Re: [AGA-mcm] Forum "purchasing"

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005, S. Hieber wrote:

> I imagine you took some time to think about what you wanted
> to say, and chose your words carefully. I will try to do
> the same.

I don't have the time to spend hours composing messages.  I took a little 
bit of time yesterday afternoon, but not a lot.  Now I am up at 3 AM with 
insomnia, so I can take a little time now.

Obviously, I would have needed to take MORE time to do a forum reply than 
on this list, so I opted not to do a forum reply.

As a side note, I have removed the "Advisory Committee" forum, as it was 
just a test to see if gatewaying works, and is now essentially complete. 
This list (aga-mcm) will no longer gateway to that forum.

> I don't know why this is off list. Or to put it another
> way, if I knew that was how you felt, I wouldn't have
> spoken quite as I did.

I don't know how many times I can post "let's move this discussion back to 
the content, not the container" before people can figure out how I 
feel/think/whatever.  This is not something new.  In my mind, this kind of 
thing is an early indicator of the success or failure of a project. 
Remember the Hofteizer forum proposal where the most important thing was 
that he could have a friend host it for $100 per year?  Or Jay's desire 
to run an AGA photo gallery before he even had any photos?

So let me put it another (theoretical) way: Say there's a club bidding for 
a convention, and they don't have the hotel contract even remotely figured 
out, and it's about 3 weeks before the deadline, and one of the folks in 
the local club asks about switching to a VISA service to collect the 
registration fees because PayPal is kinda slow and clunky.  You, as a rep 
from the AGA, try to quickly convince everyone that we can work this stuff 
out if we need to, can always switch to the VISA system in the spring, and 
we really should make sure the hotel contract is signed.  But then *I*, 
another rep from the AGA, come in and start talking about how we should go 
ahead and get the VISA account now, and that I think it would be OK with 
the board.

Even if I had the authority to actually get a VISA account without talking 
with the board (dubious), wouldn't it seem like I was undermining your 
attempts to help get everyone working on hotel issues?  What if I did it 
multiple times in the same thread, even after you have replied multiple 
times that we need to steer the discussion back to the hotel?


Perhaps I should really just stay out of it and let the discussion ramble 
like a Ouija board to whatever topic everyone pushes it toward.  And if 
the mods all want to talk about forum software (easy discussion) instead 
of how to grow membership (hard discussion), I should let it be, and even 
if it IS a marker, just let it self-destruct or succeed on its own...hmm, 
just like I could let this convention deadline pass and not try to help 
the local club get a bid together by calling the rep every few weeks. 
Not my style, I guess.  And I'm paying for it today.

  - Erik

--
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com
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