[Foundation-l] VC - alternative resolution

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On 4/5/08, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:


> Extreme cases are not the greatest need.  However
> slowly you feel these cases were addressed; they were
> addressed.  That cannot be said about the more common
> problems faced by communities.
>
> I would much prefer an organization that is built
> around the mundane problems and is able to empower the
> communities to implement good policies by giving them
> boundaries within which to work out their own
> solutions. A group that would put together and
> translate a copyright FAQ would be fulfill a need ten
> times greater than one going around examining, and
> when neccesary implementing changes for, all the
> Wikipedias NPOV policies.  Implementing policies is
> not scalable no matter how large the VC ends up being.
> And such an effort will only stifle the ability of
> individual communities to come up with creative
> methods that may be shared back across other
> communities if successful.
>
> I think everything Ec has been saying  lately has my
> strong agreement and I am glad to see he is part of
> this group.  Not just because of that, as we often
> disagree on other topics. But because he does not seem
> to be spread as thinly as the some of the other
> members with prior commitments. I must admit I prefer
> Nathan's alternative resolution. I like cautious
> approaches best. There is a reason that no Council has
> ever been created despite years of discussion. The
> reason is not because of a lack of ambition to
> actually do it so much as to a more widespread fear of
> the ambitious.  Caution in creating this Council will
> do a great deal to allievate those fears.
>
> Birgitte SB
>

I have to admit I find your reasoning quite compelling,
even persuasive.

Antheres posting just recently about barnraising,
about how barns were the biggest and often first
construction projects, sort of reminded me of an
anecdotal, apocryphal tale, explaining why in the
New Sweden colony (in the Americas) the settlers
who were ethnically swedish, fared many times
worse than ethnically finnish settlers. The reason
was explained to me to be the following:

When Finnish settlers first broke ground, they
didn't start by building granaries, barns or grand
estate houses, but instead, first built a tiny sauna
with haste before the snows came and then slowly
but surely began to build a sturdy and well insulated
log cabin, rather than a house made of thin planks
hurriedly built as large as possible. The sauna was
flexible in its usages. Being frequently warmed to a
high temperature, it stayed louse and germ free,
keeping the people the same way. It could be used
to cure/dry meat, as a makeshift forge (very inefficient
but a workable forge for some purposes), but most
importantly, because the warmth was held in the
large amount of rocks, constantly radiating out,
the problem with not having a completely leak-proof
hermetically sealed wall structure wasn't that bad
even during winter, though they made darn sure
the log cabin they built as a more spacious
abode was tight as the anatomy of a gnat.

And after they did get their sturdy, well insulated
log-cabin built, it might for a long time do double
time as a barn, with the animals staying with
the family in sweet harmony. A barnraising would
then be done only after the fields had been
cleared (for the duration living hand to mouth
foraging and fishing and so on), and a crop
and feedstock hay had been planted in such
amounts as to require more of a moreness
of space.

It has however been suggested that saunas
had a spiritual function too for finns, so I guess
they built their "churches" first... Though their
churches were what one might call very "utilitarian".

;-)

There is great virtue in building flexible first,
then solid, and after that, enlarging - I would
think.


Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]