I’m glad the list is open to diverse opinions, because I have a few. How do I stay in the list? If there are more than 10 entries in my in basket I delete all the entries from the three most frequent posters. That will remove almost all the buddy chatter, attaboys, and “me too”s. I think we need to understand what is making people leave the list. In Jay’s case he made a generous offer to drive people to the center of the eclipse this summer. All he really wanted was to hear from people who wanted to go with him. Anything other than that was off topic. In the past when Jay wanted to go out to a dark site on the night of a SLAS event at SPOC, he would get replies suggesting he not go out on nights that “belong” to SLAS. This time, not only was his message thread hijacked, his outing was ignored and replaced with a SLAS event, including the required dogfight over funding. We are losing the young active and knowledgeable members. These people have an interest in Astronomy but not the time to suffer the noise. DT ________________________________ From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 9:55 AM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] last note On 1/22/12, erikhansen@thebluezone.net <erikhansen@thebluezone.net> wrote:
I would suggest the recent unsubscribers need to look within, nothing posted warranted the reaction.
There are a couple of posts at Jay's forum that, while not outright stating it, suggest that recent discussions here have been "uncivil". Honestly, I can't find or remember any posts that are uncivil. It seems that people get hurt when others simply disagree with them. If we can't disagree, then things will get downright boring. Like CN, it can become just a bunch of "me too" hand-holders and people wanting to bask in the warm glow of groupthink. Freedom is more important than decorum, IMO. And even saying that, a disagreement is not a breach of procedure or a rules infraction. Variety is the spice of life. If a forum or list turns into plain, uninteresting vanilla sameness and blank-faced empty smiles, THAT will drive me off. I do hope Joe, Kurt, and others return. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php