Hey, some of you, cut it out!--God damn it, please

[Peter Giordano]

Andrew says:
>When replying please delete any text other than that which establishes
>the position to which you wish to respond. It not only helps those who
>have low-tech access it also avoids a lot of unnecessary scanning and
>rescanning for the rest of us and should ensure that *you* focus your
>point and state it as precisely and concisely as possible. Given the
>current volume of list traffic these side effects from a simple matter
>of common courtesy will be most welcome.
[... I deleted the style-manual materials]

I say:
There are a number issues raised here - Let's take one of the
more broad ones - Internet and list discussions have been compared
to cocktail conversations which is of course absurd - The only way
that analogy would hold is if people carried around video recorders,
taped each other, re-wound the tape, edited in their own remarks, and
then made copies of the tapes for the rest of the world -

What makes this sort of discourse strange and glorious is that it is constantly
self-referential - I personally dn't mind the in-beding of previous messages
because I am not likely to have read all the previous postings - The down side
of that is that in all the layers of >>> and >> and >, etc. the original
commentator
is easily lost (hence I by reflex use "Somebody" merely to avoid the
embarassment
of attributing the words to the wrong party)

As for threads and consistant titles - I cannot agree with Andrew's
comments - I
find that the relationship to a title is almost always lost about two
postings in
even when the discussion is exactly about the topic of the list (and not
flaming)
- However, I obviously defer to his wishes (with one exception: there are names
I will not use)

The other side of this is that there is an archive - (What's remarkable
about this
archive is that it manages to elude the omniferous Dejanews) - The problem
with the archive is that it can be darn slow (please take no offense - It is
the same sort of technical issue you raise when you talk about other people's
tools

The culture of lists and email is still evolving but a number of basic
activities and
trends are in place - We already have a complete glossary to describe various
behaviors and a complete new set of punctuation - There are those one lists
who somehow imagine that they can control the flow of discourse - I used
to be one of those people (Hey, stick to the topic, man! etc.) - Experience
proves
that the only way the content of a list can be controlled is to have it
moderated and
moderated lists make for their own problems

Although I've only been on this list a short while I can't for the life of
me remember
how I found it - When I signed on I did all the good do-bee things - I read
for awhile
and dipped my toe in (I think my first message was about a public reading
of GR) -
I readily admit that I did not read all the messages and my main goal was
information
about M & D - My point being that all the publicity about M & D was bound
to change
the culture of the list - A lot more people were going to find it and join
(Andrew , is this
the case?  Is there a census?)

Believe it or not, in my first two months (was it that long), not once did
I read a message
about Lineland (there I said the title) or its author - I passed because I
thought from
the title it was one of those glib little satires one finds on the list
every so often -
My first foray into that strange world was my first and perhaps biggest
mistake -
I responded (in kind and tone) to some strange claims about the first book on
internet discourse and the first self-designed book - At that time I had no
idea
who or what I was dealing with - I was truly shocked by how quickly the
tone went
from mutual sarcasm to personal attacks and threats - Alarms went off for
me, not
because I I was personally offended but because experience shows that when
people are reduced to personal insults they usually have something to hide
- And
I have a professional interest in the accuracy of information spread on the
internet
and I have a personal interest in the way pynchon scholarship is built - I
do not
"worship" TRP but I do not think there is much value in spreading rumors about
him - And unfortunately this list has been used for that purpose - Some people
may not like it but I believe that the majority of my postings are directly
related
to TRP and the nature of the scholarship - When it was pointed out that I was
off track I corrected myself (or tried to)

Sorry to get so long winded - The point of all of the above is that it is
pointless
to try to tell people what to post or not to post - For those who are veterans
of this list I'm sorry about the change that the list is going through but this
is not the end of its evolution - The delete key and filters are going to
have to become more popular

Peter Giordano
Williams College
Williamstown, MA