On Tue, 20 Feb 2001 17:17:21 -0800
Chuq Von Rospach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> As bill cosby says, parents don't want justice, they want quiet.
I find myself retroactively interested in this thread. The tone of
one of my lists has begun to suffer becoming somewhat caustic and
aggressive, far from the professional slightly chummy yet formal
attitude it had (and I took so long building). Tracing of adjective
patterns (the most effective way I've found to trace culture shift
sources) points to one of the more intellectually
dismissive/patronising members who posts frequently, is religiously
on-topic, never attacks members, and in all public manners fits
within every rule one could think of.
Yet, he is sabotauging the very community basis that found the list
and its value without also providing himself as a target for
moderation or removal.
Minor background: It is an older list, stretchning back informally
to 1985, but only publicly in to 1996. It has become the central
point for the field, sufficiently so to be referred to as "the
list" by most of the field, and to attract basically all the big
names as well as all the development teams as members. As such
the list carries considerable weight and influence, but has only
become so effective due to it being unaffiliated and unrelated to
any of them or their projects and religiously taking a rigorously
non-commercial even handed approach.
Recently I've become involved in founding a non-profit technical
association (ala Usenix) for the field, which turns out to be in
direct competition with one of his commercial ventures and has
caused him to have to re-write his business plans to work around
the non-profit and attempt to salvage his sunk costs.
The last time I ran into this sort of case I spent several weeks
maneuvering that person to the point where he unsubscribed himself.
Doing that took considerable time and effort; more than I have
available at this point. I was also aided by events in that
person's personal life at that time which helped distract him
(alcohol and family problems). I don't have those luxuries this
time, especially as the business model for two of his companies are
directly affected by the list (the list remains in semi-direct
competition with the one caught by the non-profit), and he has
considerable personal motivation to pursue and contest any action.
I find myself somewhat in a quandry as to how to approach this.
Approaching him will not help (done before, behaviour worsened, he
has little to lose and a lot to gain).
The list is hand moderated. The temptation is to silently boot him.
Several long standing members have as much as suggested this.
However, he has enough of a public figure to make enough noise and
rucus over my "unfair, prejudicial and discriminatory" behaviour in
doing so than I have time to handle at this point (the first
conference for the technical association is under a month away).
Ideas on approaching this?
--
J C Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---------(*) http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--
