1) As others have pointed out, anyone who is shocked at the level of discourse here has not sufficiently plumbed the depths of usenet elsewhere. Part of the fantastic job that Wayne does for us is keeping it a listserv with some filtering and monitoring so we are spared the spam and posts from anonymous remailers. If you think this is bad, you can imagine what people post under the veil of anonymity.
2) A positive sign for me at least is that the nastiness seems confined to non musical issues, namely copywrite and politics (sorry if others classify these as purely musical). If we had name calling over the merits of Johnson vs Dowland vs Cutting, then I think we would be in real trouble. Having said that, one more disparaging comment about Shostakovich and I'm opening up a major can of whoopass. 3) Even within the recent flames, there seems to be a historical subtext that is keeping them fanned. The latest really seemed to start innocently enough with a reasonable question about the legality of posting scans of a manuscript you buy and a non-inflammatory answer from the publisher in question explaining the legal and moral reasons not to. The issue was ready to be retired at that point but others joined in. I have briefly looked at the archives (they are HUGE) and did not find the seed that started the conflict between RT and MO (amongst others), but unless this history includes war crimes and pedophilia, the language is uncalled for (although having lived in the city of MO's birth, I realize that even if a Sabra is trying to be polite, it might not come across that way <g>). Monkey? Excrement? Ashamed to be in the same species? Please channel such blindingly creative energies into muscial persuits. 4) For those thinking of leaving because of these flames, there really are some very simple ways to never see them again. Since it seemed to me that over half of the Vancouver LSA workshop participants were in the computer science industry, I'm not going to presume to give a seminar on the topic, but all email programs have basic filtering which can be based on author, subject and content. 5) OK, final muscial comment so this isn't an OT post. I just got the latest O'Dette CD of Nicolas Vallet music and it is fantastic. My only dissapointment was that he didn't include the pieces I downloaded from the pdf site and still haven't heard performed. Since the disc is not yet available at my usual outlets (Amazon and Mymusic.com) I had to order it directly from Harmonia Mundi and pay a slight premium. I'll be posting the ripped mp3's from the CD on my website soon (JUST KIDDING!!!!!) >Vance, >I've been on the lute list serve for only a few months, and have been >surprised by the vituperative nature of some of the messages that have >been posted. I've been on the verge of taking myself off the list >several times, because I find much of the heated discussion pointless >and a waste of bandwidth. > >I have noticed that there is an ebb and flow to the flame wars that >coincides with the full moon. We are just reaching a full moon right >now and are also cresting on another flame war. If you watch the >postings over the next month, I think you will find that in 21-28 days >we are in the middle of another spate of heated emails. About a year >ago the local newspaper did a study of crime statistics and interviewed >police, and came to the conclusion that although the actual number of >crimes rose only slightly during the full moon, the nature of the >crimes changed, with the crimes being of a much more aggravated nature. > The worst period was in the week before the actual full moon. During >that week people tend to react more strongly to perceived offenses than >they might otherwise. Perhaps some of those writing heated emails >should check the moon phase, think twice, take a deep breath, let it >out slowly, and delete their message. > >There are some truly awful things going on in the world today that >merit heated discussions. The lute is not one of them. > >Tim Motz >
