Hi folks, I need to referee a bit here... Please give me your attention a moment! Thank you.
Fuzzmom, First off, stick around, ma'am. You're welcome and wanted here, and reasonable accomodation for your disabilities (hardware and software as well as physical!) is not too much to expect of the other members of the group. Given the volume of messages the group is seeing each day, you're doing a tremendous job keeping up with it at all! By all means, get a cheap external keyboard to plug into the creaky old laptop, but rest assured that repeated criticism of your spelling and proofreading efforts will not be permitted. To Dave and everyone else who has staked out a position in the Bone Spur and Rude Post threads: Dave made a posting that, if you wanted to read it as considerate and reasonable, you ... could if you tried! If you wanted to read it as rude and insensitive, it'd be pretty easy to do... It was positively ... ambiguous. What that says, Dave, is that your writing was not skillfully enough done to communicate your precise intentions, lacking tone of voice, body language, and all the other nuances of voice or face-to-face communications in this text-only medium. You may have meant to sound reasonable and polite, but your words didn't guarantee that reception. Add to that, you stumbled into the serious error of criticizing or attempting to correct someone that many of us *DO* remember is coping with the challenges of visual impairment. It'd be a stretch to *expect* you to remember the following from Fuzzmom's first post to the group: On July 12, 2009, Fuzzmom wrote: > ... I am visually impaired..print books don't work for me..so all > research is done via braille coputer and internet..and there's a lot of > conflicting info out there. Thanks and look forward to eeting > everyone!! ... but that's the reality you stumbled into! I'd suggest, Dave, a valuable lesson to be gained from this situation: When you proofread your OWN writing, imagine the WORST possible interpretation and write it out of your wording; when reading somebody else's writing, imagine the BEST possible intentions or interpretation and respond to that... If you'd done that, you'd have made yourself understood as you intended, or else not made the mistake of attempting to correct Fuzzmom's behavior in the first place, seeing it as harmless or assuming there was a good reason for it besides laziness or lack of consideration on her part. Sasha interpreted Dave's post in a more negative light and called him on it. If he knew what he was doing (in terms of Fuzzmom's situation) and was being deliberately rude, then I'd certainly have had a similar response. And lots more of ya piled on and chimed in... some being helpful, supportive -- or even hilarious -- and others expressing exasperation or defending one side or the other. IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How much nicer could this have gone if, in the first place, Dave had written me a private note asking me if I could "do something" about Fuzzmom's posts, giving me a *chance* to explain the situation to him and sparing him and us the consequences of his faux pas? What if Sasha had, similarly, limited herself to the heads-up she sent me privately and given me the *chance* to step in and referee the situation before correcting Dave publicly? ... And if the rest of you had flooded my in-box with messages rather than clogging the list with pages of responses and counter-responses? I do realize that I'm offering the impression (and sometimes the reality) of being too busy to stay up-to-the-minute with the list, but if you give me the *chance* to do my job, we'll have a better chance that things will work out the way they're supposed to. Which all boils down to a lesson we've learned quite a few times before, and that is manifest in List Rules and Etiquette, which can be found at: http://www.silverlist.org/Rules.htm (Yes, the web site works!) Specifically, under Courtesy Allways: > Criticism of other list members' behavior or how the list is being run > must be directed to me, the list owner, privately and not on the list. > No List Cops! ... and again under Prohibited Topics: > I say again: Criticism of other list members' behavior or how the list > is being run must be directed to the list owner, privately and not on > the list. No List Cops! ... and on the Etiquette page: > All efforts at policing etiquette must themselves be handled with > courtesy and respect, and almost always in private. If you feel you > have to correct someone else's behavior, do not do it publicly. In > general it's better to leave such things to me -- don't play list cop! > I will occasionally post a reminder or two on rules or etiquette items > just to get the general list membership thinking about them again. If > you think such a reminder is in order or have a specific complaint, > send me your comments at mdev...@eskimo.com Do you all see what I'm getting at? <grinnnn> Sasha, thanks for the heads-up. I'm always grateful for the help! Dave, think twice (or more) before you post a correction to another member, please. Now let's please let the furor die down. Don't respond to the thread(s) involved any more, or to anybody who does respond before they see this message from me. Thank you, again, for making this kind of intervention from me a relatively rare event. You can't know how much I appreciate it! Peace, Mike Devour silver-list owner [Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian] [mdev...@eskimo.com ] [Speaking only for myself... ] -- The Silver List is a moderated forum for discussing Colloidal Silver. Instructions for unsubscribing are posted at: http://silverlist.org To post, address your message to: silver-list@eskimo.com Address Off-Topic messages to: silver-off-topic-l...@eskimo.com The Silver List and Off Topic List archives are currently down... List maintainer: Mike Devour <mdev...@eskimo.com>
