Recently, as per my Member-At-Large duties, I was asked by folks being removed from the list, or those folks that were getting warnings about being removed soon, as to why this was happening. Here is the reasoning:
We are a club, and rely on people to join the club to keep it going. We rely on people to join to cover expenses, volunteer for Board positions, to become part of something real, to ensure the members are quality folks who put in the effort to become part of the club, etc.
"The list" is a valuable resource of information, advice, camaraderie and other beneficial items to those subscribed to it, and we simply don't allow non-members to have access to that indefinitely or some folks would never join but continue to benefit from the list and only take and not give. Non-members on the list are subscribed in an "introductory role" and are given a reasonable amount of time to go through the membership process and become members. Once members, they then have the "benefit" of full and ongoing access to the list and the other membership perks.
The purge process performed by the Member-At-Large about twice a year does two things: It either 1. motivates people to join for fear they will miss out on something they enjoy, or 2. it rids the list of folks that have no intention to join but intent to only use the club's resources but never give back.
"The list" is a valuable resource of information, advice, camaraderie and other beneficial items to those subscribed to it, and we simply don't allow non-members to have access to that indefinitely or some folks would never join but continue to benefit from the list and only take and not give. Non-members on the list are subscribed in an "introductory role" and are given a reasonable amount of time to go through the membership process and become members. Once members, they then have the "benefit" of full and ongoing access to the list and the other membership perks.
The purge process performed by the Member-At-Large about twice a year does two things: It either 1. motivates people to join for fear they will miss out on something they enjoy, or 2. it rids the list of folks that have no intention to join but intent to only use the club's resources but never give back.