Charter for GNU Herds (draft)

[Jay Hammond]

Greetings, 
I was directed to your site by a signature, probably of a member of 
yours.

I'm involved with UKTUG, a local user group for TeX. (early freeware, 

as you may know) We're considering our constitution, and I've learned 

that I don't stumble over things the way I do when I first read them. 



So before I lose the insights, here are a couple of comments you may 
want to consider, and two  things  you may 
wish to change in _your draft charter which I have just read.

Two preliminary comments; the register (style of prose) in your draft 
charter fluctuates 
between very formal, almost legalese and more informal. It's hard to 
avoid when there are many contributors.

There is evidence that capitalisation is inconsistent. So much so, 
that I can't easily guess when there should be capitals and when not.
In a legal document, a word with an initial capital is expected to 
have a special meaning compared to the lower-case version.  Such 
documents often have an early  clause spelling out  special meanings. 

Otherwise they are introduced on first use. 

The other two points are easier to fix.
They can each be found at a particular place in the text, so I can 
quote to get you there.

Charter for GNU Herds (draft)
[...]
Committee

[...]


An Office term will be 4 years. All committee positions are 
voluntary, an officer may step down at any time. After 6 months if 
the membership is dissatisfied with an officer they may vote her or 
his out of office.

I suggest this read ... "vote her or him out of office."

Voting

[...]

Guidelines:

    * Do not vote on technical subjects. Just discuss it to get the 
best technical solution. Only if the time needed to discuss it is too 

long should there be a vote.
JH:
"Only if..." can be confusing to read (see note 1 below) I suggest 
(minimal change) "...to discuss it is too long..." become "... for 
discussion is too long..."

You may prefer a more direct guideline instead:

"You may use a vote to stop technical discussion taking too long. "

This makes a nice bridge between the technical and non-technical 
voting advice. It seems to be an exception to 'Do not vote on 
technical subjects.' but it's really saying "vote on non-technical 
issues" (like 'we don't have time or energy to pursue this further')
 


note 1
technically, the sentence starts off with several possible  parse 
paths and may need a re-parse if the reader guesses to follow the 
wrong one; I'll use parens to suggest the differences in the parses 

Only if (the time needed to discuss)NP (it)NP (is too long)VP (should 

there be a vote)VP.
Only if (the time needed to discuss it)NP     (is too long)VP (should 

there be a vote)VP.

parse 1 isn't going to work, but because "it is too long" is such a 
frequently occurring combination, readers are tempted to process that 

as a chunk and pick the wrong path. Ok, I know  skilled readers will 
back up when it won't work, but it's good style not to misdirect 
readers like this.


JH:(ends)


best wishes with your group.


Jay Hammond
address@hidden