The subject of civility and tone often comes up when I'm corresponding with list members in private or meeting them in person. Some members of this list object to my efforts to moderate the tone of the discussion.
To help inform others, I'd like to share the fact that over the weekend, I got a private email (fairly typical) from a participant on this list who has posted only a few times.
This participant, indicated that he/she is much more likely to read that to post, because ....
"I've had some pretty sarcastic comments from one
of the list members and I was hoping to keep a low
profile. Now I see that a lot of these people get
sarcastic and they know each other well."I hear from people who are fairly new to our list or to St. Paul politics on a frequent basis - many of these folks are feel as if our forum is a closed clique of political insiders who like to be nasty to each other. This inhibits their participation and limits the discussion in our forum.
I suggest that all of those who wish to support and promote open and broad based political discussion, look closely at the tone and content of your posts and consider whether or not your actions are promoting public conversation and debate or discouraging it.
We have many participants who value the information that they get from our forum, but are afraid to contribute - because of the aggressive and nasty tone that some of our participants often take. Many of these "silent" lurkers, work in city or county government, community agencies, or district councils - AND could contribute much, in terms of information and opinions, to our discussion, if we encouraged them to do so. Many are simply citizens interested in getting more involved in government or politics and are using our forum to learn more about it.
To those lurkers, I would like to say that only a few of our most vocal participants are the "insiders" that they sometimes appear to be and many of us know each other, only from the posts in this forum. The best way to change the sometimes sarcastic and aggressive tone that appears from time to time, is to counter it with thoughtful posts and examples of civility.
The quality of our forum is only as great as the contributions that we get from as many people as possible. The MORE active participants that we have, the less any individual or small group can dictate the tone of the forum.
Best wishes,
-- Tim Erickson List Manager St. Paul Issues Forum http://www.e-democracy.org/stpaul/ Hamline Midway Resident 651-643-0722 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
St. Paul Links - http://www.e-democracy.org/stpaul/links.html
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