On 5/25/10 7:34 AM, David Bircumshaw wrote:
> I think Sharon and Stephen's gentle style of list management is excellent,
> and helps make this a pleasing place to attend. I also believe in free
> speech, because I've seen what happens in its absence.
>
I am still on one list (dedicated to opera!) where the moderator managed
years ago with an unconcealed chain-mail glove. I joined in 1995, took a
few years off for (mental) health reasons, came back and discovered
that, like a soap opera on American TV, you can catch up with the some
old crap inside of a day or two. The difference is the moderator, having
been awarded his Ph.D. in Musicology, is far less irascible and censorious.
But factor in your readership. Opera people are largely not human. They
are opera people. I don't exclude myself. Any of us will argue over
whether Lawrence Tibbett cracked an F# in a 1936 *Andrea Chenier* as
soon as we'll berate the greengrocer for shortweighting us. There is
real time and opera time.
The disputations here, while often ugly, sometimes are taken offline and
seen as insignificant. The reasons for the ban here, To My Knowledge,
have never been permanently enforced, regardless of how gross the
accusation. Whatever *did* become of one Ann White, BTW
ken
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