I found this message on another list which addresses better than I ever
could hope to do the issue of list spirit and tone.  And before I forget,
please avoid excessive quoting of the messages you are responding to and
try to make an effort to mention the name of the author of the message you
are quoting. I know I sometimes forget to do it myself but it is nice to
know who the quoted party is.

Best, Peter
[log in to unmask]

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                          A Matter of Tone

It seems, with online's absence of a root system necessary for generating
genuinely humane, enduring relations, the only tools that any of us has with
which to communicate these valuable nuances in cold print is the 'sense of
tone' that accompanies the pure data of our posts; the attitude, mood and
'feel' of our spirit as conveyed - either brusquely or benignly, crudely or
elegantly to these unknown others who share, if only for a moment, our
common thought-space.

Such tenuous linkages as forged in forums such as this are all too readily
frayed and broken by excesses and deficiencies of tone, extremes of
attitude and lack of imagination - the imagination that posits, at the
other end of one's communication - an ordinary mortal much like oneself -
who can be reached much more easily with gentle probing as, at worst, with
confrontational contempt.

Inevitably the protagonistsin these encounters come off worse for the wear,
despite having aired their grievances so pithily, which is particularly
regrettable when much the same resolution may be had, without offense, in
less disruptive ways.

But cowboy tactics seem to be quite popular just now, particularly in their
appeal to drama.

In one sense, online correspondents are only speaking to themselves, and
they may have a right to deal as roughly or as bluntly as they like, but in
another sense, they are helping create - or uncreate - a common
environment, however two-dimensional it may ultimately prove to be.

Why not, then, yield to the temptation to transmit the best, and in the
most humane way possible?