Subject: Policy site and process
To: Jeff.Callaway@canaccord.com
Cc: drmark@dyrholm.ca, lbyfield@cruzinternet.com, hiltonjohn@yahoo.com, vitor@wildrosealliance.ca
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-MD5: Qk8ton9rvLUpRi/DtsO8aQ==
While you were away....
On April 5th, John Hob, Link Byfield, Mark Dyrholm,and I met in Calgary to
discuss both the policy process and the pay and perks task force AGM resolution.
As you may know I've done all the tech work for pay and perks - and as you
probably don't know, I also put together a policy discussion site for John that
had all 71 AGM resolutions in 11 groups. As of last Monday the site had 257
"subscriber" members (i.e, people who had the passwords and ids needed write
comments) and was fully moderated.
As one outcome of the April 5th meeting it was decided that I would put together
a ready to go package asking our email enabled members to vote on the draft
resolutions then slated for the AGM so John and Link could determine whether to
just release the eight or so surveys (so each member would only get about 9
questions) this would involve, stop the process, or seek additional input before
deciding.
As the first step in this John called Craig Docksteader (who operates the
wildrose servers via a contract with a Vancouver based provider) and asked
him to release the email list to me for error checking (I'm guessing that about
15% of them are wrong, about half due to simple typos), correction, counting,
and random assignment to vote groups.
I suggested he get the updated list from the party, John requested that from Dan
kary, Vitor intervened and denied access to the list asserting that the servers
and list are his and not to be shared with anyone.
On Sunday April 11th Vitor apparently instructed John to shut down the policy
discussion site - I don't know what was said, but I got an email from John
asking me to password protect some or all of it. Given that it was already
id/password protected and moderated, I asked for clarification and got John's
agreement by phone Monday morning that nothing would change until we'd talked to
Vitor to figure out what the issue was.
What actually happened, however, was that I got a note from Craig later that
morning (after i'd warned him this was coming and suggested he check with Link
before acting) saying that Vitor had ordered it shutdown and made himself sole
custodian of access rights to it.
---
My best guess (he has not responded to me) is that Vitor is simply acting to
protect a party asset without any knowledge of what's going on or who was doing
what or for whom. However:
1) I believe it is inappropriate for a party employee to overrule two party VPs;
2) I believe he has no right to edit the policy documents put forward by the
CAs.
Since this means he can change the format but not the content, any rationale
based on removing objectionable content is absurd - and it doesn't matter who
does the actual editing. The text has to stand as the CA or other member group
put it forward.
3) I believe he has no right to deny member access to policy information; and,
The question here is: on what basis is he going to decide a particular member
cannot have access?
4) I believe the net result of this is to cost the party time and money
for no obvious gain;
5) and, of course, on a personal basis I deeply resent the completely cavalier
way he's taken over the whole process.