No apologies needed for me. I'm only chiming in on this because I
wanted to express a preference for placement of discussions, and I
didn't think my response would be found to contain animosity or
tempestuousness - I'm from the Midwest myself, and I thought I was being
casual. Of course, having lived in upstate New York for over 40 years
now, maybe New York Casual is different from Midwest Casual - I don't
know any more, maybe because I'm starting to drift toward Senior Casual.
<<rueful smile>>
When I want to understand the deeper meaning of animosity and
tempestuous exchanges, I always have the SFWA Forum stuff to look at for
inspiration and terrifying examples. <<grin>>
And of course, this whole thread illustrates clearly the tendency of
R-Speckers to elaborate at length and in prolixity... heh, heh. <<blush>>
Best to all,
Dana
On 5/14/2010 2:50 PM, Eric Scoles wrote:
Duane --
I'm puzzled by this on several levels. First, I'm not seeing what
you're apologizing for; second, I'm not understanding why you think
the ensuing exchange was "tempestuous." You advanced a suggestion; we
offered our responses to your suggestion, much as we would have
responded if you'd offered a thought about a new novel or film or the
social implications of some new technological advance. This is what
happens in discussions. I'm sorry if you saw that as a
"counter-attack." So perhaps we have some conflicts with regard to how
we perceive tone in the written word.
For example: "Virulent animosity" is an interesting phrase to use in
this context. Not very casual. I'm probably the only one it really
even comes close to fitting with regard to Facebook, but even there,
it's a real leap, and a rather strong way to express it. Using terms
like that to assert the character of someone else's position is a good
way to engender a less than congenial tone.
I'm sorry that you've been disappointed by the facebook page, which
was created in part as a way of linking Facebook to our website
<http://r-spec.org/>* -- see the Info tab, as you might with any other
Facebook page -- and has since been used sporadically as a means to
send out notifications of events to people who are linked to it on
Facebook. We haven't really fixed on a technology platform for pushing
events -- we're all over the place on technology here. So, yeah, we
could do that part better -- but that wouldn't necessarily mean using
Facebook to do it, because that would actually narrow our audience,
not widen it.
Whether you make further suggestions is up to you. We'd be happy to
have your suggestions -- but even better would be to engage in
discussion, perhaps starting by listening to your views on something,
and offering ours in the expectation that you'd listen to them and
reciprocate. "Suggestions" does, after all, tend to imply that the
people you're making suggestions to have something they ought to be
improving upon.
--
*... and no doubt in part because somebody could. I don't know for
sure; I didn't create it.
*I would remind youngsters out there that this was once upon a time a
badge of some distinction, back before the
short-internet-attention-span burned Compuserve out of most of our
collective memories, and broadly speaking I think that person [who
shall remain nameless] is pretty technically astute. Like many people,
I expect he's just got years of social capital invested in that email
address.
On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 2:04 PM, Duane Parsons
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Carry on threads as you wish; it was merely a suggestion. Blogs
are considered ideal for online discussion but it was my
assumption the FB page was intended as a blog of sorts since I
know of no other site for this group. Frankly I'm not sure what
the purpose of the FB site actually is and given the virulent
animosity to FB exhibited by these responses I can't imagine why
it's even there. I still find round-robin letter-writing - online
or off - to be tiresome but this is not - to me - the huge,major
issue that it apparently strikes others as being. It is important
to remember that to many people - me,for example - a casual
suggestion is just that and is not intended as an attack requiring
counter-attack. I daresay I neglected to consider the rather
tempestuous nature I have learned to associate with this region. I
am fairly casual by disposition myself. People from the Midwest
tend to be that way. Again i must stress that to me this was just
a casual suggestion and I deeply apologize for the seething
emotion I gather I have triggered off. Clearly this is a very
highly charged and emotional matter to others; but not to me. I
will make no further suggestions.
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