Watch for a series of posts from me about civility and respect in our forum - AND list rules. --------------------------------------------------
There have been a number of complaints in recent weeks about nasty and abusive emails being sent to list members in private, in response to their public comments in our forum. At least one of those accused has publicly stated, that he only engages in such behavior when others initiate it first.
Regardless of who starts it, this kind of behavior reflects badly upon the forum as well as the individuals involved.
HOWEVER: at this point - E-Democracy as a matter of policy does not believe that we have any power to use our rules to punish or respond formally to this kind of private behavior. We have no way of validating or confirming the authenticity of such accusations - nor do we have the ability to verify that private emails between list members are necessarily connected to our discussions.
Here is what we can do: -----------------------
1) We can step up our enforcement of rules relating to civility and respect in the forum and hope that the public tone of the forum carries over into list members offlist behavior.
As the list manager, I will be stepping up enforcement of list rules prohibiting name-calling, insults, personal accusations, and/or attacks. PLEASE - address all of your comments or replies to the entire forum, not to individuals.
If you have complaints about another list members behavior, these must be handled in private or using the St. Paul Issues Forum "RULES" list.
Violations of these rules will result in removal from the forum.
2) We can all ignore the public rants of individuals who have already diminished their own credibility. There is an old internet saying, which goes - "Don't feed the Trolls." Trolls are folks who spend their time trying to start flame/insult wars on in discussion forums. Many posts to our forum, are designed or intended to simply stir the pot and get people angry. To ignore a troll, is the surest and quickest way to get them to "go away."
3) Don't use the forum to vent and don't reply in anger. If someone really ticks you off, then hold your response for an hour or two before sending it. Nine times out of ten, after an hour you'll recognize that your reply is only fueling the fire and is better off deleted (or edited).
I've gotten pretty good at this - I can now USUALLY recognize the folly of my angry emails within about five minutes and often delete them immediately after writing them (or better yet, simply cut out the personal nonsense and send only the real meat of the argument).
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Another unrelated suggestion - "keep it short." This email has reached the limit of what most people will read, so I'm going to cut it short - more to come.........
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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