On Sat, 4 May 2002, J. van Baardwijk wrote: > Marvin: > >Julia, I'm not sure this is a good question for on-list discussion. First > >of all, I'm not sure it's possible for a person who distrusts Jeroen to > >answer it without violating the guidelines, as doing so necessarily > >involves making public an assessment, presumably negative, of Jeroen's > >chraracter. > > It should be possible to answer the question without having to turn it into > a personal attack. It would take more effort than it would take to say > "Jeroen is an asshole", but it should be doable. > > Consider it a challenge...
Thank you, I will. I'm happy to invite you respond in kind, if you wish. I'll start with a disclaimer: I'm writing about my feelings, which have grown over a period of years. What I'm presenting below are not accusations or allegations in the sense that I think they're "facts" which can be backed up with evidence or numerous quotations. They don't represent a deeply researched investigation. They're just my feelings. I had to think about this pretty hard for a while. I'm not sure "distrust" is an accurate word for exactly what I feel, Jeroen. I don't think you're particularly likely to violate an agreement you've made, for instance, or to deliberately lie...what I feel isn't that kind of distrust. Moreover, I do believe that you really want to help Brin-L. You put a lot of work into the list, and I feel confident that you want Brin-L to be nice place for people to be. And yet I feel a nagging uncertainty. I feel like I don't understand you, and I guess that comes from two things. One, the way you argue. There are two basic components to an argument: explaining your own reasoning, and criticizing the reasoning of the other fellow. I feel like you spend a disproportionate amount on the latter and an insufficient amount of time on the former. The impression I get is that you're prepared to argue about the words used to criticize you and to argue over the meaning of the words you've already written, but that you're reluctant to explain your reasoning, motivations, understandings of facts, etc., at greater length in order to make your opinions more clear. I feel like I can read a long argument between you and listmember X, and by the end of it I'll know exactly what X thinks and why, but I'll only have rough image of what you think and a very unclear picture of *why* exactly your opinion is what it is. By the end it seems as though you've spent so much time attacking X's reading of your words that you've forgotten to actually explain what you want X to understand, and as a result neither I nor X truly know what you wanted to say. This might just boil down to my personal preference. But I'd love to see an argument in which you explain the reasoning behind your opinions in just as much tedious detail as I or Dan or Gautam would explain our own thoughts. As it is, I feel like I see a lack of willingness to give that kind of effort on your part, and it frustrates me. It's not that you're unwilling to write at great length; but it seems to me that you're often unwilling to write at great length about precisely the things I most want to understand. 2, it really does irk me when you freely talk about the possibility of booting listmembers or making a "web of shame." Offering such administrative solutions to what IMO are personal conflicts suggests to me that you don't want to deal with listmember X as a person. Instead it feels to me as though you treat listmember X as a Brin-L technical glitch to be dealt with via a listserv command and not as another human being who is probably just as frustrated with you as you are with him. Unless listmember X is, like Kyle, a universal thorn in everyone's sides (and not just yours) it seems to me that solutions that imply removal or coercion of listmember X shouldn't even be contemplated. I've become convinced that Brin-L can't be improved by any kind of administrative regulation or coercive device: better guidelines won't help; webs of shame won't help. The only way to improve Brin-L is to be nicer to individual Brinellers, one person at a time. That goes for you and me and John and Gautam and Tom and Dan and, well, all of us. Which is why I'll now repeat a question I asked earlier, but this I'm not asking only Jeroen: I'm asking everybody. Are we willing to declare a universal apology and amnesty towards one another? If there's a listmember with which you have an aggravating problem, or more than one listmember, even, are you willing to issue and receive a blanket apology for past insults and misunderstandings; are you willing to resolve to be more careful of personal remarks in the future and to try not to be judgemental towards one another? I am, and I think it's about the only option we have left. The only other option is simply to say that Brin-L is what it is, warts and all, and it's too late to change it except by leaving. Marvin Long Austin, Texas "Never flay a live Episiarch." -- Galactic Proverbs 7563:34(j)
