At 5:37 PM -0800 on 11/20/1999, Steve Gabriel wrote: > I'll just let it be, and put alongside it > another plea that we treat kindly those fellows who approach this weird > little group from the outside. They know not the strangeness that holds > over the ground they now tread upon. All I can say is "amen" to this. People who have just joined in, there are occasional tussles (e.g., if this were the physical world, there would be nuclear-tipped missiles flying), but please don't be intimidated by it. If you feel that you have been unfairly criticized, reply. Not in anger. Not irrationally. But think about the facts behind why you want to reply and answer under those terms. Don't be scared off. It's not fair to you. And it's not fair to the rest of us, who might want to hear what you have to say. Speak your words with civility, and you will be heard. I regret that I can't recall who said it recently, but there are indeed a few hundred readers here (not counting the thousands who read the archives) and many of them enjoy reading divergent points of view, even if they themselves never speak up. That said, I confess that after a long time as a writer and editor and copy editor, I am definitely observant of misspellings, bad punctuation, incorrect syntax, and the like. (My present work, which is a special computing niche, pays a lot better than the editorial world -- and expecting to pay the bills based on what an unknown fiction writer earns is simply insane.) But I overlook these flaws unless a message is so mangled that it's incomprehensible to me, and under those circumstances I'll ask privately for a clarification. I don't LIKE that the world of e-mail is more careless with spelling and syntax, but I understand that it is, and I take it for what it is worth. In most cases, I'm still more fascinated by what the writer has to say than how the message is written. I guess my rule of the road is that I take each case individually and try hard to have great patience with how something is written. But I am not the sort to bite the head or fingers off a person who is unconventional or even careless. --tim