<A critical self-assessment may help foster true community building and development of esprit de corps amongst loyal members. IMHO, its better to have a few meaningful or substantive postings than the stuff we've recently seen which turns readers off and hogs the bandwidth. Pat>[PD, April 7]
In lieu of the word "self assessment", I would say "introspection". We may need to individually introspect on what we want to be known on goanet for. Do we want to be known for hurling the choicest of insults at fellow goanetters, or would we prefer to be recognised as past masters in bull shitting on this forum, or would we like to be regarded as contributors and analysers of useful information about Goa in the Indian and global context? >From personal experience I would say that even if one wanted to focus on the third category, there may still be occasions when one has to resort to the first in self defence. Hopefully this can be done sparingly. The othe two categories seem to be mutually exclusive. You tend to do either one or the other most of the time, not both. A little bit of the second category (BS) may be useful to show that you have a sense of humour. Too much of it may detract from one's credibility. The third category may, on the face of it, seem academic and harmless. But on occasion it has been found to threaten the cozy shroud of ignorance or banalities under which some people prefer to keep others. Then the abuses and insults begin to fly!
