Transparency, Community?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 06 September 2006 07:44, Peter Garrett wrote:
> Alexander, the change was made ( notice the past tense) and
> therefore according to that decision "discussion" is now
> officially off-topic. Too bad. We are continuing to discuss.
> Call it civil disobedience if you like ;-)
>
> The point is that Derek wants to discuss the decision. In
> other words, your reaction is a perfect example of how a
> restriction can be used retroactively to silence discussion.

FWIW as I see it the only possible place to have this discussion 
is right here. The change affects *this* list and how it 
operates, so the discussion belongs here on the very list 
that's affected, and there isn't a list-discuss list

Moving it to Sounder is about as OT for Sounder as you can get, 
as the subscribers there will have no interest in this topic. 
We could do things the way they do them in Zimbabwe right now 
and simply ban all discussion that some arbitrary person 
doesn't like. But if that is done you can expect a massive 
backlash from the users - what Peter says is correct, the users 
will discuss whatever they want to and authority be damned. 
Push them too far and they'll simply fork the list and go 
someplace else and no-one wants that.

As I se it, the solution is to simply let this thread run it's 
course like any other thread. It's on topic, the discussion is 
happening so let's argue the subject of the discussion, not the 
discussion itself ;-)

alan