RE: [TCLUG:9583] flamewar

["Eric Hillman" <ehillman@cccu.com>]

> It's usually not so bad.  Actually, I usually learn something every day
> from reading the list.  I'd like to see that continue.  Maybe it's time to
> create an official policy.  Does anyone have any experience with doing
> something like that?


  I've always felt that a mailing list works best as an autocracy -- the
list administrator has every right to intervene if he feels a member of the
list is out of line, flooding the list, or generally needs his ass kicked.
Otherwise, I would hope that we are all basically reasonable people, and
capable of judging from the feedback we recieve whether or not we're putting
a little too much emotion into our opinions about computing.

  Unless a flamewar has devolved to the point where it is overwhelming all
other list traffic, and the participants are ignoring repeated requests to
knock it off -- neither of which has happened here -- I don't think
intervention is necessary.  And if somebody's making a fool of themselves
on-line, we don't need to point to an "official policy" in order to make
that clear.

  A simple list of guidelines might be useful to the socially challenged --
little things like making sure your "subject" line is roughly in agreement
with your actual topic, and avoiding purely personal attacks or pointless
ranting.  Unfortunately, in a field with so many competing chips, OSes,
distributions, languages, programs, file formats and keyboard layouts, the
occasional holy war is unavoidable.  The decision as to whether the
appropriate response to this is to simply ignore the flames, nicely ask the
participants to cool down, or make with the eject button is really
completely subjective and circumstantial.

  Somehow, I felt this link was appropriate.
  http://www.angryflower.com/innerl.gif


--
Eric Hillman
UNIX Sysadmin
City & County Credit Union
ehillman@cccu.com