Jeannie,
Taking your points one at a time:
> 1. In order to have a private argument, both parties must mutually
> agree to an off-list communication. I have not done so and do not give
> permission to anyone to use my email address as a means to engage in
> private email warfare. The use of my email address to send me an
> uninvited email is a one-sided act and does not constitute a private
> argument, which requires the voluntarily participation of two or more
> people to mutually agree to do off-list.
Wrong. One person engages another "without their permission" all the time in
our society. You have a choice to respond... but that choice does NOT include
the option of violating a clear label of privacy and going public with a
private mesasge. It is the norm for one party to initiate an engagment, whether
it is a postive, neutral or negative engagement. This is almost always true
when the engagement is negative -- very rarely does someone say "Hello. I'd
like permission to engage in an argument with you. Will you agree to engage in
an argument with me so that I may continue?" Don't be silly. You know the
world doesn't work that way -- and it doesn't work that way on any other list
or forum you care to name. If one makes their email address available to other
people, by participating in a list like this, they are taking their chances
that one or more of those people will send them a private message "without
their permission." I get several a day from various MOPO members.!
So do a lot of other people. It's a common occurrence. You deal with them
P...R...I...V...A...T...E...L...Y
People who think participating in a forum with other people doesn't mean they
are exposing themselves to whatever may come along are fooling themselves.
That's why there is a function in your email program to BLOCK A SENDER so that
if you don't want to receive mail from a particular person you don't have to.
Use it. That's why you have a DELETE key. Use it. In addition to those option,
it would would have been perfectly acceptable for you to say something in
public like:
"Hey, Claude, I got your private email flaming me the other day, and I don't
appreciate it. Please don't send me anything like this again." THAT would have
been acceptable. But forwarding the text of a clearly-labeled private email (or
a quotation from it) is not.
And yes, Claude may well have also breached email etiquette by flaming you, but
he did so privately and you could have done what everyone else in a similar
situation has done before you: responded, blocked him or ignored him privately
-- which is PRECISELY what you should have done.
>
> 2. I have no intention of dragging any other member of MoPo into any
> debate or argument. Various members of MoPo do a good job of that on
> their own. However, I have no intention of letting any member of MoPo
> drag me into a personal fight.
Then you should have just ignored Claude's message, blocked his email, simply
ignored him or fired back privately to him if you wanted to. Instead, you DID
drag all of us into it and violated accepted email protocol on this list -- and
any other list I know of -- by TWICE forwarding a private email to the list. To
say now you had "no intention of dragging any other member of MOPO into any
debate or argument" simply doesn't hold water. Not only did you intend it, you
have kept this debate going... even going so far as to tell Scott that you'll
do it again, even after he has clearly stated as the List Owner that he
considers posting private emails to the list something he does not want to see
done. Proclaim your innocence to someone gullible, I'm not buying it. You knew
exactly what you were doing when you forwarded those private messages to the
list.
> 3. Any issue or argument arising from a discussion on MoPo needs to
> stay on MoPo rather than taken to the private email arena. It is, in
> fact, the reverse of what you have stated and is actually an invasion of
> private domain to take a public argument off the MoPo list and turn it
> into private email flames.
Nonsense. You don't get to set the rules on MOPO, only Scott has that right.
And on this list historically people take issues that arise on MOPO into
private conversation every day -- and have done so for over 11 years now.
Including heated arguments. Especially heated arugments. Maybe it's different
on other lists you belong to, but it's commonplace here and on all the other
lists I belong to.
> 4. In deflecting these email flames back to the MoPo list, I am forcing
> the sender to stay within the confines of the public arena to propagate
> his arguments, as it is ON MoPo and NOT in private that the argument
> began. I am not going to permit a public debate to be taken into the
> private arena with me and see the attempt to do so with such emails as
> over-stepping the boundaries of public participation on MoPo.
