Jacqueline A. Morris wrote:
Yeah -I get it. North Americans aren't going to change so everyone else has to change (grow "thick skins") instead. Thanks for the welcome and understanding. These responses really let me see the cultural bias in all its glory and WHY it's so difficult to get new ppl involved.
I wonder whether we are not trying to look at the problem from the wrong side, and culture has little, if anything at all, to do with it. Not all North Americans and/or Europeans have "thick skin" and use abusive language disguised in free speech. Actually, most of them are pretty civilized and able to sustain a calm conversation, and even to listen carefully. The point is simply that if abusive language scares people away, there is an incentive in using it against your opponents, so they leave and you remain in control. The GA, to make an example, is physically occupied by a crowd that does exactly this: in the name of freedom of expression they claim to have the right of saying everything in whatever form, and if there is an attempt to enforce civil discourse rules, they scream and yell against "censorship". What escapes the casual observer is that this behaviour ends up in being the very censorship it claims to be against: by driving away those who have "thin skin" (or simply do not have time to lose with jerks), they censor de facto the discourse on the mailing list. The only way to contrast this ill behaviour is not to be scared by bullies, and have clear rules about acceptable and non acceptable behaviour. But this is no surprise to anybody who has been subscribed to mailing lists: it is the common pattern that everybody uses in the internet to defend the right of all not to be abused by a few misbehaviours. Evan's idea of dual lists is the solution that, many years ago, has been applied to the GA. There was a "monitored" and an "unmonitored" list, and the ability of people to subscribe to either one, except for people who were unable to control their behaviour, who were given only the unmonitored choice. I respect Evan's idea, but hope that we do not have to get to that point. Cheers, Roberto