ADMIN/MEMB: Talk to the right audience

[Tom Wall]

Amanda:
You have not formally asked MEG any of these things. We can discuss 
this all we want over here, but you haven't officially involved MEG 
as a party to the discussion, as yet.

Tom:
Aha! Now we're getting somewhere. 

How exactly does one *ask* MEG to be a party to this discussion? Does 
that mean that we all sign up over there, or you all sign up over 
here? How exactly could MEG and the remaining stragglers of FAQ have 
anything that remotely resembles a discussion? Loathe as I am to hear 
another "non-official opinion from an MEG" on this list again - 
because I really don't see why MEG matters are relevant at *all* 
(except in a very peripheral sense) to what we do over here - I 
would, in this case, appreciate some suggestions for how we might get 
this done.

Will MEG respond to a letter of request with any more celerity than 
it did to my last letter? Will it respond to everything *in* the 
letter, or will it sidestep touchy questions like last time?

Amanda touches on an interesting point. She says that we 
haven't "formally asked" MEG any of these things. And she's right.

And you know what? Speaking as someone who has no say at all, I don't 
think that we have to. I think that any decisions that pertain to the 
governance of FAQ will be decided by FAQ members in the future, and 
MEG will hear about it from us when it happens.

I looked at the OT-Chatter list today (which I very rarely do), and 
boy did I find something interesting.

Hebby Elf signed off an Admin:

"Our Wizarding Leaders - the Rather Eerie Admin Team (OWLTREAT)"

I mean, are the members of MEG serious? The members of MEG fancy 
themselves as "the leaders" of HPfGU?

<Tom laughs.> Guys, *please*!

MEG is not supposed to constitute *leadership*; it's supposed to 
constitute *servitude*. That is to say that the MEG's exist solely to 
make things run smoothly for the rest of us, the disenfranchised. 

They're not here to *lead* or to bask in the delights of being a 
member of an internet "in-crowd." They're here to make things great 
for the rest of us; they're not here to demand credit for what they 
do, not if they're doing it "out of the kindness of their own hearts 
and purely on a volunteer basis" as we're supposed to believe. 
Because "people who do things out of the kindness of their hearts" do 
not demand credit for their actions, by definition.

And this little acronym here really strikes me, that some MEG-ers may 
feel like they're the "leaders" of HPfGU. It strikes me mostly 
because a great many of the MEG-ers do not follow the standards that 
they're trying to hold everyone else to. For instance, the only 
people who have ever been rude to me during my affiliation with HPfGU 
are *all* presently members of MEG. That's interesting, isn't it? And 
I have never received an apology from any of them. And no one on MEG 
ever informed me that disciplinary action was taken. And by any 
accounts it has not been. In other words, the message to a relative 
new person: "I'm a member of MEG, and I can do what I want, on the 
main list and on its subordinates." 


Cindy:
I do not see this list as subordinate to MEG. Not at all. At times, I 
get the impression that some of our MEG members feel differently, and 
it bugs me, frankly.

Tom:
I get that *exact* impression. I feel as though MEG members feel 
completely entitled to do whatever they want. This, of course, makes 
the use of the word "leader" even *more* interesting, when it's 
compared to what's getting *done* on FAQ.

I also feel like some MEG members do not exhibit tact or restraint on 
the main list, or on this "subordinate" list. I feel that in the eyes 
of some of the members of MEG, FAQ is just a bitch-group that does 
essay writing at the whim and demand of our "leaders," and besides, 
MEG members feel basically entitled to be members over here, and even 
have the audacity to request membership in order to "observe," 
whereas a very small group of us over here have absolutely no say in 
anything whatsoever. What can *we* observe?

Which may be a harsh sentiment, sure, but what also strikes me is 
that the overlap members around here don't really seem to be involved 
in any of the ongoing projects. There are several overlap members of 
MEG/FAQ who haven't even *posted* since I've been here. Less than 
half of us are assigned to FP projects that are in the works, and out 
of that less than half, less than half of *those* people are members 
of MEG.

Which indicates to me (and this is not an unfair inference) that it's 
the mostly the non-MEG members who are doing the work on FAQ, while 
the MEG members do... whatever it is that they do when they're not 
clarifying MEG policies for the unenlightened and unprivileged 
amongst us.

On top of it all, thanks to the latest round of MEG additions (which 
I will not comment on here), the non-MEG members of FAQ are now a 
solid minority. Which means that we're really in no position to have 
any say over anything. And that, succinctly worded, stinks.

So, when Amanda writes that "Autonomy baffles [her]," it now makes 
sense to me. The idea of autonomy baffles her (and, I might be 
inclined to think, possibly the rest of the overlap members) mostly 
because she *is* an overlap between the two groups. In other words, 
she's *not* in the dark. When a member of MEG tells us to *wait* on 
something because MEG is working on it, that's fine for over half of 
the members of this group, because all they do is go over to *that* 
group and find out what they want while the rest of us twiddle our 
thumbs and wait for their decision, which may or may not ever come. 
This pattern has stalled productivity over here at least three times 
since I joined this summer.

Amanda is *one* of the "leaders," and so she naturally doesn't 
understand that others might not appreciate this situation as much as 
she does. She's "in the loop," so to speak. So the desire for other 
people to understand what decisions are being made really doesn't 
even register with her, because she *is* one of those people making 
the decisions. *She* knows what's going on.

So, since I'm so very good at digging my own grave (particularly when 
I'm annoyed) I'm thinking that our round of new members shouldn't 
really consist of *any* MEG's. At all. Not one. 

I think that we should get some new people in here, some new people 
who are not tainted with whatever is going on over there. New people 
who don't have obligations over there that are preventing them from 
doing anything over here. And the present overlap members who aren't 
doing anything should shape up or ship out, because as far as I'm 
concerned, being a member of MEG doesn't make you special over here. 
You're either working on FAQ stuff, or you're not. And if you're not, 
then you're dead weight, and you should do what's best for the group 
by leaving.

In addition, FAQ has been repeatedly sullied over the last few months 
because MEG issues continue to rear their heads over here. And 
speaking as someone who was not involved with anything that went down 
over there, this whole thing is really, really annoying. I think I've 
made this point before.

I think that a lack of MEG presence (not counting 
suitable "oversight" and "liaison" capabilities) would be healthy for 
FAQ, and an influx of new ideas coupled with a simultaneous "flushing 
out" some of the stagnant ones will be a good thing for this group... 
we have a dynamic that is over half composed of MEG members who quite 
obviously think of FAQ as of secondary importance. 

I don't want to be considered "secondary." What we need is a dynamic 
where most of the members of FAQ are not involved in MEG, and so in 
the eyes of those people, this group will be of *primary* importance. 
I don't want MEG's hand-me-down attentions, okay?

Some overlap would be fine, even necessary. *Some.* Too much overlap 
(i.e. what we have now), and what we get is this constant bickering 
(which really has *nothing* to do with FAQ), followed by an effort on 
the part of MEG overlap members (not all, but consistently some) to 
defer the whole quandary to MEG. MEG in turn does nothing about the 
issue, or else they do something and don't bother to tell us about it 
(ala my letter to them, or the "scrubbing" issue).

Does anyone else see why this is frustrating?

I say we start by going back to Amanda's suggestion before I start 
citing more examples. We need a *dialogue* with MEG, which means that 
everyone who's not overlapped between the two groups has to be 
included. So how are we going to get that started?

-Tom