[ELECTRON] separate political mailing list?

[Benjamin Dembroski]

Magnus is 100% correct regarding what the club was setup for in the first instance.

Of course, things change and as has been said ad nauseam on this list before there will always be members who are more political than others.  As long as there is some kind of technology or hacking based theme to the discussion, it is appropriate for this list.

I think it's important for all the members to realise something about how the EC is able to exist at all.  At the moment, the CCA donates use of the space to the Electron Club.  It's common sense to think that there are plenty of other uses that the space could be used for, many of which could be to generate revenue for the CCA (which they are short of, like almost all arts institutions).  The only way that the CCA can justify the loss of revenue / use of the space is to demonstrate that there is another, perhaps greater, benefit to the CCA by having the EC sitting in there.   This roughly translates to 'public outreach'.  In other words, it's easy to justify the EC when activities that are based in the Club positively affect the public that the CCA intends to serve.

Like it or not, it's the 'political' groups like Document, RIB, and the like that engage in these activities the most often and therefore are viewed as the most 'valuable' by our landlords.  Rather than being disparaging of 'Citizen Smith', you might want to thank him/her for supporting your ability to use the club space for whatever you'd like, for free (which you will always be welcome to do as long as the club exists).

My apologies for the tone of this message, but the repeated talk of "The Electron Club is not political" is very much a matter of cutting your nose off to spite your face. The actual situation needed to be made very clear.

Best,
Ben D.

 
On 30 Jan 2012, at 11:39, Ian Bitmap wrote:

> why don't we just disregard the politics altogether? Just because I'm
> interested in open source software does not automatically mean I wish to
> save the rain forest, adopt a panda or indeed 'smash the state'. The recent
> uprising(?) of the 99% seems to have the air of a 'Citizen Smith' remake,
> albeit with facebook replacing soapboxes - so please, if just for
> intellectual refuge, lets leave the politics to the armchair pundits and
> 1st year social studies students, and get back to what the club was setup
> for.
> 
> On 29 January 2012 23:15, James Beeley <james.beeley at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> 
>> I'd rather the political stuff went onto a separate list. I'm following
>> the reprap discussion with great interest, but I really don't want to
>> read about anarchism and the like.
>> 
>> Jim
>> 
>> 
>> On Sun, 2012-01-29 at 22:38 +0000, Benjamin Dembroski wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>> 
>>> Lately, there's been a bunch of emails regarding the reprap stuff.  It
>> sounds like things are progressing, and sounds like a very interesting and
>> worthwhile project.  However, The discussion is getting increasingly
>> specialised.
>>> 
>>> Given the number of emails, and that they are really only pertinent to a
>> subset of EC members, would it make sense to make a separate mailing list
>> to keep the noise down on the general EC list?
>>> 
>>> Just a thought,
>>> Ben D.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> members mailing list
>>> members at electronclub.org
>>> http://www.electronclub.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/members
>>> 
>>> Instructions for changing your mailing list settings:
>>> http://lists.electronclub.org/emailhowto.html
>>> 
>>> Archive for this list:
>>> http://lists.electronclub.org/pipermail/members/
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> members mailing list
>> members at electronclub.org
>> http://www.electronclub.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/members
>> 
>> Instructions for changing your mailing list settings:
>> http://lists.electronclub.org/emailhowto.html
>> 
>> Archive for this list:
>> http://lists.electronclub.org/pipermail/members/
>> 
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: <http://www.electronclub.org/pipermail/members/attachments/20120130/7a44f8cb/attachment.html>
> _______________________________________________
> members mailing list
> members at electronclub.org
> http://www.electronclub.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/members
> 
> Instructions for changing your mailing list settings:
> http://lists.electronclub.org/emailhowto.html
> 
> Archive for this list:
> http://lists.electronclub.org/pipermail/members/