ftb2_ss

What is the group policy for unsolicited off list contact regarding list issues?

Greg

Sandra Dodd

-=-What is the group policy for unsolicited off list contact regarding list issues?-=--

Good question.

I know there's someone who brags elsewhere about trolling for unhappy group members, inviting them to another unschooling discussion list where they mostly badmouth other people, I hear. That's very tacky, but part of the brag too is that she uses an e-mail on this list that will never be discovered. So that's the hobby of someone who should definitely pay more attention to her children.

Ancient "netiquette" says if people want to disagree, they should take it off to e-mail. I think that's horrible advice. (Much of early "netiquette" was fairly tacky and rude.) I see this as a meeting. People come to a meeting and ask questions and there is cross talk, and the moderators and organizers get to ask someone to sit down and be quieter. Typical meeting tradition (older than the net).

Nothing in meeting tradition makes it okay for someone to follow someone else home and accost them on the porch.

So for me personally, I don't like side e-mail at all, and have said so, but it's not "a group policy."

If anyone wants to report unwanted side mail to me or another moderator, please do that. Moderators can throw people off the list for being troublesome. If it's something you don't want a particular moderator to see, send it to one of the other ones. Active moderators are Deb Lewis, Joyce Fetteroll, "wtexans," Jill Parmer and me.

Or if you want to just out the person right here, right now, that's fine too. People aren't allowed to be rude on the side and expect people to protect them. If someone follows me home when I don't want them to, I'm not going to let THEM decide whether I can call the police about it.

While we're taking a procedural/philosophical break, if there's anyone here who thinks this is unreasonable or doesn't really care about radical unschooling, please do leave the list. I'd hate to make anyone uncomfortable when they could have a happier, better life without all this Always Learning stuff.

Sandra




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chris ester

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:


> >>>>>Nothing in meeting tradition makes it okay for someone to follow
> someone else home and accost them on the porch.
>
>
> So for me personally, I don't like side e-mail at all, and have said so,
> but it's not "a group policy."<<<<<<
>
I have on rare occasion on many lists (I am not sure that I have done so on
this list) contacted a person off list with a resource that I thought they
may want to know about, but that didn't pertain to the list discussion per
say. I hope that that isn't offensive. I find it hard to comprehend why
someone would make contact to be rude off list.
Chris


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Sandra Dodd

-=-I have on rare occasion on many lists (I am not sure that I have done so on
this list) contacted a person off list with a resource that I thought they
may want to know about, but that didn't pertain to the list discussion per
say.-=-

And that's not terrible.

Sometimes I've written and said that something a person wrote was particularly great, and asked for permission to add it to my collection.
Sometimes I've written and asked someone to go easy on another poster, for some particular reason if I knew them both, or knew one well enough to ask a personal favor.

Sandra

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ftb2_ss

I asked because someone sent me an email about the video game thread. Someone whom I hadn't seen post anything. They weren't rude, or asking me to join another group, just asking me to stop posting. I was a bit surprised that they would email me off list, rather than post the request on the board, since it was directly related to the thread. Other groups discourage private mail unless someone says contact me off list, or asks if it is OK. I can understand where they are coming from, since I was really out of line, it just surprised me. I don't want to "report" them, I was just wondering if there was a policy.

Greg

--- In [email protected], "ftb2_ss" <gregandrene@...> wrote:
>
> What is the group policy for unsolicited off list contact regarding list issues?
>
> Greg
>

Sandra Dodd

-=-They weren't rude, or asking me to join another group, just asking me to stop posting.-=-

Perhaps it was someone who saw you were about to get your butt handed to you and thought you could be saved if you would just be quiet sooner. :-)




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Jenny Cyphers

***Sometimes I've written and said that something a person wrote was particularly great, and asked for permission to add it to my collection.
Sometimes I've written and asked someone to go easy on another poster, for some particular reason if I knew them both, or knew one well enough to ask a personal favor.***


Ha!  You've done both of those things for me!  Others have too!  That's actually totally okay with me.

What doesn't feel okay is when someone posts to me privately telling me what a horrible person I am and "how dare I?" sorts of things.  I've had that happen too.  I report those things to Sandra and generally it turns out the same person has spent quite a bit of time sending out personal yuck messages to several other people too, while continuing to sway other list members to feel sorry for them in some way or another.  It's better to "out" those kinds of things.

In real life, those are the ones who spread vicious rumors about people behind their backs while being all nicey nice to everyone's face, trying to stir up some kind of trouble so they can watch from the side lines while everyone gets stuck in the sh*t.  If you wanna make this a gender thing, sometimes men don't know that women do this.  The list rules, for me, curtail that kind of behavior while keeping the list on topic.


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ftb2_ss

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>
> -=-They weren't rude, or asking me to join another group, just asking me to stop posting.-=-
>
> Perhaps it was someone who saw you were about to get your butt handed to you and thought you could be saved if you would just be quiet sooner. :-)
>
*************
......but why wait so long :(

Sandra Dodd

> Perhaps it was someone who saw you were about to get your butt handed to you and thought you could be saved if you would just be quiet sooner. :-)
>
*************
......but why wait so long :(

========================================
This is always a problem for the moderators. If a post looks like it was written without much knowledge of what to expect, we can send it back to the poster, who typically will get angry and accuse us of not wanting anyone to dispute our "truths" or whatever. Or we let it through, it gets normal responses, and the person wishes we hadn't let it through.

Our solution for that is having several pages of background information on the list, and e-mails that each new member gets and few seem to read.

Big green letters saying DO NOT POST without reading this
hasn't been a good safety net.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlwaysLearning/

Yet people do learn a lot from the discussion, and send notes like these:
http://sandradodd.com/feedback

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