What the list should discuss

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 12 Apr 1996, Ken Howard wrote:
(clip)
> simplistic as it is. Like I mean that there seems little ability or
> willingness to explore the real life experiences of people on this list,
> warts and all, for fear that they will be ridiculed. In the end if this
> list is only for the extrapolation of individual egotisitical dirges on
> their pet theories I'm not sure that it has any other purpose then
> amusement for the vast bulk of subscribers. And clearly most people on this
> list are not interested in these kinds of polemics. I believe there are
(clip)

Louis: Ken, you have a bad habit of including the entirety of not just
one post, but a number of posts when you reply to the list. The previous
posts are virtually impossible to understand because they are prefixed by
either ">>" or ">>>" or even ">>>>". (Pine does this, I am not sure about
other mail software.) You can not follow the thread, even if you had the
patience to do so. It is much more useful to comment on a relevant
portion of a previous post and omit extra verbiage.

I will now comment on your post.

This is a complaint often heard on Internet mailing lists. "This list
should be doing..." "All I hear on this list.." "I'm sick and tired of
the constant discussion of..." This is a sterile complaint since it
accomplishes nothing. The only way to change the character of discussion
is to contribute thought and analysis that *you* think is worthwhile.

When I first got on this list, there was nothing but academic discussion on
dialectical method. The real world never entered into the discussion. So
I started writing about computers and ecology, two subjects I am
interested in and all of a sudden, other people began to respond in a
similar vein. That is the way to do it.

(Just a reminder, Ken, you should throw in an occasional carriage return
into your posts. It makes them much more readable. The carriage return, a
term that originates in typing, corresponds to the "enter" key on a
computer. The "enter" key is usually on the lower right-hand corner of
your keyboard.)


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