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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!masscomp!trb
From: trb@masscomp.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Apology to Martillo
Message-ID: <255@masscomp.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-May-84 18:42:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: masscomp.255
Posted: Mon May  7 18:42:36 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 8-May-84 00:27:36 EDT
References: <975@hou5e.UUCP>
Organization: MASSCOMP, Littleton, MA
Lines: 26

I hereby apologize to Ellen Bart and the rest of you for lashing out at
her in this space.  I (still) don't like to see people zeroing in on
others, but there had to be a more graceful and painless way to publicly
express my opinion about what Ellen posted than the way I did it.

Netnews is a special medium in that we are really dealing with ideas
rather than people.  If an idea irritates me, I sometimes stomp on it,
without really stopping to consider that there's a person associated
with the idea.  That's a sensitive area, since ideally we would like to
be able to respect a person and stomp on her ideas, but usually, until
we meet face to face, this doesn't happen, and we are shocked when
someone attacks our ideas from a distance and in public.  I know that I
get pretty defensive when someone posts netnews attacks my ideas, even
when I know damn well that my ideas are ill conceived.  (I don't want
the world to know how wrong I am.)

I've been very pleased at the high quality of the messages in
net.religion.jewish, and I don't want to be thought of as a boor, and I
don't want to chase anyone away, and I don't want this group to
degenerate into a shouting match about who's wrong and who's an idiot.

I certainly don't want Martillo to go away.  Face it, we don't have
anyone else around here who's holding up his end of the discussion.

	Your fellow net.religion.jew,
	Andy Tannenbaum   Masscomp Inc  Westford MA   (617) 692-6200 x274