[pp.int.general] Is PPI dead, or was it ever really born?

Mon Sep 27 10:02:44 CEST 2010

  Is there someone taking notes at board meetings? If so, couldn't those 
be publicized here via the mailing list to visualize the work of the board?

On 27.09.10 09:41, Joonas Mäkinen wrote:
> It is true that some actions should be more visible and more could be
> wished for. It is, however, a very bad idea to demand too much from
> such an organisation at this stage. ACTA team, getting website updated
> and receiving request of help from starting parties is, while maybe
> not the best possible range of activities at the moment, enough.
>
> The challenges have now been set and people inside and outside the
> board are aware of them. Reminders are alright, but putting too much
> pressure on everything will risk killing off even the small benefits
> PPI has. Sarcastic tones and mockery will not help.
>
> If the worry is lost potential, I believe there's always something one
> can do. One cannot worry about damages as there aren't any. If there
> are people who'd like to help, then communication and cooperation
> between the current board and others should be made stronger (and
> relaxed!).
>
>
> 2010/9/27, Sven Clement<sven.clement at gmail.com>:
>> Hello Andrew,
>>
>> As I'm not a board member of the PPI I can only point out my personal
>> opinion, but without starting a flamewar I want to take the opposite point
>> of view.
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:29 AM, Andrew Norton<ktetch at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
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>>> I say this with a heavy heart, but after 5 months, I think it's time we
>>> faced facts and called the PPI a still-born baby, bury it and move on.
>>>
>> There I simply disagree!
>>
>>
>>> The whole statutes thing was where it first went off the rocks, using a
>>> messy forum system to try and write statutes, it'd never work out well,
>>> and it didn't. Then when they were finally done, they were done AT the
>>> conference, so those that couldn't attend were unable to see them,
>>> instead we had a pdf document that didn't match what was talked over.
>>> Who was responsible for this?
>>>
>>> There was an email that went out April the 17th, from Will Tovey,
>>> (
>>> http://lists.pirateweb.net/pipermail/pp.international.general/2010-April/006591.html
>>> )
>>> "Here is the document that we will be using for the discussion of the
>>> statutes. Please note, that it is not the Statutes, and is not legal or
>>> binding in any way yet. Parts of it could (and will) be changed by the
>>> worldwide Assembly of the representatives of the Pirate Parties later on
>>> today.
>>>
>>> P.S: Jurgen, can you please forward this document to all registered
>>> attendees
>>> at the conference? Thank you!"
>>>
>>> The day before, and we've only just got the DRAFT of them. The next day,
>>> Steffen Ortmann posted this
>>> (
>>> http://lists.pirateweb.net/pipermail/pp.international.general/2010-April/006608.html
>>> )
>>> "The final (but still unsigned) version of the PPI statutes
>>> are now available on th wiki.
>>>
>>> http://int.piratenpartei.de/Main_Page"
>>>
>> That mistake was noticed and I personally am not happy about this and I
>> don't think that it was the mistake of the current board but more of a
>> general lack of agreement about what the PPI should or should not be. The
>> statutes proposal had to be modular to be easily modifiable by the general
>> assembly because it was not clear what PPI should do. Furthermore but this
>> is my personal opinion, PPI was badly restrained by the fact that they are
>> not allowed to ask for a membership fee. But hey, who needs money to
>> organize things?
>>
>>
>>> The conference itself was also a mess. Part of that was due to the
>>> volcano, but the rest was just, let's be blunt, piss-poor planning.
>>> There was a camera that often was not pointed at the 'meeting', and the
>>> sound wasn't very good. Participants via the net (for those not in the
>>> EU who had a) expensive journeys and b) no chance of subsidy by the EU)
>>> was often ignored.
>>>
>> As I did not watch the stream, I cannot comment on this but in my opinion it
>> was not willingly that Wolfgang pointed the camera away, but as I said I did
>> not see the stream.
