On Thu, 2 May 2002, Jon Gabriel wrote: > I'd like to ask the list for a reality check.
Reality Check, part 1 I think it would depend on how Jeroen carries out his idea. If he puts his catalogue of shame on brin-l.com, then that makes it an "official" part of Brin-L culture, and IMO that would be a pretty clear abuse of his listowner position and a clear threat against other listmembers. If he were to put his catalogue of shame on a personal website, a place without any "official" ties to Brin-L, then the question of whether the catalogue constitues a true threat or an innocuous and juvenile stunt would depend entirely on how it's structured and worded. In any event, the threat, if there is one, doesn't come from making people's words public -- they're already public. The threat comes from broadcasting accusations of misbehavior and the risk inherent in the possibility that whoever reads them will believe the accusations without wading through the Brin-L archives to learn the full context and history behind any given statement. One way to counter this problem might be if Jeroen allows the accused to post full rebuttals on the catalogue of shame, so that the casual reader will get both points of view without having to wade through the Brin-L archive. A better counter would be to make it possible for any listmember to post accusations and for any listmember to post rebuttals without Jeroen's consent or intervention. But of course we can already do that on Brin-L itself. In any event, what makes Jeroen's idea astonishingly bad for him personally is the effect that the mere fact of creating a catalogue of shame will have on the casual reader's opinion of him. I can see a person going down the list and saying, "Ok, I see from this that Dan and John and Gautam and Marvin and some other people occasionally say intemperate things, presumably in the heat of argument. But what kind of nut would actually trouble himself to index, document, and publish such a list?" A person not familiar with mailing lists will be puzzled at best and probably dismissive; a person well-acquainted with mailing lists will ROTFL[H/H]AO. There's another complication, too: Jeroen states that he wishes to deter what he considers bad behavior, but that he's not making a threat. However, the only way to deter behavior is to promise genuine or potential harm, which is the very definition of a threat. "Deter" and "threaten" are synonyms in this context. In the catalogue of shame, Jeroen has come up with a strategy of soliciting harm from the world at large towards those he judges to be offenders. (If that is not your strategy, Jeroen, then please explain why it's not sufficient to declaim your attackers on Brin-L itself.) I cannot think of any definition for this strategy but a threat of real-world consequences for on-list behavior. Jeroen says he just wants to make the list a happier place, a place where people won't indulge in personal attacks. To the reader of this post I can only ask: out of all the possible options available to Jeroen, is a "catalogue of shame" really a tactic that's consistent with his stated goal? Is it the sort of thing you'd contemplate yourself if you actually wanted to improve the tone of Brin-L? In any event, Jeroen, if you do go through with this idea, make sure you read all my past arguments with Gautam and John. I'm pretty sure you can find good things to accuse me of there (better than almost anything I've said to you, in fact) and I'd hate for your list to be incomplete. Marvin Long Austin, Texas
