At 03:43 PM 6/15/03 -0700, Jan Coffey wrote:
--- Ronn!Blankenship [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
At 01:08 PM 6/15/03 -0700, Jan Coffey wrote:
You still don't get that form jeroen (and other's) perspecitve what was
done to him did appear to be abusive.
[Ronn!:]
Did you read the copies of his messages I sent you off-list? Do I need to
send you copies of the rest of the messages he sent to the list in which he
made threats against Nick, Julia, John, and others?
[Jan:]
Yes in fact I referenced this in my message. Obviously this list ment quite a
bit to him. His actions at that point were intolerable, but I do not believe
that what I read necisarily constitutes a direct threat of the sort one would
need to be physicaly conserned about.
Those named obviously disagreed, and I do not think that they are the kind
of people who would overreact to an obviously empty threat. And the
threats did not seem entirely empty, based on what had already transpired.
[Jan:]
They were clearly the words of someone
who had been deeply hurt and was lashing out in response. While I do not
condone this, and while I find these particular actions in and of themsleves
compleatly dispicable, I also wonder what kind of response you were
expecting. There are allways more than one way to deal with a situation, and
the response in question was compleatly forseable. Therefore if you choose to
take the action and you know what the response will be, how can you then
speak of that response as if it were proof that the action you took was
corect.
By that point, the situation had gone too far for a less drastic solution
to be effective. Besides, numerous less drastic solutions had been tried
without resulting in a lasting change in Jeroen's behavior. Had I been in
Nick's place when Jeroen tried to hack his server, I would most likely have
permanently banned him then and there with no discussion or reprieve, and
contacted his ISP and perhaps his employer because what he did could be
considered a criminal offense. Nick and the rest of the list showed a
level of patience which makes Job look like he was on speed.
[Jan:]
While I think that what JvB did was absolutly wrong, while I think that his
wall of Shame is dispicable, while I disagree with his actions that put
this conflict in place, I also disagree with the actions which exaserbated
the conflict, the intolerance that prolongs it.
While every person must be responsible for their own actions, and while it is
sometimes necisary to simply allow others who are more skilled at phrasology
and spin to manipulate a situation, while it may be better to simply let
another win an argumant than start an incident, it certainly is also
dispicable for someone who is fully skilled at such manipulations to push
someone who isn't's buttons when they know full well what they will get as a
response.
You are correct that this was due at least in part to teasing by others on
the list. IIRC, during a political discussion, JDG made some claim with
which JvB did not agree. Jeroen asked John for documentation of his claim,
and when John did not provide it immediately, Jeroen started responding to
every message John posted (no matter to who or about what) by saying
something along the lines Why are you posting anything to the list before
you have answered my question? After a few dozen of those messages, some
other members weighed in to ask Jeroen to stop it, and a few started
teasing him for what he was doing. Things escalated from there.
FWIW, I tried tactfully to point out that I have learned in the school of
hard knocks that some people get enjoyment by teasing others, and as long
as the victim keeps responding, the tormentor continues to get his jollies
and keeps on doing it, so sometimes the only way to stop teasing is to stop
responding to it. Jeroen responded that he felt that the only way was to
stand up to the tormentor and fight back until the tormentor backed
down. With all due respect, it was clear then and is clear now that at
least in this particular situation fighting back only caused the situation
to escalate.
At that time, Jeroen was co-listowner. Numerous people expressed concern
(privately in many cases) that his behavior suggested that he was becoming
unsuited to that position. The event which caused him to be removed as
co-listowner was when he published a list of the e-mail addresses of all
the subscribers to the list, which caused several people who did not want
their e-mail addresses published publicly where they could be harvested by
spambots, etc., to complain.
This happened just before the list had to be moved from the Cornell
listserver because Eileen Tan was leaving Cornell. After some discussion
about where the list could be moved to, Nick offered to host the list on
his own server which he uses for his business, with Julia continuing to act
as co-listowner for administrative purposes. For whatever reason, Jeroen
