The Logic Off Topic list

Thoughts from the mind of Jeremy Martin, 26-10-2002:

>  > And then you go about saying that people who like arguing
>>  have some sort of psychological disease.  I don't think
>>  I quite like that to be honest. 
>
>I was just joking, but still, some people don't seem to be able to
>give this a rest and just wait for the poll to conclude.

Maybe some people have given arguments as to why a poll is bound to 
be inconclusive or why the validity of the outcome might still be 
debatable.

On the one hand you say this group is not a democracy but an 
oligarchy.  Yet you use a democratic mechanism to determine 
list-policy.  And at the same time this same democratic mechanism is 
bound to fail, for reasons explained earlier. Puzzling.  And thus 
sparking more debate.  Oh well...

>  > And then I'm even ignoring the fact that you seem to be
>>  as keen on an argument as the next guy...
>
>Honestly I don't care that much what you guys talk about here. If
>members hadn't started writing/complaining to the admins about things
>we would not have done anything. When people start bringing issues to
>my attention that make perfect sense to me (e.g. keeping this Emagic-
>related list focused loosely on music-related things only, but
>nothing that will always eventually start big flame wars such as
>politics) what can I do but reply to the constant barrage of
>argumentative posts people have been writing?

You could ignore them and simply refer everyone to the to-be outcome 
of the poll for example.  But, as I said, you like a good debate as 
much as the next guy.  I don't mind (to the contrary) -- but then 
don't go about offending "us argumentative types" as suffering from a 
disease, since you're not that different.  Not at all.

>If no one were to argue about this issue anymore I'd gladly wait for 
>the poll to conclude in silence..

I'll shut up.  Fed up with all of this, and got better things to do 
than defend some right I think people have against moderators who 
think they know better, based on the opinion of a handful of 
complainers.
I think it was Alexis who made a good point when he referred to some 
extremely boring discussions on the LUG: VST vs AU, etc, or the Mac 
vs PC debates being routed to the L-OT.  Is any of those really on 
topic?  A zillion VST/AU messages with extremely little informational 
contents?  Or a PC/Mac debate -- is that L-OT stuff?  Apparently it 
is, according to the powers in charge.  No problem with that: as 
Dennis said, that's what you got a delete-key for.

The problem is: where do you draw the border?  At some arbitrary 
point, apparently.  Because someone decides something is offensive. 
Or because someone decides something is not appropriate.  Or because 
3 or 4 members complain to the moderators.  Or whatever.  And it's 
this arbitrariness (?) that I protest against.

-- 
Hendrik Jan Veenstra  <h@...>
Omega Art: http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html