----- Original Message ----- From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 11:27 PM Subject: Re: Demanding change (was RE: Mmm, mesquite smoky goodness (was Re: (~) Please.))
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:48:48PM -0500, Dan Minette wrote: > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 10:07 PM > > Subject: Re: Demanding change (was RE: Mmm, mesquite smoky goodness (was > > Re: (~) Please.)) > > > > > > > There's that straw man again. Who among us has said that one cannot > > > > post something that upsets the majority? > > > > > > There's that faulty memory again. Just look back to the thread where a > > > number of people advocated banning Mark; before that, there was talk > > > about kicking off JDG; before that, Alberto. > > > > Actually, that's faulty memory and logic. :-) First, with JDG and Alberto, > > the campaign to knock them off was _singular_. That's the memory part. > > Actually, that's faulty reading comprehension, Dan. Or do you claim > Jeroen is not a "who among us" and he didn't talk (write) about kicking > off JDG & Alberto? Well, lets look at that statement both literally and in practice. Literally, Jeroen discussed kicking people off for violating the rules. While I admit that I often try to forget his posts after I read them, I don't think he stated that one cannot post something that upset the majority. He stated that one cannot violiate the rules. With Alberto, it was definately a rules thing, as he stated. It had nothing to do with upsetting the majority. JDG's "crime" was giving almost as well as he got in a dispute with Jeroen. I would guess that, if you polled the people on this, the vast majority would have said "a plauge on your two houses", while a significant minority would blame Jeroen more than JDG. If you look at the hundreds of emails that came in response, it would be fair to say that the majority of those that posted were agast at Jeroen trying to get JDG punished for getting in an arguement with him. Now Jeroen couched it in terms of rules violations, but I will be more than happy to agree that bothering Jeroen was the real issue. Indeed, if you were to argue that a significant problem with Brin-L is that it is difficult to get into any sort of dispute at all with Jeroen without being threatened, then I'd agree with you. I'd go further and say that Jeroen becoming a listowner exasperated the problem. However, that is a Jeroen problem, not a community standards problem. In short, while I agree that you have shown that there someone among us has discussed kicking off JDG and Alberto, I do not see any support for the contention that the "crime" was offending the majority. In the first case, it was a silly treatment of the ettiquette guidelines as a penal code. In the second case, it was trying to punish who offened Jeroen. In short, my contention is that Jeroen is not the majority. > > > The logical fallacy here is > > > > If there are things that offend the majority that cannot be done, > > > > then > > > > one cannot offend the majority. > > You have confused Nick's question with, "Who among us has said that one > can NEVER post something that upsets the majority". > > > My class in symbolic logic was over 25 years ago, but I still remember > > a bit. > > How about English class? About the same time frame. However, arguing the meaning out of English paragraphs has meant tenure for thousands, so I can't say that I've mastered it. Nick may correct me, but I think I got the general thrust of the idea he expressed there. Dan M.
