Re: ADMIN: Troublemakers, capitalization, etc.

> :     I would suggest that any of you who are being attacked and insulted
> :report the incidents to Tom Tadfor Little, who is the owner of the Iris
> :List.  You may wish to send him a copy of the offending message so he can
> :see what is going on.

Yes, yes yes.

> If anyone has any _evidence_ that some particular person has been
> consistently harassing new members, I need to know about it. At this point,
> that notion seems to be unwarranted speculation. All I know is that over
> the course of a year, four or five people have gotten off-list messages
> that upset them. I have not seen copies of those messages, so I don't even
> know how rude they actually are. Considering that the total list traffic
> over that period is probably something like 10,000 to 20,000 messages, and
> that human beings do not always behave well, and that email seems conducive
> to misunderstanding and overreaction, I do not consider this evidence of a
> pattern. As I said, if anyone has any real information about this, I need
> to have it.

People new to cyberspace need to understand that there are always one or
two wackos who may insult them in ways they are unaccustomed to dealing
with.  This is a drawback to the INTERNET, not to this mailing list.  If
you can identify the individual by sending Tom the offensive post, then
he can attempt to protect the list from said individual.

There is also the possibility that membership in the iris-l may not even
be the problem, but simply using the Internet.  If one receives an
offensive message with very little iris related content other than "I
got your name from iris-l" then if you are a member of *any* list you
could be a target.  Some people have fun by grabbing the email addresses
of lists, because they are groups of people, and spoofing (faking) a
nasty message from one to the other.  They *live* to disrupt
communities, just like real-life bullies everywhere.  You cannot escape
them entirely but if you let the rest of us know, or at least attempt to
contact the sender of the message (who may *NOT* really have sent it,
and might be profusely apologetic and angry that someone used their
identity), then we can help.

Also, you must be very aggressive on the 'Net, something you might not
be in real life.  You must "tell it like it is."  I think that many of
you have Sterling characters and probably would gracefully bow out
before confronting... except that's exactly what these folks *want* to
do, is take advantage of your kind personality and break up our
conviviality.  So instead of bowing out gracefully, I would contact the
individual, confirm the hostility, confirm the source, and report it to
Tom.

-- 
Amy Moseley Rupp
amyr@austx.tandem.com, Austin, TX, USDA zone 8b, Sunset zone 30
*or* amyr@mpd.tandem.com
Jill O. *Trades, Mistress O. {}
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