[ale] Ale subscribers

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Wed Oct 16 12:07:11 EDT 2013


On Oct 15, 2013 10:50 PM, "Aaron Ruscetta" <arxaaron at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 7:59 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sorry, Aaron. It seems you missed the point.
>
> I didn't miss any point.
>
> > ALE is dying.
>
> That may be your opinion, but I don't see any medical degree.

Sigh.

I thought I justified my statement with the declining membership numbers.
I'll use "rabid anarcho terrorist" next time to be more clear :D

> However, bull shit negative attitudes like yours certainly stand a
> good chance of killing it.

I speak plainly what I observe. I try to be objective as much as possible.
My attitude is separate from my content in this matter. ALE has 1/3 of the
subscribers we had before the traffic became dominated by one person
pushing the limits of posting tolerances of everyone else.

 You don't have any more justification
> or right to shut down ALE than the fascist democracy raping rabid
> republican terrorist traitor fucks in the house of representatives
> have any justification or authority to shut down the great nation
> of America.

I can and do have the authority to flip the list to "moderate all".  It's
been used before and most on the list agreed it was a benefit. I had a
difficult time doing that. I would prefer to never do it again.
>
> > The group is sustained by members and they have been leaving
> > in droves. The group is close to needing life support.
>
> Our LIST membership has been shrinking, yes.  I think the biggest
> problem there is monopolization to the point of abuse by one or two
> discourteous individuals.

That is a strong agreement that this a strong factor in the sudden change.

 Of course, the factors may well be some
> of the others mentioned in this thread, like the advent of other sources
> of information; there is a lot that a little google fu can do to answer
> questions these days.
>

This certainly accounts for few new members under 30 years old. I can't
fathom using faceplant or twit to replace a 20+ year old mailing list.
Different concepts and methods.

> On the other hand, meeting attendance and involvement (when
> someone has organized a meeting...) has remained pretty consistent
> over the past couple years, especially when you factor in SPSU and
> the revived NW group.  It was very frustrating and disappointing that
> no one did much of a job of maintaining the Central meetings in my
> long absences this year, and as a result it has been extremely
> difficult getting the wheels rolling again.

My apologies for the lapse. I'm not connected as well as I needed to be to
perform that task as well as was needed.
>
> ALE is not on life support, but it does need some really serious
> consideration of how it can serve a wider constituency.  If there is
> some energy out there to pursue that, then we might be growing
> again.  If not, then there is no harm and no foul in continuing
> existence as group of like minded gray beards.

Right now, my focus is to stop the hemoraging of members. Some activity
from the gray beards would help. New people or projects would help, too.

>
> > The massive overload of single-source OT posts is acting like
> > the angel of death for ALE. Thus the raising of the iron fist of
> > moderation.
>
> We discussed this off list, and the Iron Fist is a last resort,
> not the first one.  No one has addressed the problem persons
> in a polite adult manor and asked them to be more aware and
> equitable in the use of the group resources.

Sometimes a loud voice must be used to be heard above the noise. Polite
time is past.
>
> > I can't sit in the closest thing there is to a drivers seat and watch
the
> > cliff get closer and closer without doing something. When ALE blew
> > up over  politics, I heard both sides and took a hard, no preferences
> > stance and did  just what I'm doing now. I'm saying 'NO MORE CRAP
> > POSTS BECAUSE IT'S DRIVING AWAY OUR PEOPLE!'
>
> Censorship will make it so no one wants to be here at all.  And frankly
> it has no place here, or anywhere people have a delete button.
> Freedom isn't free, and if the price of free speech is as dirt cheap
> as tolerating the robotic talking point spew of political retards, then
> it's a deal.

If ALE is dominated by non-Linux drivel we are guilty of fraud. If one
person has to be yelled at to get them to reign in the noise so everyone
can participate equally, so be it. It would be far better if the archives
were read by all newbies so they get a sense of how the community works.
Sadly, technology fields are flush with bright people with poor social
skills (duh! Look at me!) and they have to metaphorically smacked with the
big foam clue bat.
>
> > If enough people royally pitch a fit over my attempted Hail Mary
> > Save the List effort, I'll gladly pass the torch and move on.
>
> At this point I think we need to make the invitation.

Fine. What other poor schlub wants to admin a centos 5 box running mailman,
send mail, apache and WordPress. I'm ready to do other things as I have
little to offer or gain from continuance in my current role as admin and
rare moderator. I would rather do more time with fewer computer screens
anyway :-)

> in peace,
> aaron
>
>

As required by the situation, in  peace or conflict but always with reason .

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> >
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