Minutes for ProgSoc Meeting 8/11/94

Christopher Fraser (chrisf@nospam.sour.sw.oz.au)
Wed, 9 Nov 1994 18:14:15 +1100 (EST)

Present:

Stephen Boyd Gowing (Chair)
Christopher Fraser (Scribe)
Dennis Clark
Scott Hopwood
Cameron Hutchinson
Chris Keane
Tom Magill
Colin Panisset
Vikky Papageorgiou
Jeremy Rashbrooke
Glenn Rickersey
Ryan Shelswell
Iain Sinclair
Andrew Wilson
Matthew Young

Excellently big slobbery thanks to Sbuggy for organising the meeting and
his ruthless editing. Also, special thanks to whoever picked the room:
you know who you are.

ITEM 2: 1995 Membership.

ChrisF: Combined 1994/1995 membership $6 until end of year. 1995
Membership $6 + $4 for TFM.

Everyone is happy with this

ITEM 3: Appointment of Treasurer (until 1995 AGM).

Andrew Wilson appointed acting treasurer unopposed.

ITEM 4: Changes to `Acceptable Usage Policy'

ChrisF: A number of people have made the wise observation that before
we go about making arbitrary restrictions in the AUP we need to
have clear statement of the goals and directions of ProgSoc.

Various people gave their opinions about what ProgSoc is and isn't, should
and shouldn't be. Suggestion was to move discussion to mailing list (not the
ProgSoc list -- too much idle banter). Various people volunteered to help.
Chris Keane will hassle Peter Bestel to get original ProgSoc constitution.

Actions: Andrew -- Make policy discussion mailing list
ChrisF -- Do start ball rolling things.

ITEM 5: How to use ftoomsh.

Sbg was going to give talk aimed at new ftoomsh users. Decided that
audience present was mostly already versed in this.

Some talk about the mailing list moving, news on ftoomsh, installing
software in ftoomsh etc. Nothing very useful.

ITEM 6: IRC

General agreement that we don't want ftoomsh overrun with IRC. Many
didn't want to see it banned either. Discussion about controlling
its resource usage. Concerns raised that ITD may be trying to ban IRC.

Colin to investigate auto-nicing for long running processes.

ITEM 7: Justice League of ProgSoc discussion.

Lots of discussion. Led to clarification of structure of ProgSoc:

- Executive (i.e. President, Vice, Secretary, Treasurer).
Responsible for ensuring ProgSoc running properly, reporting
to Union, planning, liasing, taking "investigative" trips to
Bali etc. *and* for establishing policy.

Establishing policy was noted to be slow process which requires
consensus from the membership. Has previously had problems getting
*any* feedback from membership.

Unresolved whether all elected office holders should be considered
part of the executive [ does anyone care? ]

- Administrative (Computer Systems Officer, System Administrators etc).
Deal with the actual running of systems.

- Justice League of ProgSoc. Called upon to interpret Policy and ensure
operation of ProgSoc fair. Specificly, investigates Acceptable Usage
Policy matters and determines what (if any) actions should be taken.
Needs to be independent of Executive and Administration.

Other points made about JLP:

- only interprets existing policy; new policy needs the consensus of
the membership.

- can investigate complaints of unfairness or discrimination.

- needs to reflect the membership (should have a cross section of
1st years, part timers etc). Turn over is probably a Good Thing.

- report to group.

- take an active role in policy formation.

In order to get the JLP up an running, the following persons were
elected to start the process:

Cameron Hutchinson <camh@nospam.socs.uts.edu.au>
Colin Pannisset <Colin.Panisset@nospam.nms.otc.com.au>
Jeremy Rashbrooke <jrashbro@nospam.socs.uts.EDU.AU>
Ryan Shelswell <ryan@nospam.socs.uts.EDU.AU>

Their first tasks are to decide what should be done about the existing
AUP complaints and to document their operational guidelines (ie: clean up
and repost JLP/SPAM postings).

Actions: AW - create JLP mailing list.
JLP - whatever you just said

ITEM 8: Logo

Iain: presented logo ideas. Will do mockups and post GIFs to the list, so
we can decide which/if we like. Also said he's going to a an MPEG for the
ProgSoc home page (the words ``... turns into a vomiting orange'' were
mentioned in passing).

ITEM 9: TFM

Discussions on how we should start work on this Real Soon Now. Hypertext
version would be Good, generally though not to compete with paper version.
Length is an issue (need to keep printing costs down) ... perhaps we
should do separate versions for SoCS and ProgSoc.

Tom: Change the font!
Vikky: Editors need collect criticisms and suggestions for readers.
ChrisF: needs to be more reference oriented. FAQ-style section with pointers
into doc?
Vikky: Yes, and an Index.
Ryan: Have HTML page which lists sections needing work.

Meeting closes at 7:50.