>>
>>
>>> The statutes were signed, but while a big deal was made and automatic
>>> acceptance by those who attended and signed there and then, others,
>>> including the US Pirate Party, are not so 'lucky'. We wanted to put the
>>> statutes to our members (and we said as much,
>>> publiclyhttp://
>>> lists.pirateweb.net/pipermail/pp.international.general/2010-April/006593.html
>>> ),
>>> to make sure they approved of it, and since,
>>> due to an inability to get them out before the conference so we could do
>>> that, we put them to the membership the Tuesday AFTER the conference. It
>>> was approved and our notification of that was sent to the new PPI board
>>> within a few days. We still have not heard anything back. Let me make
>>> things perfectly clear. We (the US Party) had every intention of joining
>>> at the conference (we had remote delegates present), the only reason we
>>> couldn't is because the paperwork/documents that were supposed to be
>>> done BEFORE the conference (2 weeks before, by the original time-line)
>>> wasn't completed until DURING the conference. It's a bit hard to have
>>> members approval to join, when we don't have it until an hour before. Of
>>> course, we clearly weren't expected to join, because the signature page
>>> doesn't even list the US, *DESPITE US PARTY MEMBERS BEING AT THE
>>> CONFERENCE*
>>>
>> I did the signature page for the parties being present AND who did tell me
>> that they would sign at the conference OR who would send me signatures via
>> remote participation.
>>
>> The signature page was intended for those who would sign immediately, so if
>> this was not clear to the US Party or if this enraged you, I have to
>> apologize.
>>
>> I understand your anger about how the conference went, but I have to tell
>> you, I was not happy with everything and I would have done things
>> differently but it has to be clear that the PPI is a compromise between all
>> the expectations and restrictions different parties wanted to impose.
>>
>>
>>> Of course, it gets better. Exactly what has the PPI been doing the last
>>> few months? I've not heard anything, I've not seen any open
>>> announcements of meetings, instead they're tucked away on the wiki
>>> (http://wiki.pp-international.net/PPI_Board). The meetings themselves
>>> are a bit of a joke. Attendance by the board is usually low, and nothing
>>> is ever actually discussed.
>>>
>> I do not listen to the board meetings as I trust Jerry to inform me, and he
>> confirmed that attendance by board members is low, but I ask you what are
>> they allowed to do? The statutes do not foresee that the board can exclude
>> board members.
>>
>> Anyway, with the fact in mind, that they do not have money (except some
>> little donations) PPI is working, they are currently rolling out the PPI
>> press release exchange (parrot.pp-international.net), furthermore they have
>> an ACTA taskforce working hard to prevent ACTA becoming reality
>>
>> PPI is working on a new Identity or better a real Identity before launching
>> a new website which is already in planning stage.
>>
>>
>>> We also recently got a call from their new 'PPI International
>>> coordinator'. Nice person, its a hard job (been there done that) and yet
>>> the information this poor person has been given by the board is
>>> outdated, or flat-out wrong. Silke was told there were 3 Pirate Parties
>>> in the US. There is only one. One, the 'American pirate party' was a
>>> reddit flash in the pan that never actually did anything, and died after
>>> 2 months of activity; the other was actually the subject of a number of
>>> PPI meetings late last year and earlier this year, and was dealt with.
>>> It seems reading it's own records is beyond the current board.
>>>
>> I have to say that I did not follow the USA issue closely so I cannot
>> comment.
>>
>>
>>> I've also heard from others that there are whole lists of people in
>>> task-forces, that have been waiting for 'something to do', yet have been
>>> ignored by the board.
>>>
>> Which? I know from work to be done and nobody being available to do it...
>>
>>
>>> Boards are another thing that need mentioning, as the PPI forum is
>>> completely buried in spam. Despite 7 board members, and not actually
>>> doing anything (as evidenced by their own meeting minutes) they can't
>>> even keep a forum free of spam.
>>>
>> I do not think and there we probably disagree that it is the boards work to
>> keep a forum clean! I think that if the tech TF doesn't do it, then we might
>> need to find a dedicated forum mod.
