Re: a public plea to pen-l list members

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

In addition, pen-lers should make a major change to the _content_ of their missives when replying to others. Instead of simply replying to Renegade X or Apostate Y in kind, we should write with the _list as a whole_ as our audience, trying to convince the group of the validity of our viewpoints. So instead of saying "you douche-bag and intellectual war criminal, any child would know that Frobenius solved that problem many years ago," say "in light of the Frobenius theorem, the results are different than what X says." I know this is academic, but it avoids personal animosity from getting mixed up with honest disagreements. 

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Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine