A fair representation of the Mauritian public

From: Shelly Hermia Bhujun <shelly_hermia_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2015 22:23:15 +0400

Hello Daniel,
>From your answers, I think I can conclude that you're happy with the quality of emails from MIU members to officials of various types (and you are allowed to be).
The culture in Mauritius is such that people are not used to writing to Government Officials about matters which concerns them. Even if they do, they are unlikely to receive any response to their queries. This is the reason why some people participated in writing mails as it was a way for them to reach out to the various officials. The purpose of this mailing list is for people to share their concerns on matters related to the Internet in Mauritius. We have up to now discussed about topics related to phishing, website vulnerability etc. I believe we have the right to ask officials for an explanation and interact with them for a better understanding.
>The MIU is young and needs to build it's reputation. I'd like to see it have a reputation for bringing carefully thought out arguments, and technical expertise and a fair representation of the Mauritian public. I would prefer it didn't have a reputation for enabling/encouraging members to send low quality emails to various government and non-government representatives.
 I do agree that the mailing list is still young. There is surely room for improvement and our reputation is far from being known as technical experts. Our objective is not to have a group of subscribers who are tech savvy and who share deep thoughts on the various matter discussed. I do not want us to discourage someone who does not have a technical background or who does not have great communication skills from speaking out his mind. Having both technical and non technical subscribers from different cultural and intellectual backgrounds is what will reflect as a fair representation of the Mauritian Public.
As for technical expertise, i only see around 5-8 members sharing their opinions about technical topics. Is this fair? Should topics be reserved only to those who can actually discuss about them?
The mailing list reflects poorly in terms of good content and participation. This is unfortunately a reflection of the Mauritian reality.
>Spam would be sending irrelevant emails to a large number of users (as targets). The emails on the mailing list were neither irrelevant nor sent to a large number of users.


>I personally tend to react fairly negatively towards any organisation that enables people to fill my inbox with unwanted emails. The MIU generates a lot of emails, and we need to be careful that the ones reaching non-members are appropriate.
I propose that we discuss about this topic during the weekly Skype discussion on Thursday.I would like to thank you for raising this matter as I don't believe that we should encourage people to spam Government and Non-Government Representatives. I would highly recommend people to ensure that their emails are polite and contain carefully thought out arguments if they wish to write to anyone who is not a subscriber of this mailing list.
Regards.
Received on Mon Jun 15 2015 - 18:23:29 PST