willcome
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Community! Grex! You!
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Jan 17 18:39 UTC 2004 |
Grex is a community. The ties binding it together might seem tenuous, because
they're almost exclusively limited to the Internet, a seemingly impersonal
medium, but Grex, I think, is as strong as most any community. Grex posseses
the same sort of shared experiences, events, and participation that any other
community does.
Naturally, as in any community, Grex -- as a community -- tries to help its
members when they face problems. This manifested itself in the way Sindi
Keesan and Jim Deigert helped nurse a fellow Grexer, John O'Reilly, back to
health when he fell ill, and there are innumberable more examples of this,
which, while being somewhat minor in comparison, are no less important to
demonstrating the community spirit with which Grex thrives. It's best for
the community, I think, to have people willing to offer aid to fellow
members, even in relation to issues not directly related to Grex.
Recently, however, the community neglected to provide help where it was
clearly needed. Outsiders of the community used it to maliciously
malign, harrass, and embarrass one of its more prominent members in a
vicious, long-term textual attack on his wife. She had been using Grex to
document, in a cute and beneficial way, the many minor trials and
experiences she faced as a housewife. However, the "pardody" of this, by
the outsiders, was nothing more than an attack on Jan, the husband,
himself. Many great world leaders, such as Comrade Lenin himself, who, in
a letter dated March 5, 1923, expressed his personal offense to Stalin,
who had cursed at Mr Lenin's wife, have recognised that insulting a wife
in equal to assulting a husband. Jan was, understandably, quite upset.
It's obvious, I think, that he allowed himself to be blinded to the
wrongness of the actions his wife took to retaliate against the outsiders.
First, she vandalised the system by defacing and deleting the work of
hundreds of other people, many of whom were simply trying to help her.
Then, she left in a kerluffel, audaciously claiming that she would
retaliate by denying Grex her technical services, as if she, a simple
housewife, would have any for which we'd violate our principles. Despite
acknowledging the fact that he wouldn't have done them, Jan still seems to
think his berzerk, out of control wife, was right to destroy the
collective works of hundreds of people which took hundreds of hours to
produce.
As a community, we have also been blind to the problem. No-one's
recognised it, let alone taken action to help some it. That's why I
propose we help Jan by appointing someone to take him aside at the next
Grex meeting he attends, and politely, in an unembarrasing way, explain
the problem and subtly suggest he keep his wife more disciplined.
For the sake of the community.
This is a citizine initiative; I am a member in good standing.
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richard
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response 6 of 26:
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Jan 18 04:13 UTC 2004 |
The interesting thing is that in than item, it was Jan who discovered it first
and it was he who was clearly really upset by it. He told Valerie about it
and she posted in that item, and sounded at least as if she herself WASN'T
upset about it at all. Even mildly amused by it in fact. But something
happened in the 24/48 hours after he and she posted in that item. Did Jan
tell her that she should be more upset about this item than she initially was?
Maybe all of this speculation is unfair, and they have their own rights to
think what they want to think about the motivations of the people who
contributed to that item. But to take one's anger about an mnet item out
on grex seems strange, so its hard to not think about these things.
I think Valerie owed a clearer, better explanation of why she did what she
did. Maybe she has even provided one in the staff cf or something. In
any case I think if Jan wants to avoid further discussions and
speculations such as in this item, that he himself could provide a clear
explanation of Valerie's motivations and thinking if he wanted to. After
all, if anybody's talked to her about it, he has.
It is also worth pointing out that Valerie greatly curtailed her grex
participation well before this, she had not been a particularly regular
contributor to Agora in some time and I can't remember the last time I saw
her on Party. So I'd bet the reason she left wasn't entirely this item,
but then again if she won't talk about it, what are we supposed to think?
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richard
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response 11 of 26:
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Jan 18 19:37 UTC 2004 |
Sure its fair to ASK them, one of them, to explain Gull. It wouldn't be fair
to in any way try to coerce or force them to, but any of us have the right
to ask questions. There is such a thing as being TOO sensitive Gull, and when
you do that, try to be overly "fair" to one side, you end up being unfair to
the other side. There is absolutely and unequivocally nothin wrong, or
unfair, about ASKING Jan or Valerie if they would mind explaining what
happened and why. Its just a question after all.
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