Dear Nicola,

Forgive me for coming back to you on this, but I do think that
there is more to discuss here.

After an opportunity to revise your earlier message, you would
now say:

   "... periodically new people come in with fake
    names and feel free to send us any kind of
    stupid message. This was certainly far from
    Ken's purpose ..."

No amount of subsequent revision of words can remove any
effect they had when first expressed: in this case,
misrepresentation.

In these circumstances it is not revision that is needed, it
is an apology. Like Speech Acts [1], list posts--List Acts,
we might call them--act on and so change the world, often in
non-reversible ways: a world of people and their emotions,
feelings, thoughts, desires, beliefs, ideas, ideals, in this
case.

If damage or hurt is done by a List Act, even inadvertently,
a further act that attempts to repair this damage or hurt is
needed: not an attempt to re-write the history of it. This is
what Ken did.

But, even your revision does not remove what, for me is the
offending implication: that Cindy's posts were stupid. Even
if you say it was certainly not Ken's purpose to have Cindy
post stupid messages, your (revised) statement still leaves
the implication that you think, or would like us to believe
that they were (nonetheless) stupid.

Please don't misunderstand me, I am not trying to defend what
Ken did here: that is not what we are discussing. We have
moved on from that, as Evandro Guimaraes would wish us too.
What we are discussing is how open and fair discussion
and argument can take place on this list, and what is the
nature and basis of the trust that is needed for this.

Fair and effective discussion and argument depends upon
constructive actions. Searle's Speech Acts theory gives us a
theory for the 'mechanics' of these actions--in our list
discussion world of List Acts. From this point of view, you
can see that emotional content in List Acts is important as it
can be used to achieve or secure the desired effects:
emotional content can and does effectively refine List Acts so
that they do what the author wants them to do.

What we can also see, is that List Acts that are all, or
almost all, emotional expression easily and often result in
misrepresentation and distortion. For fair and open
discussion and argument, these are destructive acts. Worse
still is when such emotional expressions are apparently used
to prepare for and justify the presentation of judgements of
the (now misrepresented and distorted) state of affairs.

For this list to work as an open and fair places for
constructive discussion and argument, each of us, both posting
to and reading this list, need to be able to trust that the
posts are prepared and sent as constructive contributions to
an ongoing discussion or debate: it is thus the form and
construction of the post that we must be able to trust in, not
simply (or even) the person or persons who posted it. This is
so that when genuinely constructive attempts fail, and cause
hurt or damage--as they occasionally will--further appropriate
List Acts (apologies) can quickly take effect to sooth the
hurt and damage done. Careless and ill-considered emotional
expressions of indignation, hurt, or wrongs do not serve to do
this, no matter how strongly felt and properly justified and
real the feelings of indignation, hurt, and wrongs are.

For this list to work as the PhD Discussion list it was set up
to be, and which it has very largely succeeded in being--a
list where people can engage in, learn, and develop the
effective discussion and argument abilities basic to all kinds
of research--we need to be able to trust list members to not
use it as the place to express their emotional judgements:
these can and should be done privately. This list is not for
anybody to say just anything in just any way because he or she
feels the need to, or that he or she must or should. It is
for genuine attempts at constructive discussion and argument.

If there is a disease that would destroy this list, it is
the disease of posting distorting and self centred
judgemental out bursts.

Best regards,

Tim


References

1. John Searle, 1969. Speech Acts: An essay in the philosophy
    of language, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
    Press. (This presents a theory of speech acts replying on
    an idea of constructive rules.)