Earlier: "... Men, as a tendency, are often more to-the-point than women..."
Peter Blaise responds: And your point?
First, it's "masculine versus feminine", not necessarily "men versus women". See the book: "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation" by Deborah Tannen before going off half-cocked (so to speak - once you've read the book, THEN you can go off half-cocked, okay? =8^o I say that tongue-in-cheek - doh!) See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/002-6378027-3604807? %5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Deborah%20Tanne n for more.
Second, if the one who decides what's on-topic or not is expressing their masculine "report" talk, then it makes sense that all other expressions - "rapport talk" - would, by definition, appear off-topic TO THEM. And vice versa.
Yet I put it to you that ALL conversations, report and rapport, are essential to a healthy, growing inclusive community, especially one that is trying to build a knowledge reference for everybody. We all know knowledge, like everything else, must grow or die. If any of us try to make Wikipedia stable, and lock it down, and ban any non-spam, non-vandal contributors, we are killing it.
Hence my perennial cry for multiple co-moderators here and on Wikipedia, and that no one have the power to ban, especially to resolve their own argument with someone!
This "masculine/report versus feminine/rapport" challenge is not imaginary and we are not alone. See "..."Tech and Testosterone: A Data Storage Titan Confronts Bias Claims,"...interviews with 17 former EMC salespeople who claimed they had to work in a macho, frat-boy atmosphere that included "locker-room antics, company-paid visits to strip clubs, demeaning sexual remarks or retaliation against women who complained about the atmosphere..." http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=1992C33:1CF88AC25C36E21990893F5BE2 0FABA2EFF29049075316B4
What's our choice for Wikipedia?
- Peter Blaise