Bill. Good to hear from you.

I think the election issue was put to bed some number of pages back. Just for interest sake though, most of the world live every day with the same risks you outline in elections and most consider it better than the other alternatives Not perfect, just the best we have atm.

{edit} Your second point... Scientific structure of the project and like decisions were deliberately excluded from the portfolio suggested. The responsibilities outlined were specifically dealing with cruncher concerns in a bi-lateral communications capacity. The heirarchy of WCG cannot be expected to keep abreast of forum issues and this was seen as a methodology to create a liason officer in an official capacity, without significant additional time or expense to the project. {end edit)

The reason for this thread has become somewhat lost so I'll state my point again: There has been a clear communication breakdown betwen the crunchers and the project as a whole and on many fronts. Things seem to have improved in the recent past. A lack of transparency from WCG as to their intent and actions has been causing unnecessary rifts arguements and flames in the forums. Perhaps most important, where clear and decisive action is necessary, nothing is "seen to be done'. Given your occupation I'm sure that you appreciate, better than most, the weight of those words.

So my purpose hear was to create a "think tank' amongst the crunchers as to how our needs and wants might be best represented to WCG. How we might receive timely and clear feedback in regard to those requirements, and the project in general.

Much has improved but we still lack a viable mechanism to ensure a contintinuation of representation and information sharing into the future.

Cheers. ozylynx

Dave, perhaps you can provide smoe history from your recollection on how the CA's first came about. I've found that on most any forum, you get the more knowledgable folks providing answers and help to others in the forum. I fully expect that the CA position arose from that originally. And yes, while the Contact Us link may be the official way to contact the admins, to the extent that information can be provided in these forums, the more efficiently they can communicate with us. I doubt that Nelsoc sole responsibility is to enforce the rules in these forums. When you are dealing with limited resource, you have to assign priorities and work on the higher priorities. Setting those can mean some difficult choices. To the extent that we can police ourselves and behave, the less of nelsoc's time we'll use. Sadly, there are folks who seem to thrive on flaunting rules. I've seen some downright tastelessly rude posts in these forums. I guess that is unavoidable. However, I also suspect that the admins would notice a sudden a surge of emails via Contact Us if we'd all promptly use that in such cases.

I think the admins do pay attention to what we say. I think they have made a number of changes in response to discussions here. It may be nice to have them say, "that's an issue we're looking at" but then that would create an expectation that they see reasons for changing things and if they then don't, open themselves to needless criticism.

I think if folks feel the CA position is not working, then let's get rid of it. I doubt that that would stop the more knowledgable members of our community from helping the rest of us. I'm not sure what or if we'd replace it with though. It seems that it's inevitable that about every month or two, some "bruhahaa" breaks out somewhere in these forums. I'd like to think we could just give each other the benefit of the doubt at first. Simply point out that you find the post rude or offensive first and not respond to what is said. Maybe bbover3 is right and it's best to ignore such posts but I can't help but feel that ignoring such posts condones them if only tacitly. Sigh, maybe it's just not realistic to expect that folks can behave here in the forums. While for the most part, most posts are polite and civil, sooner or later someone will post first and think later. Myabe there just isn't a good answer.