Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Name-calling - Fred's perspective

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

On Mon, 11 Dec 1995 11:02:58 -0600, 
Gail Patterson   <pattersg [at] osshe.edu> wrote:

>I am glad to see a request for civility here.  I just subscribed to this
>list a week or so ago and have been reading, when I have time, the
>submissions.  I was not impressed with the name calling and came very
>close to unsubscribing.  We are not going to promote co-housing in general
>or even be able to discuss the multitude of co-housing issues with a
>general atmostphere of strife and anger. 
>
>
Gail, I'm sorry that your first impression of the cohousing-L included
"name calling".  

    Actually I think you overstate the lack of civility.
I reviewed the messages of the period in question (I don't normally 
read *everything* on cohousing-L).  The only instance of name calling
I found was one message on 12/8 from Scott Cowley and the worst
instance in that message was from Scott's un-named friend.  There
were several responses pointing out the infraction -- all carefully
and respectfully phrased.  The situation was complicated a bit
by some discussion of controversial topics - capitalism.  But that's
perfectly fine as long it is done in a civil manner and kept within
reasonable limits -- several writers noted it was somewhat off-topic.

It seems to me that these messages demonstrate the strengths of this
discussion rather than any weaknesses.  And it's the people and their 
collective will to have civil discussion that make it the civil 
and useful discussion that it is (despite the propensity of email 
discussion to deteriorate into name calling at times).  
Thank you for making this list fun to manage.

As Julianne Malveaux does at the end of her weekday noon (CST) 
progressive talk show on the Pacifica Network, (inquire at 
jmshow [at] peacenet.org),   I'm going to claim the "last word" on this 
topic on the list.  (Private email is fine.)  

                 PLEASE TRY TO REFRAIN   from ....
replying or continuing topics related to "name-calling"
Let's get back to talking about cohousing.

Scott Cowley, with a little something resembling an apology I'm sure
you're welcome to wade back into discussion tho I think general 
discussions of capitalism might be more appropriate elsewhere.  

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson   fholson [at] uci.com   (612)588-9532  Amateur radio: WB0YQM
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