>>[thomaspietras] It is easy to say (paraphrasing): if "they" don't want to share information, I'm not going to chase them down.<<
Do you notice that I don't paraphrase you? It goes back to your earlier observations that this is a difficult medium. It's incredibly easy to unintentionally or intentionally falsely attribute a position to someone. Here's what I actually said: "When folks are too busy to distribute and/or publish information, I'm not going to burn their time by calling them and asking for more information than they've publicly released -- it's a fool's errand to a fool's end. Each club has to decide how to disseminate information and how much they want to disseminate -- just as each person interested has to decide to try to discover information."
Let me go further in this to make sure I understand what you are recommending. You are recommending that I call a planning member of a committee of a corporate entity that is in the midst of planning and expect that planning member to individually tell me things that he and the people he's working with have not agreed should be divulged to the general public or that they have agreed to be divulged but just haven't gotten around to because communication is such a low priority. Is that what you believe is the best approach?
I see two problems with doing that. The first is that I can't, in my wildest imagination, imagine it working. The second is that if it did somehow work, then I'd be aiding and abetting a prioritization scheme that places communicating with its membership at such a low priority (e.g., writing multiple incredibly long complaints is more important than communicating with its membership.)
Here's a counter to your proposal. Why don't you, with the credibility and friendship that you have earned as being a loyal NECSA member all of these years, give someone a call and tell them that they need to use their web sites (minimally) or the message board (I know that "inner members" not only have access to the message board but have posted in the past) to distribute information as quickly as they can? Wouldn't that actually be the simplest and easiest way to approach this? Barring that, why don't you, with the credibility and friendship you've earned, tell them that if they don't want to do that you'll volunteer to do it on an on-going basis?
Somehow, I've got to believe that you'll be perceived as a more friendly "reporter" than I ever would. I believe that my best contribution at this point is to take a "minority position" publicly on issues that I believe to be important. And while I believe that there is a great deal of discomfort regarding public debate within South Carolina youth soccer clubs, I believe it is a valuable and worthwhile thing.
