response 70 of 184:

Feb 1 20:46 UTC 2004

I think there's a difference between the definition of Grex's 
principles as seen by Grex non-participants, as opposed to the applied 
principles of actual Grexers.

re resp:56: There's no conflict between having principles, and helping 
out another person, unless your principles are pretty whacked.  If 
your principles are so rigid that there's no room for any variation, 
no matter what, then there's something wrong with your principles, and 
with you.  It's like having a principle of self-sufficiency, to the 
point where you will never assist another person.  That's not a 
principle of self-sufficiency; it's a policy of disassociation.

That isn't to say that, if you don't vote for my proposal, your 
principles are by definition wrong.  You might just think my request 
hasn't got enough merit to be worth supporting, but that someone 
else's similar request might.  Or you might think the remains of those 
items would still be worth preserving, and oppose my proposal on those 
grounds.  But to oppose my proposal because of a principle that, once 
entered on Grex, all text must be preserved forever and there must 
never be any deviation from that, no matter what... which is what a 
few people have said, directly... that is the sort of view which 
causes me to put the word "principle" in quotation marks.