R-help mailing list activity / R-not-help?

On 25/01/2016 3:33 PM, Hasan Diwan wrote:

There exists a fine line between being unintentionally rude, but helpful
and purposely putting someone down. -- H

I'm afraid I don't think your point is relevant.  I didn't claim all the
people who were rude did it unintentionally.  However,  I don't know anyone
on the list who is always rude and never helpful. Oliver claimed almost
everyone is like that.

I actually agree with a weaker version of John's proposal (which I cut out
of my reply to Oliver).  I can imagine a public reprimand from one of the
moderators would be appropriate.  It would never be appropriate from general
list members; that's what leads to flame wars.

I'm not a moderator, so I would not publicly "remind the poster to reply in
a more moderate tone", and neither should you (unless you're a moderator).
It would be much better if one or both of us posted a more helpful response
when we saw a rude, unhelpful one.

Duncan Murdoch

On 25 January 2016 at 12:07, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>
wrote:

On 25/01/2016 2:45 PM, Oliver Keyes wrote:

I disagree, and would argue that fails to take a systemic view of this
kind of behaviour.

If individual commentators are acerbic and are only privately
reprimanded, from the perspective of everyone else it looks like the
acerbic reply was A-OK. Someone said something unnecessarily hostile
and the response was...nada. That creates an environment where there
are no clear examples of what crosses a line and no clear expectation
that moderation is even a thing that happens. Indeed, I was shocked to
discover this list _was_ moderated precisely because all I see is
people being mean and nothing much else happening.

Why would you bother to read it if that's all you see?  I think there
are
examples of posts here which are not at all helpful, and others which
are
rude, but the majority are actually helpful (even some of the rude
ones).

Duncan Murdoch