Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 16:43:37 EDT
Reply-To: FrankGRUN@AOL.COM
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Frank Grunthaner <FrankGRUN@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: IS THE LIST GETTING SMALLER? with proposal!
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In a message dated 5/28/02 11:20:17 AM, dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET writes:
<< William, what you seem to be missing is that the people who leave are the
ones with expertise and experience, who have given many hours of effort to
assist others. It is hardly censorship to remove oneself from an
environment that has become unpleasant, and many people find blatant
rudeness, hair-trigger squabbling, and endless pushing of
politicosexualsociological philosophies quite unpleasant. I count myself
among them. There is another group who may leave -- that is new members
who have entered in the midst of a bout of incivility and have not had a
chance yet to discover the value of the list. I seem to remember a certain
feller from California who a) left in a huff after being subscribed for
roughly one day, and b) has proceeded since then to irritate a considerable
fraction of the list membership in various ways including pushing various
personal and political agendas unrelated to Vanagons. He has in general
been treated with considerable forbearance, and I must say that IMHO he's
gotten a lot easier to live with in the last couple months as he absorbs
some of the spirit of the list -- but he'd have done much better to be a
lot quieter in the beginning. Please forgive my not mincing words in this
situation.
>Furthermore, to attempt to lay a guilt trip is outright latent (and blatant)
>manipulation. How childish. Really!!
I beg to differ. People have, I suppose, every right to be rude, although
it certainly says a lot about them personally -- OTOH other people have an
equal right to expect an atmosphere of civility and to vote with their
feet when it is missing. If the people who leave are ?coincidentally?
those who have the greatest experience and expertise, then I submit that
the list is the poorer for it.
On that basis I suggest that it pays to keep the old-timers happy, and that
in the absence of self-control amongst list members it might indeed be
worthwhile to have a little more active participation by some form of
moderator (not necessarily the list-owner) who has/have the power to say
"This thread is ended, take it private" and make it stick.
>I hope the list IS getting smaller. I also hope those that want to leave
>just do it and don't waste list band width telling us you are going to or
>why you did it.
Does this include everyone? If Tom Carrington decides to leave the list
would you want to know why? And would you be prepared to take over the
ownership of the list, house the machinery, provide the Internet connection
for it and so on as he does? You already know if you've read his postings
that he's disappointed in the lack of self-control evidenced by various
recent flareups. If Dennis Haynes or Harold Nancy or Mark Drillock or Bob
Donalds or Brent Christensen or Ken Wilford or Ron Salmon or Frank
Condelli or Joel Walker (to name just a few) leave would you like to know
why? I'll even venture an opinion that I myself give more to the list than
I take from it -- if I get to the end of my tolerance would you care to
know what made this place not worth the effort to me?
regds,
david
>>
David,
Well said. In my view, having been involved since nearly the inception of the
list, I do feel that the technical, recreational and societal content of the
list has declined markedly in the last few years. This is certainly
abandonment by experienced and well informed former members.
Part of this is due to the generation of focused sub-lists and part is due to
the extended response to flames, off topic forays and politically correct
demands. Often, speaking for myself only, I delete whole days of
transmissions in a unit time.
One of the key separations between democracy and anarchy is personal
discipline. Participate, but offer postings with a view to contributing, or
probing for information after searching the archives and FAQs. Tom's role as
moderator should not have to be punitive. Police yourself least we drive
another moderator into the drink. Share content, as opposed to innuendo and
structured belief system pontification.
(The proposition) BTW, with the increasing number of newbies, and the size of
the archives, the FAQs for the group should be enhanced. Such an undertaking
is beyond the time resources of probably all list members. However,
individual specific topics, taken on by a volunteer newbie might be feasible.
Said newbie would take on as a project, scanning the archives on, for
example, the topic of cooling system bleeding. After pulling the material,
said newbie could digest the material and piece together a summary of the key
features with references to the archives for more detail. The group could
comment at length, after which said document owner could develop his final
piece on the matter and forward it to Vanagon.com for incorporation as a FAQ
on the matter. The result could be newbie rapidly converted to expert on his
topic and a wealth of info for all.
My ill-considered thoughts,
Frank Grunthaner
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