You didn't have to "permit" anything. You could have just ignored Claude's
message and blocked his email, but no, you determined to drag a private issue
into public in VIOLATION of accepted email protocol. On many other lists what
you did you have gotten you automatically suspended the first time you did it,
not to mention the second, not to mention that you maintain you have a right to
do it again if you want. Consider yourself lucky Scott is such a mellow guy. I
would have bumped you on your second offense. The fact that you apparently
can't see what you've done is wrong and continue to say you will do it again
merely confirms that such action would have been a good decision on my part.
> 5. Being a member of a public group does not give automatic permission
> to any other member to use the email address provided as a means to
> further one's agenda. If so, then you should not have any problems with
> spammers and should actually happily engage yourself in open discourse
> with those spammers.
>
No. I delete spam unread and block the spammer's email address and keywords.
This is the correct thing to do and exactly what you should have done. I
certainly don't forward spams I get to MOPO.
> 6. You need to distinguish between personal flame emails that originate
> off-list vs. private flame emails used as a weapon in arguing with
> someone on a public on-list MoPo issue. Simply labeling such an email
> as "private" does not afford it that special status when it is an
> extension of a public argument. The recipient's involuntary receipt of
> such emails does negate their right of refusal and their right to return
> that message to the arena from where it originated, which is the MoPo
> list.
You're completely wrong about that, but obviously you can't see it. No, I don't
need to make any such distinction and I won't. Labeling an email PRIVATE means
just that, regardless of the content. It means the sender is exercising their
right to say "I don't want what I say in this message made public" and you are
obligated to respect that statement and deal with the matter privately. The
only exception might be if in the private message the sender revealed to you
that he was doing something that would harm or defraud other unsuspecting
people, in which case going public with that information would be acceptable,
but not just because the information offended you personally. That's not
sufficient grounds for violating the label of PRIVACY. You had plenty of other
options, as I've outlined above.
>
> 7. I will redirect those flame emails back to MoPo, not because I have
> no respect for private emails, but because the attempt to take a public
> argument private is not allowed by me and the person doing this will be
> redirected back to MoPo where they belong if they wish to engage me in
> any further argument. It is my freedom of choice as to whether I will
> participate with someone in private email communication and if I have
> not consented to that private communication, then the contacting member
> must stay on MoPo to continue any further discussion with me.
Yes, it is your right to choose "if I will participated with someone in private
email". You could have done that very effectivley without forwarding the
private mesages to this group. Instead, you choose to make a private mesasge
public. You did not have the "right" to do that, no matter how personally
offensive you found the message. Scott, the list owner, has said it is NOT
acceptable for you to do this. Yet you say you will continue to do this if you
feel like it. There's a disconnect and a disrespect here that you apparently
can't understand. You seem to feel your personal version of your "rights"
overules the guidellines of this list. They don't. This is not a "public" list
as you seem to think and keep saying over and over -- despite Scott's mellow,
few official rules and easy-going policy. Please NOTE that you have to apply
for membership to MOPO and Scott has to approve your membership before you are
allowed in. That makes MOPO a privately owned-and-operated list. In!
the end, the rights you have on this list are the rights that Scott says you
have. If you don't wish to go along with that then you either need to leave the
list voluntarily or risk being suspended.
> 8. Whether anyone else on MoPo desires to participate in that
> redirected argument back to MoPo is a matter of choice as well. My
> intention is to keep it where it belongs.
But it DID NOT belong here, even if the original message that inspired Claude
to write you privately appeared here. Why you can't understand this is beyond
me.
> I believe that I have made my position clear to you on this issue, JR.
> If you continue to distort my words, I will assume that it is your
> intention to do so
I'm not distorting anything. You've made yourself perfectly clear. I'm merely
responding to what you are saying and doing -- the bulk of which which I find
at best naive and cry-baby-like and at worst self-centered, stubbornly
wrong-headed and mischeviously self-distorted.
I personally was surprised and a bit shocked at what Claude said to you. And I
certainly would not have used some of the terms he used. But now it is apparent
to me that he recognized something about your attitude that I didn't see until
now and was reacting to it. He was wise to do so privately, even if you didn't
respect the accepted convention. I am obviously not so wise.
-- JR
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