Concerning Michael Etchison's farewell: >> As you may know, I have been evicted from pen-l. I suppose this >> relieves me of the social obligation to continue any conversations in >> which you all and I have been engaged at one time or another. I shall >> miss them. The problem with Etchison's participation on this list, based on what he chose to contribute, is that he apparently didn't enter into the spirit that nominally defines our interaction: a common interest in the pursuit of progressive or leftist political economic concerns and ideas. His main interest, again judging solely from what he chose to contribute, was in chiding various participants for the "biases" in their thinking. Group self-criticism is desirable, even necessary (and on this list, routine), but if that is the *only* basis for his participation, as it has been, then one begins to suspect that he is only here to satisfy some perverse entertainment purpose; and while only he can know his motives, if that is the true one he really shouldn't be part of the group, for the same reason that (say) a group favoring reproductive choice shouldn't be forced to include a militant right-to-lifer. But this leads to a process issue. Michael Perelman, our outstanding moderator, explained some time ago his sense of the degree to which "free speech" issues apply to a self-selected e-mail discussion list such as ours, given that other such lists exist, and there is no question involved of barring anyone from the electronic medium itself. Perhaps Michael might recycle those comments for current consideration. For myself, I'm also presumptively against "eviction" from the list, although I think that presumption can be overturned--for example, in the case of a hyperactive polemical libertarian. Ideally a potential "evictee" could be led to agree that s/he doesn't share the particular interests of the list, and thus to exit voluntarily (or else assume lurker status) on the basis of that understanding. Personally, I've found Etchison's posts to be frustrating (because uniformly one-sided) but not disruptive. I could never figure out why he wanted to be on the list, since his posts gave the impression that he thought we were consistently and fundamentally full of crap. Gil
