Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!sun-barr!newstop!texsun!texbell!swbatl!adams
From: adams@swbatl.UUCP (745)
Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix
Subject: Re: nominees BOF?
Message-ID: <1108@swbatl.UUCP>
Date: 15 Jan 90 23:29:02 GMT
References: <1990Jan9.221705.17622@utzoo.uucp> <316@limbo.Intuitive.Com> <6922@pdn.paradyne.com> <1990Jan11.193931.4650@utzoo.uucp> <614@ssbell.IMD.Sterling.COM> <1107@swbatl.UUCP> <326@limbo.Intuitive.Com>
Reply-To: adams@swbatl.UUCP (Tom Adams - 235-745)
Organization: Southwestern Bell Tele. Co. - Advanced Technology Lab - St. Louis
Lines: 43

In article <326@limbo.Intuitive.Com> taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com (Dave Taylor) writes:
>Gee, you just *know* something strange is afoot when *Tom* has such a

And who better to validate strangeness than our *illustrious* Mr. Taylor.  :)

>whether the current nominees are participants in Usenet or not in the
>first place because what we're skirting is the fundemental problem
>of pre-election periods, where candidates change their behaviour to
>sway or impress the voting populace.

What I fear more is the degeneration of officer elections to a personality
contest.  And if Usenix votes go like newsgroup votes lately, I'd want no part
of it.

>Of course, there's also the question of whether participation on 
>Usenet is a useful and necessary selection criteria.  I can see 
>both sides of the coin on this one; on the one hand, it's pretty
>clear that Usenet is a common and popular communications mechanism

It seems reasonable that all candidates have access to electronic
mail.  It's trivial to provide mail <-> news reflectors.
I'd certainly feel justified requiring everyone to provide an email 
address prior to electioneering.  If you don't do mail you certainly
can't represent most of us out here. 

There's a lot more bandwidth here than in those one page position papers
mailed out at great expense by the association.

The timeliness of response could also help gauge a candidate's commitment
to doing the job.  And we could evaluate their willingness to use nasty old 
public domain mail agents rather than the robust, faithful mailer supplied
on the distribution tapes :)  

>After all, I believe that one of the fundamental challenges facing 
>the Association right now is just that; the transition from being 
>in essence an elite Unix hackers club [*] to being a more general 
>purpose Unix community organization (and the subsequent challenge 
>it becomes distinguishing ourselves from the UniForum Association

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