[Artemisia] WAS: Top Posting vs. Bottom Posting NOW knightly behavior

[morgan wolf]

----- Original Message ----
From: yumitori <yumitori at gmail.com>
To: Kingdom of Artemisia mailing list <artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 1:43:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] WAS: the dreaded and horrible circlets, NOW: Top Posting vs. Bottom Posting

> > Lets let this lump of horseburger fall off the list.
> >
> > My 2p, Hargrove the Wanderer.
>
> Feel free to 'fall off the list' yourself if your stomach for
> moderator requests is so weak.

I've been taken to task for my response to Hargrove the Wanderer and
told among other things that my response was not befitting a knight. I
won't quote from a private e-mail, but I will post my response here
since I do see that my advice and line of thinking that led to it
might be a bit obscure.

---

Let's try it this way -

The rules are the rules. If you don't like the rules, you can muster
well-reasoned counter-arguments as to why the rules should be changed.

Or you can bitch.

Mr. Sunderlin chose to bitch.

Having failed to convince me of the worthiness of his position, and
stating that he was 'sickened' by the insistence on some basic
courtesy on the mailing list, I see but two options open to him.
Remain and continue to be sickened by the list's rules ...

... or leave.

I reminded him that the latter option remains available to him.

As to whether doing so was 'knightly', I could go into the differences
between the 'perfect gentle knight' of later romances and the rough
warriors of William Marshall's time. I could even compare and contrast
the knightly paradigm of Europe and the Code of Bushido.

But really, I was writing as a moderator, not a knight. Mr. Sunderlin
decided to post rudely in objection to my rules, which I do not think
are excessively draconian. I chose to respond in kind, as is common on
this thing called the Internet. I at least did not call anyone any
names. I simply showed him the door, so that if he is so inclined he
may use it.
-- 
Ron/yumitori





Yumitori-san,
 
While I would not presume to speak for others on this list, I believe that the reason you've received such vehement personal replies has to do with the following-
 
Many people consider a response of "if you don't like it, leave" to be in direct contradiction to the concept of Courteous, Chivalrous, and Honorable discourse that you, as originator of this list, ask, one could even say "require", us to follow as participants on this list.
 
While you say you were posting as moderator, you signed the post as "yumitori" as well as "ron", and by doing so you are indicating to all of us, at least in my opinion, that you are posting as the Peer called Yumitori.
 
Which goes hand-in-hand with the fact that, while you identified him as "Mr. Sunderlin", it was in fact milord (apologies if I've demoted you) Hargrove the Wanderer who indicated that he felt the matter to be, in essence, a proverbial "dead horse", a feeling I know at least one other subscriber agrees with.
 
Further, while you as a computer expert do not find your rules regarding top-posting vs bottom-posting "excessively draconian", recent posts have made it very clear that many of us who subscribe to this list had no idea what you were talking about, and while posts from other computer experts have been Courteous and polite, yours did, to me at least, come across as abrupt, to say the least.
 
I realize that you have made this same request multiple times in your years as list moderator, and that it is a very uphill battle, especially considering the fact that, as noted previously, many of us had no idea what you meant, but perhaps you forgot that not everyone reading the list now was on it when you made that request last time, or any of the times before.  I am minded of the advice a certain Scottish Prince of Artemisia gave me many years ago when I complained to him about the office I held- if it's more of an aggravation than a joy, maybe you should consider letting someone else take over.
 
Of course, I could be entirely wrong about all of this, but I hope my words are taken in the friendly and hopefully-helpful spirit in which they were written.
 
Morgan


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