I've now read all messages in this thread. One off, I can right away say that the total thread makes me feel very queasy. It looks like a 'witch' hunt is sweeping brin-l and everybody is dancing around the fire in a kind of fever, very eager to get some one fried no matter the cost. For people who advocate freedom of speech the 'shutting people up' sentiment is awfully well established. For myself I've got to say that I defended Mark once when his behaviour got really annoying and I'll defend Jeroen now for the same reason. My opinion on listmail is that if you don't like what somebody has to say, ignore it. People have a right to an opinion, fortunatly others have just as much right to ignore it. Use that right. Use filters, be it just mere mental or state of the art electronical, you are equipped with them for a reason.
Now for the rest of this very long mail, indeed exceptionally long for me. One thing I did observe with increasing amazement is that most on this list were very paranoid against the 'powers of Jeroen' who in effect never did anything, and didn't have the power to do anything much at that, to warrent that extreme form of paranoia shown. Except maybe the transgression of publishing the subscriber list after being taunted into doing so. At most one can say he was annoying, ignorant,... stupid even maybe to fall for the taunt, but nothing more. Most were happy enough to be dancing on his grave when Eileen pulled the plug on him as list administrator under the probably valid excuse of possible problems with Cornell. Only... now that Nick is list administrator or should I say in effect list owner..... most of you are also just as happy to enter on the road of censorship by setting up a dinging system. And (if I understood correctly) without prior knowledge or anouncement at that I might add. Just as with the list tests we stumbled upon this. I do respect that Nick supplying the infrastructure does have the power to do that and doesn't need asking any of us for permission, indeed. However realising this, even more disturbing do I find the fact that he is actually using that power in consent with the other listowners. It feels like the testing (without any knowledge or participation or even an invitation toward any of the regular listmembers) of the new list. It only made some dust waft and settle quickly. Considering all this, only thing I can say is that it feels strange.... very strange that everybody so paranoid toward Jeroen without any power to speak of is so trusting all at once toward Nick who in effect holds all the power on this list. ============= Out of context from exchange between Debbi and Nick: Debbi: > I must once again respectfully disagree. Anonymous dings, no matter the > value they are given, go against the idea of transparency. If > someone dings > me, I want to know who did it. Nick: I'm sure you do... but I don't think transparency need be carried that far, necessarily. ============= It's the formulation that just struck me. Mentioning this would have caused a major upheavel if it had been said by anybody else but Nick, in or out of context. I find that very disturbing even if I can see that the reason for the desired anonymity as posed by Nick is a valid one. On this subject I remember one person who countered the argument by calling someone hiding behind anonymous dings a coward. I tend to agree. I feel that if you are upset enough to ding someone you should at least have the courage to stand by that and accept the consequenses be it mailbombing or whatever. At least then the reason to remove someone from the list would be provable and valid. As people in Europe keep saying you cannot in advance punish someone for something that person hasn't yet done. Admittedly a very un-US standpoint at the moment but in my opinion it still holds. As for ============= Nick: ....the heuristics could assure that even if *everyone* actively involved in the list dinged the same person anonymously, the effect would still be relatively minimal. ============= To which I say : so why bother. The venom will still arive but later and as Jeroen IMO correctly pointed out it will only prolong the unpleasantness. That is unless the next stage is indeed the introduction of censorship in which case this introduction of dinging would make much sense. ============= Nick: Remember, we're not talking about blocking messages, just delaying them. It is quite literally a moderating effect. ============= It's an effect already achieved by people not being on line continuously and the large time-zone differences of the members on this list. Especially when considering the antagonists (the ones we are all aware off that is) delaying messages further will get the most venomous ones only in the midst of the most heated discussions. I really feel that the introduction of dinging is the admittance that we as a group have failed miserably on account of the IAAMOAC credo. The thing that struck me somewhat is that DB is the one suggesting this system. [as mentioned by Nick <"David Brin *suggested* the system">]. For an advocate of transperancy and the one who coined the idea of IAAMOAC I feel that DB (if this is indeed true), by suggesting the introduction of a dinging system, has just lost a considerable number of credits on my scale of respect. I still feel that impartial behind the scenes appealing to persons better nature (as Julia and a number of others on occasion still try to do), arguing with people off-list and putting the results of that back on list when appropriate, staying out of sticky spots or trying to sort out grudges and realising that some will stay assholes and be done with it, ignoring any further responses. This results in a much better and more valuable working moral. Enforcing something (be it the n th repetition of an opinion, a certain point of view or a dinging system) onto the members of this otherwise vibrant community IMO will do the community as a whole not much good. Maybe the Doctor should on occasion remember that it was he, who once had the short end of the stick in this community and no one on this list spurted to defend him. Lucky for him the excuse was that most didn't understand what the hell all the commotion was about and it got sorted in the end. But if we must ding I can say that I found Julia's set up of public records rather good. At least it will keep the transperancy and the possibility to spot abuse, but unfortunatly at considerable cost of time to the listowners. Even if there isn't a totally public record I do like there being a possibility to keep track of dinging quite closely. I would suggest that any listmember can request acces to the dinging list to see what is going on. Just removing the accesibillity of the dinging list one step from totally public, should gain enough privacy for all involved. The least this would do is introduce the possibility of arbitration (without ANY participation of the list owners I might add) because abuse to one might not be abuse to another. ============= And now finally a warning for all those who think they can use me against Jeroen and try to put me in the middle. I don't respond well to that kind of meddling. SO: If anybody, and I do mean _anybody_ ever again tries to use me to get Jeroen to <quote>SHUT THE FUCK UP<unquote> .... I'll publish that attempt no matter what the writer intended me or asks me to do. It'll be posted in the unabriged version on this list for all to see. So far I made a policy of no respons and keep it private even toward Jeroen or if the mail isn't totally beyond merrit I try to sort out the persons feeling without the knowledge of Jeroen. BUT I'm really absolutely totally completely sick and tired of people telling me what an 'ignorant fool', 'arrogant basterd' or 'fucking son of a bitch' etc.... my husband is. And I'll only use those quotes (for which I got appologies from some of the posters after more reasonable exchanges with considerable restraint on my part I might add). The others are not suitable for publication...... For whom it may concern, you don't need to worry, I regularly clean out my e-mail and any transgressions until now have been deleted. But I warn, and I warn only once, I won't be that polite in the future. ============== And now I thank you for your attention if you managed to sloughe (sp?) through all those thoughts of mine so far. As you can see by some of the incoherence and subject drift of this mail I'm really not good at writing these way too long mails. I really should stick to the short ones, at least they don't cost as much time but I felt it necessary to at least make the effort in keeping up my end of IAAMOAC. Sonja :o) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
