On 11/04/2010 02:34 PM, Jorge Bellas wrote: > Make that +2. I've stopped using this list as a business tool. Too many > folks are shredded here for sport. It's become a spectacle. Hopefully, it > can recover and become useful once again. > > I'm half expecting someone to respond and criticize my grammar...
It's not so bad. Most reasonable people here agree -- even if they don't express these sentiments publicly for a variety of reasons -- that the folks being "shredded" have done something to deserve it. I'm judging from the plethora of private e-mail I receive saying, "I completely agree with your flame here, but I can't rock the boat with my employer by saying so myself." A "-biz" list should, as well as discouraging people from saying things to each other that they wouldn't say in real life on the one hand, also on the other hand acknowledge the blunt facts of "business," as it were. Business has vicissitudes: there are very positive as well as intensely negative experiences, perceptions, strategies, technologies, etc. Business is a profoundly interpersonal thing; it directly concerns one's livelihood, directly impacts one's material well-being, and it is, at the end of the day, a thinly-veiled interaction of real people, with the full spectrum of thoughts and emotions that attends. Instituting a Compulsory Pleasantries Act won't change that. What do you "only say positive things to each other!" people want? To (metaphorically speaking) paint the room in warm, bright colours like yellow and orange and insist that everyone smile and be nice? In Soviet psychiatric "hospitals" for political dissidents, this kind of paint job was said to consist of "aggressively cheerful colours." Contrary to the implicit allegations of self-appointed guardians of decorum here, _very few people_ are genuinely, earnestly negative for merely for the sake of being so. Usually, people have a bone to pick for a reason, a reason everyone can appreciate and empathise with if they listen. Under the veneer of "negativity" is useful information and perspective, with all the utility as well as the limitations inherent in a single narrator. Thus, it is not necessarily the case that negative feedback is, by definition, not "constructive." The debasement, cultural Third Worldisation, and used car salesmanship of the VoIP origination business presently being ascribed to DIDX in this thread is a real story, consisting of real thoughts by real people that is a useful data point from an empirical perspective. Everyone is, of course, free to make their own judgments and purchasing decisions. However, there is clearly sufficient consensus around this angle on it that it's not just a figment of one disgruntled individual's imagination. As with anything, there are invariable excesses, of course, but there's some saying about heat and kitchens that speaks to that. In short, the value in "business"-themed lists, forums, etc. is to get the good, the bad, and the ugly, like any community. That's part of the reason, I would surmise, why Digium has hitherto taken a hands-off role regarding requests to censor or moderate these lists. It doesn't seem to me a good idea to tamper with the role played by all three of those elements of the discursive timbre. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov - Principal Evariste Systems LLC 1170 Peachtree Street 12th Floor, Suite 1200 Atlanta, GA 30309 Tel: +1-678-954-0670 Fax: +1-404-961-1892 Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/ -- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
