Forum Guideline: Keep it Local
From:
Brian Sandle
Date:
Jul 21 03:35 UTC
Short link
andrew wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> On Fri, 2008-07-18 at 09:21 +1200, Mark Alexander wrote:
>
>> I can accept and understand that we may not want this forum used to
>> debate Auckland's roading problems - thank God we haven't got their
>> problems (yet) - but surely issues like road safety and planning (for
>> example) that have national, regional and local significance we should
>> debate the national issues as well as our local issues because our
>> local solutions may well arises out of the national solutions.
>>
>
> Personally, I feel that the major benefit of keeping this forum focussed
> strictly on issues specific to Canterbury, or global issues that have an
> impact in Canterbury, is that there's a better chance that we can
> actually *do* something about the things we're discussing rather than
> just talk about them.
>
From the rules:
"The Goals of Canterbury Public Issues Forum are:
to have active conversations about a wide range of topics that are
relevant to Canterbury and Christchurch, and
to reflect a wide range of points of view."
So perhaps these rules should have added, `with a view to possible change'.
the newsgroup nz.reg.canterbury.general has very little but spam on it
at the moment, and an occasional notice. It is supposed to be about
Canterbury matters. We voted years ago to take Christchurch out of its
name because it was bringing in lots of overseas Christian messages &c.
On nz.general no-one complains if you just want to chat with others,
even if it is not specific to nz. It is really just a nz chat group.
nz.reg.canterbury.general evolved from chch.chat where chch people could
chat with one another, and perhaps there is a gap for that now.
On some mailing lists there is a technique where you put [Off Topic] in
the title if you just want to chat with the people you have been
conversing for a while but not on the intended subject of the list.
> So, yes, there's probably not much Cantabrians could do (or would want
> to do :-) about Auckland's roading problems, but there might be lessons
> to be learned from their mistakes or successes that we can apply here,
> or things we could teach them. Alternatively, Indonesia threatening not
> to buy NZ beef is a non-local issue that probably does have an impact
> (real or potential) on the Canterbury economy.
>
>
>> I hope that our moderators allow us some sensible/reasonable
>> flexibility to be able to discuss issues of national significance
>> without being restricted to simply the Canterbury aspects of each
>> issue.
>>
>
> I think we've had some discussions here in the past that have started
> with some global issue as the context for a local problem, but then just
> lose all local significance as the participants focus on the global or
> generic aspects of the problem. I, for one, switch off at that point
> because I can see the discussion has no benefit for me, academically
> interesting though it might be.
>
> My guiding principles for reading any post on this forum are:
>
> 1. How does this affect me as a Cantabrian ?
> 2. If it affects me negatively, what can I do about it ?
>
> If you can weave answers to these questions into your posts, then you've
> got my attention :-)
>
>
>> For example I went to an excellent IPENZ public seminar of wind power
>> this week. If we were to debate this issue on this forum it would be a
>> very short debate if we were to be restricted to Canterbury issues
>> pertaining to wind power.
>>
>
> I'd be very surprised if it was a short debate, Mark - why don't you
> kick it off and we'll see what happens ? :-) I'd say wind power is very
> pertinent to Canterbury's future. Perhaps you could start with the
> outcomes from the seminar and the significance for Canterbury ?
Did they talk about climate change expectations?
.