In order to inform the debates happening on other threads, I'm posting my version of the history of this group. I'm doing so in the hope that it will help people understand how we got to where we are, and help people think about where we should go from here.
history of the NYC Drupal group:
The NYC Drupal group has its roots in the first two DrupalCamps, organized primarily (if I remember right) by NoNeckNoel.
After the second drupalcamp, the meetups were started by Jacob, and held at MNN.
Based on discussion in those meetings, it was decided that the NYC Drupal community should be organized and coordinated publicly via a group on groups.drupal.org. The goal was to ensure that anyone could have a voice and to keep a high level of transparency in how things were done.
Then came Drupal Camp 3, mainly organized by Jacob
Jacob was leaving town -- moving to China -- and he realized that it would be better to have someone local run the g.d.o site. The role of site manager was always thought of as a burden, not as a position of leadership.
There was some confusion afterwards about the difference between facilitating community and being in authority/leadership role. But we all made it through the debate without anyone feeling the need to splinter the group and as a result the group continued to grow.
The responsibility of the nyc g.d.o group passed to Marketanomoly/adam and he did an amazing job of keeping the posts on-topic, experimenting with new features of the g.d.o site, communicating with other local organizers and the g.d.o maintainers to make g.d.o a better resource for everyone. He also did a great job on meetups.
Even if I stopped attending the meetups because they had moved to a corporate location requiring pre-registration and security, I continued to feel a part of the group as a whole.
Drupal Camp 4
There was a debate about moving drupal camp organizing to a separate site. The primary person advocating for the new site seemed to think that Jacob had put him into a position of authority (a position that did not exist). This led to some heated debate. When the group made it clear that there was consensus for keeping the organizing within community controlled infrastructure, the primary advocate of a new site stepped away from organizing the camp, so Adam, Sam and I took on the task.
Adam was too overloaded with work and his life (new baby!) so he went looking for someone to take over running the group and organizing the meetups. He took his responsibility to the group very seriously and made sure things would continue. This is how meetup coordination and management of g.d.o site moved to oleg/litwol.
As others have pointed out, Oleg has done a commendable job keeping the meetups happening. But, being that he is very new to New York City and the community, I think he has made some mistakes -- out of totally good intentions not malice.
Management of the site was never meant to imply leadership. The role of site manager requires someone have the time to deal with spam; the time to keep the posts organized; the motivation to work with the g.d.o crew to improve the functionality of the site for the benefit of our group and all others.
This group has a few different facets that should remain separate, not be consolidated under one board or group that acts without communicating with others.
There are the meetups; there are the drupal camps; there are more social meetings that some have asked for; these all overlap into what is the larger community that exists as members of the nyc drupal group.
It is not hard to post ideas to the group, get feedback and then act. I'd like to see someone give a detailed list of what is not served by the current methodology.
Thanks for reading, and let's have this debate so we can all move on and get back to sharing knowledge.