[ILUG] AGM Annoucement - again

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Niall Walsh (linux at esatclear.ie):

> I've been trying to hold back on responding to every possible taunt on 
> this thread to see where ILUG would take it.   There seems to be a group 
> who are quite happy with the way it is and another (probably smaller if 
> that is possible) group who would like to see more (of something, though 
> no-one has expressed any ideas yet).   The vast majority of people 
> reading (or ignoring) this are silent.

Getting non-response after addressing a topic on a mailing list (or
newsgroup) can be difficult to interpret.  Sometimes, the speaker has 
dealt with the subject so comprehensively that his post was what we call
a "topic killer":  Nobody says a word, because the subject's been laid
to rest.

Other times, practically everyone agrees with what's been said, and the
silence reflects that.  Still other times, the speaker's widely
considered to have been spouting nonsense, and resulting silence
actually indicates rejection rather than agreement.

More often, there's some mixture of the above elements.  (I'm certainly
_not_ saying your posts fell into any of those categories, but rather am 
speaking generally.)  One of the more amusing mixtures is the 95% topic
killer, in which all _reasonable_ readers agree so absolutely that they 
see no need to comment, while the inevitable 5% loon contingent are
trolled into posting loud, somewhat crazed objections.  An incautious
observer would think the original poster's views had been extremely 
unpopular -- because the many who agreed considered comment superfluous.

So, extrapolating from on-line silence to a conclusion about generally
held views is problematic, and cannot be done with confidence.

> Am I going to organise all of these, NO!

Ideas and suggestions are less significant than actual deeds, but
they're not a bad place to start.  What you might want to do with all of
those ideas is list them on the ILUG Web pages, pointedly mention
that they're up for adoption, and remind people that (generally
speaking) they don't need anyone's permission to step up and get
something done.

By contrast, ideas posted to LUG lists (for someone else to do) have a
tendency of getting buried.

-- 
Cheers,                 "Heedless of grammar, they all cried 'It's him!'"
Rick Moen                       -- R.H. Barham, _Misadventure at Margate_
rick at linuxmafia.com