Jay, I disagree with you. I apologize for not yet answering your email, however with the exception of one week of vacation I have spent the entire month of May traveling for ARRL and other ARRL business and I’m frantically trying to catch up with reports, etc., one of which is a response to your post. The reasoning behind my position will be forthcoming. There is no urgency here, so I would like to respectfully ask you to hang on for another couple of days while I catch up and respond. 73 Joel W5ZN _____ From: John Bellows [mailto:jbellows@skypoint.com] Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2007 11:23 AM To: arrl-odv Subject: Re the Secret Society About a week ago I suggested a way to address the concerns raised by Rich Moseson in his “Secret Society” editorial in the June 2007 issue of CQ Magazine. In essence the suggestion was to ask W2VU for an opportunity to respond in CQ to the questions he asked in the editorial. The idea was that a clear statement of we the Board did, together with the reasons why we took those actions could at least be a first step in answering some of the concerns raised in the Moseson editorial. After I posted my comment I received several positive responses, some via odv and some direct. Additional there were a couple of emails from board members who didn’t think the suggested approach was the way to proceed. That is great since odv was created for this sort of discussion. After that first flurry of comments odv has gone quieter than HF at the bottom of the cycle. If the CQ questions had arisen in one of the web “trash talk forums” a response would likely be futile, since those gristmills seem more interested in volume than solutions. The questions raised in CQ are different, they were raised by a serious and experienced Amateur in a respected and public forum and we shouldn’t just leave them hanging. My suggestion may not be the way to proceed, but it seems that if the recent discussions about improving our communication with members and non-members are genuine, we should do something and shouldn’t let a serious question by a responsible voice in amateur radio go unanswered. Left unanswered the reasonable assumption is that the statements in the June CQ editorial are either true or the ARRL leadership simply doesn’t feel they need to answer. Either way ARRL loses. 73, Jay, KØQB