I feel completely unqualified to pass judgement on anyone, which is one reason why I don't pretend to have any particular authority on 313. I got the admin job because no one else wanted it. I'm no better than anyone on this list -- I'm an attention seeking, biased, petty, immature person, just like a lot of people here.
What makes this list occasionally more than a wankfest is the sense of community that it provides. It is no intrinsically cooler than 30 midwestern housewives who are really into Hummel figurines, or people who trade gay Star Trek fan fiction. We've found that group of people that share our personal obsession. I have tremendous respect for most of the people on this list, and feel like on this one thing, we see eye to eye. What matters about the 313 list is that it is a circle of friends. Friends can disagree about things in a friendly fashion. Friends can give each other crap all the live long day. But for it to work, everyone involved has to maintain a minimum level of respect for everyone else. Over the weekend, this baseline level of mutual respect went out the window, and people were getting ugly. I'm hoping it has died down by now, but I would really like to ask everyone to get back on the happy wagon and stop engaging in hateful personal insults and threats. It just bums me out, frankly, especially when I know the parties involved. And it's just so much noise to the people theoretically under discussion. They have their friends and their work, and they're successful enough in life that they have recognition by a large number of people worldwide. Whatever sh*t has been talked about them on 313 is nothing compared to the ravings of the real losers of the world who have too much free time. The only thing you gain by getting salty with them, or each other in this forum, is membership into the fool's club of their detractors You're just one blob in a demographic lump of folks who want to harsh on their mellow. That's the reason a lot of artists aren't on mailing lists. They're busy, and there are things they'd rather do than slog through our logorrhea. If you want to rip on someone's work, have at it. All I ask is that you figure out a way to be respectful. There's almost never a flame war between people who know each other in real life. Furthermore, it's difficult to judge the real tone and intent of a person simply from e-mail. You're not even seeing them through a glass darkly, you're just seeing the 3rd derivative of the person.
