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The suggested rules of conduct are all the sort of common sense guidelines that I, for one, try to live by on a daily basis. Whenever I find that I fall short on one -- and I'm wretchedly imperfect -- I live to regret it. I might even add one more: never post to the list when you have alcohol, THC or other brain altering substance in your bloodstream. But much of this discussion has reminded me of two important considerations: One, that the net and emails in particular are especially difficult contexts in which to pick up nuance. Often, wry witticism sounds like a crass put down or worse. It seems to happen over and over and over. We need to learn not only to live with it, but to plan for it. If we all saw our communications as the sort of primitive constructions they really must be, not unlike flags, perhaps we would be better off. Two, incivility is almost always a gendered/gendering phenomenon. Not that a krupoet cannot be female, but rather than when things get really tacky, men seem less likely to throw up their hands and walk away. That has longterm consequences for who stays on the list and the nature of discourse that follows. So it's really really really important that we not let these bumps in the road drag out too long (badly mushed metaphor, but I'm at work, forgive me). My final thought is that we're all here because we care about something in common, however we may choose to define it. It's worth reminding ourselves of the fact that everybody here, including the people I always disagree with, are among the "good guys and gals." Because you are. Ron Silliman ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%