you do not have a real name in launch pad, you will be removed.

I disagree with this idea strongly. It's rather common in the open
source world to go by one's handle near-exclusively. For example, as 
is common knowledge, "Mako" is not his real name.

I have also met a number of intelligent people who do not wish their
online identity associated with their real-life identity. Some do it for
personal reasons, some do it for professional reasons. One example is a
friend who is a teacher and does not want the things she may say in IRC
to be too directly correlated to her real name (which her students may
know and then search for). 

Perhaps it should be more encouraged for people to be more concious
about their online identities, realizing that they are public and that
they somewhat represent us as a group. Perhaps we could find someone to
give a talk on how to create a clean (in the non-noisy sense), consistent
online reflection of one's self at one of our meetings. All of the
psychological components that pertain to identity are not obvious;
there's a genuine learning experience here. 

Flat-out requiring someone to edit their launchpad account to reflect
their real name for one particular group is absurd and well beyond
what any group should ask of anyone. 

> We will also be trying a new logging and irc system out to see how it
> goes, everyone who can't make the meeting is encouraged to join the
> irc channel; one person will be designated as irc secretary, their job
> is to set the irc channel mode to "meeting" (so it logs directly to
> the wiki) and type in everything that is said in the meeting as well
> as saying out loud anything from other members in the channel.

I would like to eventually drag in a link blog bot (chumpbot) for
letting members post links that are relevant to the group's activities.
I have used such in other channels and it's very helpful for catching up
on what has occurred.

-- 
Steve Pomeroy
http://staticfree.info/
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