melissa said:
Could you please take private your ongoing discussions of whose penis is bigger? ... Can you please be quiet, PLEASE?
yeah, sometimes i too get so bored with the tedium of the noring merry-go-round that i also absolutely feel like screaming. that observation i made about noring not knowing when he's passed the point of diminishing returns is quite applicable to his listserve discussions too. i _do_ realize when i'm testing subscriber patience, however, so i should be smarter about terminating. sometimes i opt out, as when i declined to respond to his challenges earlier on the bookpeople list, but then he mentions it months later, as if he had "won". if jon weren't so tenacious about spreading his "project gutenberg e-texts are untrustworthy" message to every nook and cranny of cyberspace, i probably wouldn't feel the need to address him. (but yes, i believe this campaign of his _does_ make what he says relevant to p.g. volunteers, and thus germane to this listserve in particular. it's certainly not a "private discussion" anymore, let alone one about "penis size", as you've put it.) but i suppose i should let it go, since -- unlike jon -- i do _not_ believe perception equals reality -- it's just temporary confusion -- so i do not think his attempts to manufacture a reality by creating the perceptions he wants to spin actually "work". so he's harmless. he thinks he's effective. he's not. on the other hand, even though jon resorts to personal attack at times, which i give back to him in spades, at least he mixes in a good dose of on-topic thinking in his threads too. so compared to the number of people on this list who dish attacks _exclusively_ in their replies to me, without ever even _touching_ the matters under discussion -- and your message here is an example -- jon's posts have _some_ redeeming value... even if his thinking is often badly muddled, at least he is trying to _do_ some thinking. how many other _thoughtful_ conversations happen on this list? i can't remember many. (kudos to vijay for his jump-start attempts; the enthusiasm of new converts is a real kick. it's just too bad there isn't a wiki that could help them negotiate a road already well-trod, get them up to speed before they lose steam.) i mean, the project gutenberg e-text library is one of _the_ shining examples of the potential to bring literacy into 21st-century cyberspace, which means it should be tremendously exciting, but you wouldn't know it from _this_ listserve, as it more closely resembles an old ghost-town. so, melissa, how about you? what is _your_ thinking on how the error-rate in the e-texts can be lowered? after all, some of them bear your name. surely you want them to be right? what do you think about jeff's google experiment? how do you think the project could be promoted? what issues do _you_ think need to be discussed? i've found the best way to get a listserve back on-topic is to post cogent messages, and not complaints about the other people. light a candle instead of cursing darkness. that's what i try to do. i am sure that you could've learned something from my posts, including the recent rounds, if you wanted. i'm sure that some people managed to do so. but also, of course, if you desire to remain oblivious, you can stop reading my messages. and if you're already not reading them, then it takes a mere quarter-second to poof a post. surely the burden of pressing the delete key can't be all _that_ pressing on you, can it? and hey, if it _is_, then perhaps you could learn how to use filters in your e-mail app. that way, you don't even have to press a key. there's no reason for you to _unsubscribe_. or were you just using a little hyperbole to make your point? it's fine if you were; i'm fond of using a little hyperbole myself. but i don't want to be insensitive to your request, even if you didn't pose it politely. so i'll cut back the frequency of my posts addressed to jon, to no more than 1 a day, so as not to overwhelm any e-mailboxes... so thanks for your feedback, melissa, and i hope to hear some input from you on more substantive issues as they come up here... -bowerbird p.s. so how big is _your_ penis?