[Foundation-l] VC - alternative resolution

[Florence Devouard]

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> 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]]

I guess the saunas were built by the Collective though. Hence having the 
same benefit of collaborative success.

Nice story Cimon :-)

Ant