[Sosfbay-discuss] Applying NVC to the situtation...

[Andrea Dorey]

Thanks for clarifying that.  You are a very benign dictator!
A.

On Mar 9, 2007, at 11:56 AM, Cameron L. Spitzer wrote:

>
> For now, I'm in charge of sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org.
> It's paid for by the Green Party of California through
> its IT Subcommittee.  That makes GP of Cal responsible
> for it, and my charge over it is delegated from GP of Cal.
>
> Here is my philosophy about running a discussion
> list, which has been the de-facto charter of this list
> for years.  He who governs least, governs best.
> That is, no rules that are not needed to prevent harm.
> Trust the subscribers to behave themselves well enough
> most of the time.  Politeness is common sense.
>
> Revealing confidential information is harmful.  Could be
> personal, or strategic.  Threats and insults are harmful.
> Racism, sexism, homophobia, ethnism, etc etc are harmful.
> Sarcasm is often harmful.
> Technical stunts like broad crossposting and
> tricky Bcc arrangements have done harm.  Subscribing
> one mailing list to another makes a mess.
> Subscribing addresses you don't control is harmful.
>
> But the most harmful recurring behavior I've seen in
> two decades of email and Usenet has been the angry
> back-and-forth known as "flame wars."  In the heat of the moment,
> people reply to email in ways they might not face to face.
> They degrade the value of a mailing list, driving away the
> most thoughtful subscribers, in a spiral that has wrecked
> much of Usenet and countless mailing lists and web fora.
> They're easy to stop, just let the other guy have
> the last word.
>
> Flame wars often begin with one subscriber trying to
> control the behavior of another.
> The flame wars over restricting visitors do
> more harm than the visitors' presence might.
> So my rule is the same as for a face to face meeting.
> Visitors welcome as long as they don't disrupt the
> meeting.  I can imagine a visitor might be interested in
> us as a typical county, whether we are or not, just as
> a Green from the East might want to sit in on our
> business meeting.
>
> Relax.  Trust your list owner.  If a visitor gets out of
> hand, I deal with it off-list.  I can block them if I
> have to.
>
> -- 
> Cameron, your autocratic list dictator.
> http://greens.org/cls
>
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>