10/15   As recent ('05) alumnus, I'm very disturbed about the tone being taken
        towards alumni by the current pburo. Is this because of bad feelings
        towards people like psb & etc for bitching about the MOTD change, or
        is it really about the mass alumni community? I found the (recent)
        alumni community to be an invaluable resource to me when I was a student;
        I even attended social functions with 'geezers' like nevman and felt
        enriched for it. I never partied with nweaver, though. Everyone is
        right about networking, but I think that the CSUA alumni community
        goes beyond that. It's just a pretty freaking awesome group of people!
        Where else could I go and have a handful of people spend three hours
        recovering my fubared laptop hdd (thanks ajani, vadim, mconst!) and
        then laugh with me at my stupidity? Current members are running the
        CSUA, no ifs or buts about it. But I hope amckee is not representative
        of the majority of pburo or current memberships when he asks "Why
        should we even allow alumni on our servers?" The whole point is that
        alumni have jobs and lives and our servers are what really creates
        the crossroads for the alumni community to flourish. Would you rather
        have irc.csua be for current csua members and make dbushoung delink
        and run an irc server for alumni? A serious schism between alumni
        and current membership strikes me as the worst thing that could come
        out of the MOTD changes, whatever happens. -jhs
        \_ I have been fortunate to have worked with several alumni, and
           almost all of these interactions have been positive and rewarding.
           The politburo, and me, have nothing but respect and admiration
           for the vast majority of alumni. Hell, we even respect psb. However,
           there is a very vocal miniority of alumni that are helping to
           derail the CSUA. As others have said, the alumni are an invaluable
           resource - for jobs, for insight, for a million things. However,
           how likely is it that the majority of them - reasonable, level-headed,
           non-trollish peoplt that they are - will look to the CSUA with
           repect, given the environment that we're seeing here in the MOTD? If
           I had a job opening, of which I've represented many in the past,
           I most certainly would not take it to an environment that appeared
           to be filled with petulant children, as I would argue we see here.
            \_ No, you'd take it to individual people whom you've seen provide
               a high signal to noise ratio compared to the petulant children.
               Trust me, people are grown-up enough to know not to rely on
               the tenor of a publicly writeable text file as a primary means
               for judging the membership of an organization.  -John
           It's not that the majority of CSUA alumni are like this, far from it,
           it's just that the vocal minority of ones that are seem to
           disproportionally represent the 'culture' of the CSUA. So yes, we're
           frustrated with some of the alumni that you see here, but that in no
           way translates to all of them. Hell, perhaps some of them would even
           come back into the fold, if they didn't think this would end up like
           some kindergarten in the Bronx. And no, there are no plans to boot
           alumni - that was never a proposition. What was said was that we
           put a *LOT* of effort into this environment, mainly used by alumni,
           and the generosity of this does not seem to be appreciated. We're
           not a free ISP, we're a professional student organization, and it's
           only reasonable that we have -some- expectations out of how we use
           our servers. Like, "don't act like children". We desperately want
           alumni to be a more important part of this organization, but we
           need to constantly evaluate whether that is happening and what we
           can do to improve it. And, it's important to note, the 'alumni
           commmunity' stretches much wider than the MOTD audience, and we
           try to keep that perspective in mind, as well. Not only will a
           slightly less  hostile MOTD be good for new students, it may
           very well attract more alumni who have been turned off on it.
           -amckee
           \_ Just as a tiny piece of advice, if I may be so bold, consider
              paring down your essays a bit and working on making a point
              in a more succinct manner--it's more effective.  -John
        \_ And the "why should we allow alumni.." quote was a rhetorical one,
           intended to solicit retrospection and perspective. Communicating
           subtleties of intent are often difficult in 'informal' environments
           like this, and there's at least a fair chance that much of the
           animosity comes from both sides misinterpreting the intentions of
           the other. As always, talking about things like this face to face
           is always far more productive. Alumni are always welcome to
           attend politburo meetings (Mondays @@ 7pm) and share their thoughts.
           As people like mconst and dlong  can attest to, we (and I, especially)
           make a lot of effort to solicit their views. An alumni representative
           actually sat with us during the MOTD debate and provided more insight
           and dialog than any other participant in the audience (politburo
           included). This insight was invaluable. We ultimately decided on
           the side of anonymity, which was not the position they represented,
           but it helped give us a much deeper perspective. If you feel strongly
           about something, then the place to broach that is in person at our
           meetings. To be honest, with all the emotion on the MOTD, it's hard
           to take things too seriously - and it's easy to get into too 'defensive'
           a mode of debate. And as much of an apparent schism as seems to exist,
           this almost always collapses when you realize that the person on the
           other side of the debate is an actual 'person'. -amckee
           \_ Above, you write "we ultimately decided on the side of
              anonymity"?  In the minutes of the meeting, I thought
              the 4-1 vote to "Modify the system" was a vote to
              institute motd logging?  Please explain.
              \_ I typed too quickly. We decided to enable a provision such
                 that, in extreme circumstances, the politburo could identify
                 the source of an motd edit and deal with them offline, through
                 our normal disciplinary channels. This would never include
                 de-anonymizing them to the motd. amckee
           \_ It seems clear that the decision to deanon is one for the pburo
              to make. The most reasonable complaint I've heard is that the
              proposal was not structured or formalized well. This seems fair,
              and it may be that the MOTD's importance to some alumni was
              underestimated? Putting in the effort to get both a technical
              solution and a policy that is robust and as liberal as possible
              seems worth it (especially if alumni can be made to do most of the
              work?). But I'll likewise agree that some of the same people who
              are complaining the loudest don't seem to understand the reality of
              today's student body, and don't give credit when credit is due
              to the work put in by the current pburo. Of course this is *some*
              people, I've seen plenty of jvarga props in the last few months.
              -jhs
              \_ And yes, jvarga deserves definite props. We sometimes ride
                 him a bit hard, but he's always had what he felt was the
                 best interests of the CSUA at heart. We may disagree occasionally,
                 but he's been one of the most self-sacrificing individuals I've
                 known. -amckee
              \_ The decision I actually proposed was more alumni friendly
                 than what was originally proposed, in my opinion. We
                 decided that we needed the capability to identify motd edit
                 authors, but I wanted to leave the implementation
                 (technical and theorhetical) largely up to the alumni. This
                 got thrown back in our face as "we don't want to eat your
                 dog food". Reasonable, but perhaps more rooted out of
                 initial frustration. Although we aren't negotiable on the
                 need for the provision, we're pretty flexible on how it's
                 done and we're fairly open to suggestions on how
                 disciplinary action should be handled. My own idea was that
                 if someone is making threatening, slanderous, or hostile
                 attacks or comments against another person - the sort of
                 things that you would not expect to find in a work place or
                 professional environment - that we need to be able to deal
                 with that person. In most circumstances, this would
                 probably start out with a warning. In circumstances like
                 the one that initially prompted this whole mess, it might
                 lead straight to sorrying.  As with all such disciplinary
                 actions, this is a matter decided upon by the
                 politburo. (Granted, if someone is being a real pest, an
                 officer or root staff may need to temp-sorry them until a
                 vote can be made.) At no point did we ever discuss or
                 suggest that we would "tell the world" who the offender
                 was, that'd just be silly - especially since most of us
                 don't even use the MOTD. For the most part, it'd probably
                 be a system such that we only got involved if someone
                 complained (or how else would we know about it?)
                 Hopefully, once tempers calm down, we can get some more
                 productive suggestions on a solution that is as palatable
                 as possible to the users of the forum.  - amckee