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ans. to Whitney on topic process

Uh, two of the three topics I indicted, including the one I felt is the most

clearly out of the topic area, are policy topics. Glen Strickland has already
produced a "value" topic that would fall within the topic area.

I would prefer that a value topic not appear on the ballot unless it goes
through the same process as the other topics. Other than that I don't care. I
think the CEDA community has pretty clearly indicated in the last few years
that they prefer policy topics so putting a value topic on the ballot or
voting for one is just a wasted vote. 

Mark writes:
>>>
However, if this is followed up on, people will more than likely be able to
use it almost every year to try and get topics they don't like off the
ballot.
>>>

If topics aren't within the topic area then sure. Later Mark asserts that all
of these topics are clearly within the topic area but he doesn't provide any
explanation of what animal rights has to do with environmental regulation.


Mark writes:
>>>
Remember what topic selection used to be like?  A committee would meet
sometime, somewhere, and a list of topics would emerge for us to vote on
(kind of like the state budget in New York). This topic committee has been
the most open  ever. They accepted volumes of input from the list (oops, I
guess that raises all those validity questions because not everyone is a
member of the list), put out daily reports on progress and asked for and
accepted more input, and replied quickly to concerns. But it seems that no
matter what lengths they
go to, they can't win.
>>>>

This is the best topic committee process we've ever had. That doesn't mean it
couldn't be a little bit better. As I noted in my original post I don't see
this as some evil topic committee conspiracy. I just think they got a bit
carried away in their quest to be creative and diverse.


Hang back,

Tim Mahoney, Pace U.
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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