ATM a message from the list owner

[Mel Bartels <mbartels@efn.org>]

Now that the recent unpleasantness has abated, I have a couple of
observations:

1. if you include attacks in your messages, people zero-in on the
attacks, and forget the rest of the message,

2. the resulting flurry of, "Yea, he bad."  "No, he good.", destroys the
atmosphere that people enjoy,

3. such that 40 people have unsubscribed in the past several days, I
have received numerous e-mails of complaint, and most unusual, have
received several phone calls from around the country complaining about
the tenor of the posts of one person in particular.

It is a good reminder to all of us to think about how our words will be
received by others.  I certainly have sent my share of messages I wish I
could have back.  

For those of you worried about what would happen if something really
terrible was posted to the list, I do have the power to block messages
and remove people from the list.  I have never done this and I don't
anticipate ever having to.  I much prefer that the list members sort
this out themselves.

Thanks for listening!

-- 
Clear skies, Mel Bartels    Programmer/Analyst, and amateur astronomer
atm, atm-digest list-owner  mailto:mbartels@efn.org
homepage: http://www.efn.org/~mbartels
Motorize A Dob: http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~mbartels/altaz/altaz.html