Hi folks, David and several others have now registered their objections to Kurt's posting habits. Though I prefer such complaints be issued to me privately, I'm willing to explore and debate the situation in the open for a bit, since member input always bears strongly on my choices of how to moderate the group.
For some background, let me post some relevant bits of the list rules, from www.silverlist.org: Permitted Topics: "Brief heads-up messages about legislation, regulation, or politics of relevence to Colloidal Silver or important alternative health issues may be posted occasionally, with follow-up to be taken off list." Prohibited Topics "Politics is forbidden unless it relates directly to CS or important alternative health issues, as mentioned above. Do not discuss political parties, elections, politicians, policy, or philosophy. Do not raise divisive issues -- you know which ones! Do not reply to political comments made by others..." These policies evolved years ago in direct response to a similar situation, where a particular member felt it was extremely important to post information about urgent matters affecting various aspects of alternative health and medicine, much as Kurt has been doing. They have served as a reasonable compromise between the urge to create a political free-for-all and the similarly destructive drive to keep things strictly ON TOPIC. Ignoring for the moment criticism of the tone or style of some of his messages, if Kurt can be said to be "stretching" any portion of these rules, it would be the "brief" and "occasionally" parts of the standards. In his defense, I can honestly say that, 1) I know he'd really like to post a lot MORE of this sort of material than he does, and 2) He's been entirely agreeable toward my requests that he slow down and be as selective as possible in his choice of what to send to the list, only requiring an occasional behind the scenes reminder from me. Now let's look a little at the specific topic, its treatment here, and the general effect of such messages on new members. Norm posted a link to an article from a local paper, representative of the benign sounding description being given of the FDA ruling in the mainstream press. Naturally, killing germs and preventing more e-coli contamination can only be a good thing, right? There have been strident critics of this technology ever since it was first proposed. A basic question I would like to see answered is this: How much radiation is involved and can it *really* be harmless to the nutritional value of the food and the health of those who eat it? Now, Kurt's chosen article is over-the-top in its style. It's definitely not attempting to be "objective" or "fair," but is rather pure polemic. The author is even foolish enough to end his first paragraph with a bad joke about people who eat irradiated food "glowing in the dark." Stripped of its alarmist tone, however, the author makes some good points. Does he, and Kurt, do injustice to our cause by his failure to appear reasonable? I have in the past discouraged some of the more "over the top" topics that I know some of our members enjoy, for the reason of not "scaring off" newcomers, like Kirsteen's friend, who can easily be frightened back into their secure ignorance of alternatives that often contradict conventional "wisdom" about disease and medicine. As I've said before, however, to some people *every one of us* are "a bunch of crackpot conspiracy theorists" for simply believing something like CS can possibly be real when it is ignored so completely by mainstream "authorities." How far must we go to protect these people? So, what should I do, folks? I look forward to your suggestions and analysis. Be well, Mike Devour silver-list owner [Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian] [[email protected] ] [Speaking only for myself... ] -- The Silver List is a moderated forum for discussing Colloidal Silver. Instructions for unsubscribing are posted at: http://silverlist.org To post, address your message to: [email protected] Address Off-Topic messages to: [email protected] The Silver List and Off Topic List archives are currently down... List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]>
