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#29
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I've been banned from UtterAccess
I have to acknowledge you are probably correct about banning in general.
However, I think a somewhat firmer hand could be applied to individual threads or posts without compromising the spirit of an open newsgroup. I have the lowest possible regard for Aaron's opinions about me or Access, but I would rather not see his "You must be an idiot" species of response to new posters with Access-related questions. I can only repond as quickly as is possible to assure the OP that there is plenty of help to be had, but Aaron is not it. When somebody responds in that vein the thread tends to get taken over by a slugfest that ignores the original question, but I guess that's just the way it goes sometimes. I think spirited and civil discourse both have their place. Like running and jumping, they answer different situations. "David W. Fenton" wrote in message 36.97... "BruceM" bamoob_at_yawhodotcalm.not wrote in : You're welcome to disagree with my view that f-bombs and other forms of personal attack do not promote discourse. The problem is that many people seem unable to distinguish the use of strong language to criticize something someone posted, versus strong language used to criticize and individual. Aaron is certainly not one of the hard cases -- he uses ad hominem attacks, while pretending that he's criticizing the advice in a post. The problem is that someone would be making the decision to ban and that means that in a certain number of cases, mistakes will happen. It's the equivalent of a Usenet death penalty (though rather easily circumvented), and like the real-life death penalty, I think it's better to put up with the annoyances of an Aaron Kempf (using a killfile judiciously to avoid seeing his crap) than it is to start hunting down offenders and banning them. Spirited discourse is better than civil discourse, in my opinion. The problem, of course, is that spirits often get out of hand and become uncivil. I say that goes with the territory of all human discourse and is a feature, not a defect. -- David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/ usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/ |
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