ADMIN: More Membership Musings (Oh Boy!) (MEM)

[Tom Wall]

Cindy wrote:
It seems to me that if we can't decide whether we are or are not an 
open membership list, then we can't get back to those who have 
expressed an interest in joining us.

Tom:
After taking a little bit of time to think about this, I've come to a 
decision. And it was this bit of your post, Cindy, that got me to 
this point.

Although I do think that we need to sit down and talk about how we 
want things to run around here eventually, I don't see why we have to 
decide how we're going to operate generally in order to evaluate 
these specific candidates right now. They've either expressed an 
interest or been invited, and have been pending for a while, right? 

We should do them the courtesy of deciding on them right away; I 
suggest that we set a deadline for ourselves in this case of "no more 
than a week" to decide. (All members are checking in once a week at 
least, right?) So we should be able to come up with an answer in a 
week. Can se send a Special Notice or something? One way or the 
other, then the, um, considerees will know where they stand. As far 
as I'm concerned (and having heard nothing truly negative on any of 
them) they've all got my vote. Their names are Michelle, Carolyn, and 
Kelley. Right? ;-)

However, in my opinion, it would be a mistake to open up membership 
fully to the list as a whole (at least at this point); that is to say 
that I don't think we should declare that we're moving into an 
unlimited membership ("You apply, you're in") mentality because I 
think that we'd be very, very unprepared for the influx of people and 
activity that would result. We shouldn't issue a general offer like 
that until we at least work out how things are supposed to *run* 
around here. I know that for the time being we're okay with an 
amicable sort of anarchy, so to speak, but I don't think that our 
present method of operation would be as effective for a group of, oh, 
say the *hundred* that Carolyn spoke of in her suggestion. And I 
think that there are at least twenty-five or more people out there 
who would love to jump right in if such an invite were issued.

SIDE NOTE:
On Carolyn's project - I think it's a good idea, and having been 
combing through archives for the last week or so, I'm convinced that 
she's right about how fluidly work would go with a hundred members. 
But I don't think that all one hundred of them have to be members of 
this group. We (or maybe MEG) could simply create a second group of 
people to work on it. Anyone (including us) could be involved; but I 
don't think it has to be an FAQ thing, per se. It really sounds like 
a true "community" sort-of thing, you know, that every member of 
hpfgu should get the chance to work on.


Anyways, yeah, so I'm all for the three that are pending; we should 
get to them right away.

Unlimited open membership I'm thumbs down on; for now let's just 
continue to evaluate people when they come up.

Carolyn's project gets a thumbs up in concept, but we should consider 
if we want to take it on ourselves or delegate it back over to MEG as 
some kind community-wide group project.

-Tom