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There is general desire to declare a group of nLab contributors whose member's names wil "represent the nLab to the rest of the world". The main purpose of the steering committee will be to have some entity that is in principle capable of making official-sounding decision in cases where that should matter and to have some body that people can be pointed to who are wondering about "who is in charge".
We have talked about this before. Now I take action.
In this thread here we'll establish a primordial steering committe . As only regulars are reading the discussion here anyway, the rule for the primordial steering committe is: everyone who indicates that he or she wants to be part of it within two weeks from now will be part of it.
From then on, the steering committee will grow only by consensus of all its members.
What else the steering committee will do or not, presumeably only time will tell...
So, who wants to be part of it?
Recall the entry I wrote above, almost a month ago.
The two weeks I mentioned there have passed meanwhile and nobody has raised his or her hand.
But we need this now. In another thread it is being declared that I am the one to ask for personal nLab webs. Ideally, this would instead be a question to ask the steering committee.
So I guess I am on the steering committee, by default. I can understand that nobody is yearning to be part of it, as it sounds like extra work. Maybe at least the "Lab elves" should also be part of it. Certainly I won't get far without at least Andrew Stacey in the boat, as he runs the system.
A bout of Lab Gremlins meant that no-one saw this until now. The Lab Elves formally apologise (one of them has been publicly sacked as a display of our remorse at the situation (and then privately rehired so that the Lab Elf union doesn't get annoyed)) and suggest that the two week period mentioned in the first post be retroactively post-dated to now.
More seriously, just because I'm the current sysadmin doesn't mean that I should be on the steering committee. It could actually be viewed as a reason for me not to be on it as there's potential for at least confusion of roles, if not conflict of interest.
However, I'm not just sysadmin. I'm a user of the system and although at the moment I don't use it quite as much as I would like, of all the projects for getting maths and the internet to work well together, this is the one that I like the best so I would like to be on the steering committee.
Great, thanks Andrew.
No one else seems to be leaping at this, so I'll go ahead and volunteer myself, as someone who is convinced of the value of the Lab.
(Sorry about declaring you the creator of personal webs, Urs.)
I'll join, of course. I've been waiting for this thread to appear for almost a month!
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<p>Great, thanks. And here was I already getting afraid that you were all calling for a steering committee only to let me go through all the trouble alone!</p>
<p>To make this materialize somehow, I created <a href="https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/steering+committee">steering committee</a>. Please have a look. Just an idea. Feel free to criticize.</p>
<p>I linked to this from <a href="https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/HomePage">HomePage</a>, where I added the following paragraph</p>
<blockquote>
The nLab is a community undertaking. But for all matters that do require that the nLab is represented to the outside by an official decision-taking body, we have the steering committee. Nobody “is in charge of the nLab”. But the steering committee is the closest approximation to a body being in charge that we have.
</blockquote>
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I can't finf the point anymore where Ben added the HowTo remark on how to ask for personal webs. Where is that? We should edit it now accordingly.
I think that steering committee belongs on the meta web: steering committee (nlabmeta). That's what it's for, right?
I can't finf the point anymore where Ben added the HowTo remark on how to ask for personal webs. Where is that? We should edit it now accordingly.
It's at the FAQ. I've edited it.
Ah, right. I was looking of course at HowTo.
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<blockquote>
I think that steering committee belongs on the meta web:
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<p>Right, thanks.</p>
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I like alphabetical-by-first-name!
Good, thanks. I added your name here.
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Count me in too.
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<p>Good! I added your name to <a href="http://ncatlab.org/nlabmeta/show/steering+committee">the list</a></p>
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About personal webs, would it help to have a link to
http://ncatlab.org/web_list
from the nLab homepage? I'm sure most people who visit are unaware of the other webs.
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<p>Yes, lets do that in a short while when the steering committee has stably formed.</p>
<p>I had intentionally not announced the private webs so much publicy before, because I had been afraid of what do to when lots of people would request webs that we didn't know.</p>
<p>But now I think one of the first good uses of the steering committee is that it serves nicely as a body to decide about this matter. Once we have us stably constituted in a few days, we should post an announcement saying something like</p>
<blockquote>
if you want a personal web, please feel invited to post a request to the nForum saying such and such. If we know you already a bit as a decent regular, you'll get your web in a moment of time, if we don't know you yet we'll just ask you to hang around the nCafe and/or nForum and/or nLab for a while, so that we get a feeling for who you are.
</blockquote>
<p>Something like that. What do you think?</p>
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Good idea. I'll see if I have a minute to start something.
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