Hello Joseph,
and list
I am one of
the guilty parties and wish to apologise if my posts was
out of line as far as this list is concerned. I will
refrain from off topic discussions in futere.
Having said
that, I support the suggestion of a possible sub-list to
be used for off topic chats.
Cheers
Christo
Dear members of the
NVDA community and members of this forum:
First, thank you for
your valuable posts for the past few days.
It has been brought to
our attention that we’re straying way off topic from the
purpose of this forum, stemming from a discussion that the
moderator has intervened. A few hours later, someone
started discussing a topic that didn’t fit the subject
line to a point where we’ve started discussing other
topics.
For the past few
hours, Joseph Lee (the moderator/associate owner) was
debating whether to declare an emergency, a first of its
kind for this forum. An emergency mode means all off-topic
posts are closed immediately. He says that, as the chair
of the committee in charge of NVDACon preparations, he
felt uneasy regarding this, seeing that this could have an
impact on the reputation of NVDA, NVDACon and this forum.
Thus, Joseph Lee says:
I, Joseph Lee, seeing
the current situation on the NVDA list and due to an
important event that’ll take place in less than 48 hours
from now, hereby declare that an emergency exists in NVDA
International Users Forum. Any off-topic subjects
discussed for the past few hours, shortly after the
moderator’s declaration on April 18, 2016, are hereby
nullified (threads closed). This emergency will be lifted
once the leadership team (Nimer Jaber and Joseph Lee)
determine that the conditions for emergency mode is no
more.
Joseph speaking:
On mailing lists I’m a
moderator of, I usually allow some off-topic posts. But
what we saw for the past few hours has been something that
is beyond words. Perhaps I’m feeling the stress while
organizing NVDACon 2016 (which has been in the works for
the past six months), perhaps I’m feeling academic stress,
perhaps I’m worried too much about the reputation of this
forum and what not. For the past few days, I’ve been
thinking about current state of this community and what we
can do to make it better, as well as to help NV Access and
other members of the NVDA community have a joyful year
throughout 2016 as we celebrate NVDA’s tenth anniversary.
To put it bluntly, I’m very disappointed at the state of
NVDA International Users Forum, and to put it nicely,
we’re in the danger of alienating potential community
members due to our conduct (and some people did leave our
list). If this happened at another time, it would have
ended with a letter; but we’re living in the eve of NVDA
Users and Developers Conference 2016 (tenth Anniversary
Edition), an important event that’ll serve as an important
occasion for each and every one of us to unite under NVDA,
its history, future potential and celebrating its
features. To find an international forum conducting
ourselves like this at the eve of this important event is,
to me, a huge public relations disaster (and I’m not
saying this lightly).
At this moment I’d
like to kindly ask that we ask ourselves the following:
how did this happen, why is this happening, and what can
we do?
Thus, for the sake of
NV Access, rest of the NVDA community, NVDACon organizers
and for other users around the world, I’d like to
sincerely request that we show ourselves as model users
and community members throughout NVDACon days and beyond
(like many of you, I’d like to see NVDACon become a
successful gathering).
If you have any
questions, commetns or concerns regarding the emergency
mode, please let Nimer and I (Joseph Lee) now via email at
nvda+owner@groups.io.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Joseph S. Lee
Moderator, NVDA
International Users Forum
Translator, code
contributor and community add-ons reviewer, NVDA screen
reader project
Chair, NVDA Tenth
Anniversary Planning Committee
