A couple of days ago, deep in a foul mood, and afflicted with a hard cold
and arctic weather I commenced to complain off list to a couple of list
member friends how tiresome I was finding some recent threads. I was
especially harsh on the file marks one.
Much to my amazement the universal response were that they were more
interesting than I found them or that I was a big boy with a delete key and
I had freedom to use it. I backed up a bit and felt like pouting. Then I
realized that these folks were correct.
There is a limited amount of things to discuss on a focused list like this
and some of them will be of less interest to some of us than to others. I
think that it is cool that we can explore a topic in exquisite (often mind
numbing?) detail. I revisited recent issues of the digest and found that in
reality what had turned me off was the hostile nature of some remarks like a
frame builder's work being "sterile" of other writers being '"pompous" or
others using an argumentative technique deemed as questionable (the infamous
and seemingly endless "straw man" thread.)
I think we do well when we stay focused on bikes and bike related
issues...if they get tedious we can use the delete key as was suggested to
me.
Where we seem to go astray is when we make hurtful remarks about other list
members. I have never seen one good bit come from this in all the thousands
of posts that I have read here. Truth is we do a lot less of this than some
other bike lists that I can think of (Probably thanks to Dale's iron hand in
a velvet glove) and that over all we do a good job of staying civil.
This is one of the finest points of the CR List.
Even if curmudgeons like myself do get grumpy occasionally.
Tom Sanders
Lansing, Mi