Stuffing

[GILLESPIEP@VMS.CSD.MU.EDU]

Wow, Stephen, that sure was a long paragraph!  Happy holidays everyone.

Paula Gillespie
Marquette

> I certainly understand David's and other's plight.  I sympathize, but as
> others here have said, I would not want to see the nature of this list
> changed.  It has seemed to me before when this discussion has arisen (and
> now, too) that some people are asking us to write only what is of interest
> to them (personally) in our "public" posts.  I would love to be able to do
> that if I had some way of knowing what was of interest or what was
> important to each individual here.  I do not know that and I cannot know
> that.  So I say what is of interest to me and hope that others will also
> find it interesting or of value.  I frequently do post off-list to
> individuals and make a genuine concerted effort not to "clutter" the list
> with messages of a personal nature.  I try (successfully, I hope) to be
> more than tolerant of messages that seem inappropriate to the list as a
> group.  I'd far rather read 50 stupid and personal messages than miss that
> one pithy piece imbedded in a personal message with a subject head that is
> misleading.  I'm not trying to be cold and indifferent when I say that I
> don't expect people to hang around me and attend to what I say and do if
> they are not comfortable with who and what I am.  Neither do I have any
> such expectations for this list.  It seems to me that we are what we are
> (whatever that may be) not as writing center tutors or directors or users
> but as a list.  
> Now where did I leave those essays I was evaluating?   ......--stephen

On Wed, 14 Dec 1994 SHCARROLL@DAVIDSON.EDU wrote:

> Having just read David's post, I find myself wishing I could see some
> way of compromising between the two positions.  I am in the camp of
> no changes, as I love sorting through all the mail WCENTER generates,
> but I understand the frustration someone feels whose system does not
> allow him to recieve more than a limited number of messages daily or
> weekly.
> 
> Compromise seems impossible, except that really personal messages
> (graduation announcements, birthday greetings) arguably could be
> best sent individually to save WCENTER space.  For David's comments
> revealed precisely why so many on the list want to keep it the way it
> is: his comment that he's found, through talking to someone else,
> that one of the 13 responses to a syllabi request contained a really
> need bibliographic reference.  However, he didn't get the reference
> because he deleted all responses with that subject heading after the
> first seemed irrelevant to him.  What's relevant to one participant
> in one entry may be irrelevant to another, but that second person
> will find a different response useful/illuminating.  If all discussion
> threads of a like nature immediately went private, we would all
> suffer, all miss nifty references and epiphanic moments.
> 
> I just hope that those innudated by too much mail will stay with the
> list, for the more participants we have, the more invigorating the
> discourse.  And, by the way, happy holidays to all.  Shireen Carroll