>>
>>
>>> It's a classic case of all around incompetence. Pirate Party
>>> International is anything but. Even as Pirate Party Europe it fails
>>> miserably. All it is, is 'Pirate Party of the week'
>>>
>> See my comments before, I disagree with this point
>>
>>
>>> Let's just acknowledge what I'm sure we all probably know by now. PPI is
>>> dead. Those that were entrusted to run it, have either been completely
>>> inexperienced to deal with it, generally incompetent, or lazy. I would
>>> say let's sack them all, and get some new people in to run it, but I
>>> can't, because my party's membership still  hasn't been processed after
>>> 5 months (see above). And frankly, I'm not sure who'd be mug enough to
>>> take on the task. After all, if they've screwed up the basics like
>>> 'membership' and 'running a forum', how badly F***ed up are things like
>>> the legal documents that have to be submitted. Would anyone want to take
>>> the legal liability of taking over this clusterf**k - I certainly
>>> wouldn't.
>>>
>> Let's be blunt here, the mess was already there with a "de facto"
>> association with no statutes and a bank account with not known liabilities
>> before the conference and it was pointed out many times at the conference
>> (also by me) that we would need an organization to get things running
>> smoother. (and to get more legal protection for the board)
>>
>>
>>> Jerry, Gregory, as 'co-chairmen' the balance of it falls upon the two of
>>> you, you're supposed to lead by example, and your leadership is clearly
>>> lacking. Joachim, as the chief administrator, you should have noticed
>>> this yourself. That you've not said anything mans you either didn't see
>>> it, or didn't want to make it public. Either way is bad. And Jakub,
>>> Bohomil, and Aleksandar, as board members, your job is to keep the board
>>> focused and working. As it hasn't, then you've not been fulfilling your
>>> role.
>>>
>>> At present, PPI is a lame duck, a do-nothing organization that is
>>> supposed to do something. A organization of parties that could be
>>> replaced, at present, by one part-time blogger.
>>>
>> I do not agree that this is because of the board but because of statutes
>> which are a compromise between different opinions about PPI and I have to
>> repeat myself, this can be changed by the GA.
>>
>>
>>> Back in April, there was a thread of messages here "The conference -
>>> what went wrong, and why we NEED to do better!"
>>> (
>>> http://lists.pirateweb.net/pipermail/pp.international.general/2010-April/thread.html
>>> )
>>> and NOTHING has been taken from that.
>>>
>> If I may refer to your mail (
>> http://lists.pirateweb.net/pipermail/pp.international.general/2010-April/006661.html)
>> nothing could have been done better in the meantime! Those are valid points
>> but are not possible to incorporate before the next conference.
>>
>>
>>> Since there's no provision is the statutes for any form of board member
>>> removal (fancy that...) I make the following proposal to the board
>>> members.
>>>
>> Oh sorry I did not see this comment before beginning to answer and dissect
>> you message word by word ;) I pointed you to the same in my answer...
>>
>>
>>> Shape up, or Ship out!
>>>
>>> I'll give you until October 18th. That's the 6 month anniversary of the
>>> much lauded 'founding'. Get everything into gear, do what you're
>>> SUPPOSED to be doing, or resign.
>>>
>> I would propose to give them until the first year anniversary before
>> restarting the entire thing which will lead in my opinion to new problems
>> where pirates internationally will have no common platform.
>>
>>
>>> This will anger some people, but frankly, the actions (or complete lack
>>> thereof) have angered me, and only the extremely naive would accept that
>>> hiding from the truth is acceptable - and if you are that naive,
>>> politics isn't for you.
>>>
>> I understand your anger but I think its not a lack of actions but more a
>> lack of communication which angers you.
>>
>> Sven Clement
>> Pirate Party Luxembourg
>>
>>
>>> Enough is enough.
>>>
>>> Andrew Norton
>>> US PP Legal Officer
>>>
>>> - --
>>> Andrew Norton
>>> http://ktetch.blogspot.com
>>> Tel: +1(352)6-KTETCH / +1[352-658-3824]
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