At 11:37 AM -0700 4/13/00, Garnett J.(Joe) Zsedeny wrote: >Suppose a webmaster became angry and made obscene comments >about the Project or volunteers on a frontpage. would you >wait 48 hours to endlessly discuss it and vote on it or even >two hours? No, there are extreme cases where the NC would be >justified in delinking immediately. As I see it, that is one of the problems with the ByLaws. They *should* have specified that the NC and the webmaster would both have the authority to delink immediately in that kind of extremity. Giving someone two weeks to come into compliance when their page is shouting obscenities is, I agree, not in the best interests of the USGenWeb Project. Yet, that is what the ByLaws in effect say we must do. (Not by mentioning that situation, but by saying that the site must be given at least two weeks notice, without making any distinction between extreme violations and less severe violations.) >However, I wouldn't >expect that to occur but it is possible. Probably the ByLaws are relying on just that - that situations that extreme simply won't happen, because we are all decent people. Violations so extreme that everyone would want to have the pages delinked immediately were probably just not foreseen. In cases where the ByLaws and common sense are at odds, it is very hard to know what the right thing to do is. I really wish we could find a way to amend the ByLaws to bring them more in line with common sense. If a situation so extreme were to occur, I would still think the NC was in technical violation of the ByLaws by acting immediately, but I would not object. I would feel that it was justifiable to do what we probably all agree the ByLaws would have allowed for if they had been more carefully written. And then I would press to get the ByLaws amended. >But in this case >the Board should be the one to delink as the ByLaws specify. >If we can trash the ByLaws succeeding Boards or anyone else >can also. > >Joe Right, in this case the ByLaws and common sense are in agreement. Violations that are controversial enough that people are in fact arguing about whether they are violations or not, and that have in any case been going on for quite some time, are clearly the kind of situation that was foreseen, and that the Advisory Board was *intended* to rule upon. -- Teri