On Fri, 4 Dec 2009, Joey Smith wrote:
On Fri, Dec 04, 2009 at 10:28:38AM +0200, Jon Richfield wrote:
I haven't seen a great deal of change in PG's overall structure develop out of their niggles. Nor in any other human initiatives' structures either.
I have never had a problem with MH or Greg, but I can certainly tell you that once upon a time, I was interested in being more than a "voice" in the PG community - I tried to help in several different areas. However, there's a strange sense of glaciation and organizational conservatism that really stymied all of my efforts to see PG change. Maybe that's for the best - I can believe that there are some people in PG that are of the opinion that "it's not broke, so quit trying to fix it". However, speaking for a few of us that tried (and ultimately failed) to become more involved, it was both disheartening and demotivating - and when you care about a cause, and it feels like you're offering up your soul for them to examine, it can end up feeling like you've been personally rejected.
I mention this only because it might help others understand why they might sometimes feel negative things about individual members of PG, etc. I can say it's definitely part of what makes it so hard for me to hold a rational conversation with BB. Maybe instead of attacking the people who are running PG, you could spend your efforts in a parallel project such as what manybooks has done, or just find some other passion to pour yourself into. At least that way, it would mean one fewer person who MH might feel was attacking *him*.
People have attacked me aplenty since before hardly anyone ever saw eBooks, and as much from those some would think as "insiders" than as "outsiders." I'm used to it, so don't worry about until I yell for help or assistance. Speaking of assistance, I should state for the record that Greg Newby and I offer literally all the assistance we can to ANYONE wanting to set up kinds of "parallel" projects, including fileservers, listservers, email accounts, and even requests for volunteers in our newsletters. We are interested in seeing ALL of these proposal get some real airtime. Our basic suggestions is simply to create a small library of eBooks in what type of format you are interested in, put in some publicity about it, get a number of volunteers to help, and then do larger and larger libraries. Rinse, lather, repeat, until done to your satisfaction. However, you might have to be warned that some of those who make the louder noises about all this refuse any and all offers of assistance, they have it their minds and hearts just to tell other people what to do. Since we are all volunteers here, that doesn't always work so well. However, any ideas YOU want to work on, we'll throw all at our disposal out your direction for you to work with. mh