I find it interesting, and a little distressing, that there seems to be a "groupthink" phenomenon on this list (and also sometimes on Wikipedia itself). I saw it just now in the discussion of an expulsion from this list. When it was first brought up for comment, there was a "me-too" chorus of agreement with the ban. Then, a day later, I posted my dissenting commentary (which I actually wrote yesterday, but failed to successfully post due to a misconfigured mail program... getting outbound mail sent while on vacation and using various different access providers is a pain with all the security moves and port blocking tossing up hoops to be navigated), and suddenly there were several other dissenting views following in close succession.
Since I've never been accused of being timid about my opinions, I'll chalk it up to the fact that, as the Canadian in the office this week here in Boston, I've been getting all kinds of lovely overtime hours bestowed on me as people say, 'Hey, do you think you could cover....'. I didn't have time to actually articulate it and actually type it, but it had occurred to me.
Frankly, I think in any group of a few thousand people, we get about the normal amount of acquiescence and people who say 'me too' simply because sometimes, someone else has just expressed things they'd sort of thought. Would you rather have said it and had no one say, 'That's been bothering me, too?' and have no idea that other people were in agreement? (that sounds snarkier than intended, but I really mean it; it's a high volume list, some people might prefer that. But I'd rather have the volume and see when people want to chime in, even if it's just to say, 'Hey, he's right.'
Thes.