From: donna nutt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >I must say the responses to Dora > Smith have truly intimidated me. I imagine this will be one of > very few posts I'll ever make on this board because I figure I'll be > misunderstood by someone and get deluged with critical emails and postings.
Hi, Donna I'm sorry you got off to such a bad start with the us. Arachne is an especially kind and gentle list, but no list is totally without flames. The most important thing to remember is that each person reads a message and responds, usually before all the other responses have come in (much less been read by that person). This means each person writes to criticize, which doesn't happen in face-to-face conversations. F2F means I hear someone else voice her concern or put the "offender" in her place, so I don't feel the need to do so. With email, between not having the non-verbal signals of F2F and not hearing other responses before I decide to respond, the reaction to a poorly-stated or poorly- thought statement comes out a lot worse than any one person intended. Thus, if you are the recipient of what seems like an attack (like what Dora got), divide the reaction by about 100 and let the other 99% roll off your back. To the rest of us, in addition to Anje's "count to ten before responding", I'd like to add two suggestions/requests: first, read the rest of that day's mail before responding--someone may have already voiced your opinion, maybe even better than you could have; second, write to the person personally--we don't need to inflame the list with angry reactions to the angry reactions, which can snowball into true flame wars. I don't pretend I always follow that advice myself, but I do try, and I believe the world would be a better place if we all tried. Robin P. Los Angeles, California, USA (formerly Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
