[HAM] Communities and Civility

[David Anderson]

I usually respond to technical posts, but this latest discussion has  
prompted me to share some of my experience with specialized  
communities and how they keep focused on their central mission.

In the 90s, I was involved in an intentional community experiment,  
one that had no effective mechanism for excluding or controlling  
people who became disruptive. There was a mechanism for excluding  
people who refused to abide by the rules, but it required everyone to  
agree. If even one person didn't agree, the disruptive people could  
stay, and, of course, there was always at least one person who would  
stand up for the people in question. The result was that, eventually,  
the community was taken over by those who yelled the loudest, and it  
ultimately fell apart, as these experiments often do. The people with  
better things to do simply left. Personally, when I see my Inbox  
begin to fill up with messages from people trashing each other, I  
contemplate unsubscribing.

Maybe it's because I was raised in a very Old Southern family, but I  
expect people to have manners and to behave in a way that reflects  
basic standards of civility. Contemporary Americans seem to me to  
take the freedom of speech principle to rather ridiculous extremes,  
leading to the Theater of Incivility that our media have become from  
Jerry Springer to Reality Television. Obviously, some people are  
entertained by this kind of thing, while others are not. Many seem to  
associate disruptive behavior with sincerity or authenticity, which  
is, I would suggest, an association that should be questioned.

I don't want to burn up bandwidth with this, so I invite private  
responses.

Sincerely,
David Anderson