On 9/12/07, Marc Riddell
<michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote:
Folks,
I have just spent some time reviewing the List's archives for the past
several months, and it is clear something is changing and not for the
good. The dialogues have become more combative, argumentative and
downright
mean. The individual contributions have become more aggressive,
intolerant,
patronizing, bullying, insulting, and downright mean. There has been a
steady decline in fairness, civility and just plain listening.
Also, it appears that the majority of the Members of this List are willing
to scrutinize anyone or anything but themselves.
What's going on?
Marc Riddell
Did you read through more than just the last few months? There's six years
of archived lists; they make for pretty interesting if headache-inducing
reading. I would be interested in your conclusions based on a year or
three's worth of data. (Of course it's very time-consuming to read archives,
I know!)
Most of what I've seen in the archives is that there are issues that come up
periodically, with never much consensus or a slow shift in how the issues
are argued; and issues that keep coming up but have a drift towards
consensus until something gets done. It's also interesting to note the
various groups of people that crop up, are very active on the lists for a
few months or even years, then go away; versus the few hardy souls that are
still posting and have been here since the beginning. Also interesting are
the brilliant ideas/proposals that you see pop up once in a while that seem
perfectly reasonable, but nothing ever happened with; occasionally an
entirely different, newly enthusiastic person will come up with the same
idea later. There's definitely a rhythm to what issues come up and how that
I haven't really spent enough time with the archives to determine; but the
lists seem to have been pretty argumentative since the beginning all in all,
with presumably a steadily expanding readership, but perhaps not a
proportional increase in posters at any one time.
-- phoebe
Without having re-read the archives over that period of time (I've
been on-list for about