On Mon, 3 Jun 2002, Marvin Long, Jr. wrote: > You're right of course, but
Whoops, hit send instead of cancel. I intended to say that yes, it is rude to talk about someone in front of his face, and yes, I would hope that people would have compassion towards me if something went wrong and I began "acting out." That said, how can one describe Mark's behavior except as rude? However, I don't feel privileged to judge Mark's mental state and decide whether or not I should feel compassion or irritation. The two aren't mutally exclusive, regardless. (Compassion being universal and all that.) And although I do glean some interesting content from his posts; and although my gut tells me that Mark isn't trolling in the standard usenet sense of the word; and although I find nothing to connote ill motive in his posts; I must confess that although I really hate the idea of banning anybody, I don't have a good argument against the observation that he is acting rather like a wino who has decided to sit himself down in the middle of a conversation and talk to himself at full volume for an interminable length of time. Nor do I have a good answer to the question, "How long should we put up with this?" > > It makes me wonder. > > If I suddenly went off the deep end, would I be treated like this? Would > > Marvin or Julia or Nick be publicly rebuked in the third person in a similar > > situation? If it went on long enough to cause a general stir on the list, I'm sure we would be discussed in the open. I wouldn't expect people to start "Marvin-L" just to discuss the problem. > > I ask everyone to not take this personally, I just find some recent > > commentary to be a bit less than polite. Of course! But it seems unreasonable to start Mark-L to have a broad discussion; talking behind someone's back is also rude; and those who have addressed Mark directly have found little evidence that he's willing to discuss the issue he's created except in the same old cryptoprophetic terms. Mark: I don't want to exclude your opinions, but for reasons that have been discussed ad nauseam your current pattern of posting to Brin-L is really ticking people off. It's probably not as good as having a "captive" on-list audience, but do you suppose you could route most of your mini-essays to a web site, post the link in your signature, and save your on-list commentary for actual discussions rather than the high number of declamations that has lately been your wont? Marvin Long Austin, Texas There ain't no Devil; there's just God when he's drunk. -- Tom Waits
