[meteorite-list] An open message to all list members

From: Paul Barford <pbarford_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Aug 28 13:19:46 2006
Message-ID: <020c01c6cac6$05178280$1f85cf57_at_chello.pl>

Concerning the inflammatory "open letter to all list members" which we all
recently received via meteorite-list, Dave Carothers writes:

> You're entitled to your opinion, as am I. <
But in joining this list, I was interested in opinions on meteorites and not
personal attacks on another list member. I dont know how many people on the
list find reading any of this sort of stuff edifying or even entertaining. I
suspect some (including those "newbies" you all seem so concerned about)
will find it rather off-putting, irritating and intimidating.

Dave continues:
> As to your comment: "In any case the ebay ad does not read
> as Carothers reported." You are incorrect. Steve made the
> alteration to his ad AFTER I informed him of the
> misrepresentation. <
well, no actually I am correct (now YOU are the one doing the
"misrepresentation", see how easy it is?). I used the present simple tense.
At the time I checked to see what all the fuss was about, the ad already
read as you would have wished. I dont know (nor care) at what stage it was
changed, it may well have been immediately after Mr Arnold learnt that you
were unhappy about his phrasing and while you were writing your vicious
"open letter". The point I was making was that you were using the list in a
private vendetta over a matter which when the message came from the List was
no longer an issue. It was your open letter which was misrepresentation,
since it assumed from the outset than no change would be made as a result of
your intervention ?your assumption was obviously wrong. Any time any of us
spent checking the facts behind your ranting was wasted. Perhaps you would
have done better (and us a favour) to wait a while to see if the ad was
changed before trumpeting about somebody else's "set of morals" and other
such self-righteous nonsense.

While on the topic of "morals" though, you did not answer the point about
reposting to the whole list the contents of private emails in order to be
inflammatory. No doubt you will claim that in this too you were acting for
the greater good of the meteorite collecting community... Yeah, right.

In my opinion, you owe us (not to mention Steve Arnold) an apology.

"Bill" (joseph_town) writes:
> It's very good practice to correct an improper ad. <
Absolutely. But what is disturbing was the form in which the information was
imparted. What we all received in two messages in the space of a few hours
unequivocally had the form of a personal attack.

If the intention of the author of the "open letter" had been to inform
rather than attack, what would have been wrong with a simple and courteous
message containing the information? For example: "This ad >
http://xxxxxxxxxxx< for a fragment of the Warrenton, Missouri meteorite says
that there has "never been any for sale", but in fact there are a number of
documented instances where specimens have been made available for sale or
auction, for example xxxxx, yyyy and zzzz. Perhaps the vendor would consider
changing this unfortunate phrasing as it may mislead new collectors".

In any case, once the vendor had been made aware that the ad was badly
phrased, as we have seen, he did indeed change it, as is only proper.

Bill, why do you call the ad "improper"? You say you are a newbie, in this
case are you not making an assumption here based on the inflammatory wording
of this damaging "open letter", in which case do you always rush to
judgement so quickly?

As I said, there is no reason why Mr Carothers could not have first made his
point off-list and waited to see what happened, rather than straight away
firing off a public personal attack and causing a lot of unpleasantness and
wasting our time when it turns out that in fact within a short time, the ad
had already been changed.

Dave Freeman continued the ill-mannered onslaught with name-calling in a
manner which further depreciates the tone of this list.

What is wrong with meteorite collectors? Whence all this pent-up aggression?

Paul Barford

(With apologies if this comes a second time, the first one sent a few hours
ago seems to have gone astray in the Web-ether)
Received on Mon 28 Aug 2006 01:18:45 PM PDT