Pilgrims, christians and pharisees

[David Hough]

Although repeated off-topic posters to mailing lists
do need to be discouraged, I hadn't counted Ignacio as
one of those.     It sounds like others did:
it seems to be practically universal among
unmoderated electronic mailing lists,
regardless of their topic, that as they grow,
arguments
about which postings are off
topic become frequent and bitter though confined to a
small
minority of active disputants.
For most of the list members, metapostings about
other postings are best ignored, and those that
have to take them up should indeed do so in private.

An email is not a court subpoena that
requires an answer; I've never seen an etiquette book
that suggested that there is any obligation to respond
to unconstructive email; to do so is to fight fire
with gasoline.   email from the list moderator or
manager is an exception!

This is all the equivalent of telling somebody
that they are "doing the camino wrong,"  except
a large audience has to listen, at least to the extent
of deciding to ignore the discussion.   Maybe they
are, maybe they aren't, but unconstructive criticism
seldom helps, and even unsolicited constructive
criticism should be applied sparingly, lest it reveal
more of the criticizer than the criticized.

The most helpful single technical improvement is to
configure the list server software so that the default
reply goes to the sender instead of the whole group.
That tends to limit the damage from emotional shots
from the hip.



--- Ignacio Francés <ignaciofrancesaTELEFONICA.NET>
wrote:



> All of us know of examples of this behaviour, even
> among this list
> members.

> I have
> been receiving e-mails from a couple of this
> pharisees that claim that I
> am not good enough to be part of this group.

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