The micropolitics of list management are always tricky, and I tend to think
the best way is to try not to care to much, and to just desert without the
slightest hesitation any list that annoys you either by its censoriousness
or by its apparent lack of discrimination in the matter of
abusive/unpleasant/inappropriate postings. There are plenty of groups and
lists out there, and almost none of them has the sort of clout that would
merit a serious outcry if their moderators started making silly or
overly-defensive or even downright unfair and moronic decisions. Silliness
etc. are annoying; but not much more than that, unless the perpetrators have
real money and power.
Having said that, I would like to add that I think the listowner's
objections to the cross-posting of material are a bit specious, and in this
case mean that the list is deprived of some really good stuff. Mez and Alan
Sondheim both cross-post quite a bit: it's not self-publicizing, or not just
that, but rather - to my mind - part of an interest about how already fairly
unstable material "plays" or performs (or sits, or stands...) in a variety
of contexts. Reading one of Alan's posts on Cybermind is different to
reading more or less exactly the same post on the Buffalo poetics list (not
that he posts quite so much to that any more): it's inserted into a
different conversation. I post, and sometimes though not often cross-post,
stuff all over the place; it seems natural to me, like telling the same
anecdote at lots of different parties...
Dom
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