On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 2:49 AM, Charles Matthewscharles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
stevertigo wrote:
Can you not do this thing of bad-mouthing people who disagree with you? (See your attitude to Cary Bass.)
How have I bad-mouthed anyone? My "attitude" toward Cary has actually been quite positive - before I ever tried to communicate with him, I had already imparted to him such human qualities as a bright and an outgoing personality, and a fair and balanced approach to new concepts. Hence when I made my plain and open request - via wikein, mediazilla, and a private email - I had no doubt that we would soon get a response from him. I was simply expressing my disappointment in how things turned out, and in fact I attribute his lack of responsiveness not to him, personally, but to whatever behind-the-scenes artifices may be constricting his degrees of motion and general sense of freedom.
I seem to remember a thread with a very different feel. You had some support from Fred Bauder, who likes the idea of discussing dispute resolution.
Fred's an intelligent being, and when I'm not deliberately pouring fuel on the fire - he might even agree with me. He understands this is an open project, and that in all but a few special cases, its issues that are best discussed openly. Pretty simple, actually.
You had very definite opposition from me. You can call me sub-articulate all you like, but I don't think it will stick.
I would never call you sub-articulate, Charles. In fact you are one of the most articulate people I've ever dealt with. However, with that said, as I recall in this case you just didn't have much of a point to make other than you didn't like it. I would not say this means that you were sub-artculate, personally, but rather that your posting on the matter lacked the substantive and articulated argument we've generally come to expect from you.
And my point is that your broad brush means the second sentence would self-contradict, in a welter of meddling and advocacy. If that's the intended remit (everything up to and including the kitchen sink) then there was no misunderstanding at all about the scope.
I don't see the contradiction. A large part of 'being helpful' is in fact just being open and available. If a private, closed, proprietary system thinks that openness is unhelpful, then the fates usually demand that such system get retooled.
I understand that you were Arbcom for a while, and you might suspect that resolution-l would just be a forum by which I could lambaste Arbcom, inline with the points I have been making recently about its lack of openness and responsiveness - concepts made clear in the WP:RFAR/OAR case.
The real point here is that we don't need to get into that territory too much more, if we establish an open forum - not a closed one, mind you - at resolution-l.
-Stevertigo