Thank you, David.  Well said.

I truely miss a lot of the 'old guys' and their wealth of information and
experience.  There do seem to be more posts by a very vocal goup.  Most of
these posts are worthless to anyone not in the group.

David, you are a valuable asset and I hope you stick around in case I need
some obscure piece of electronic trivia to get my temp guage functioning.

Chuck
'85 Wolfsburg Westy - 'Roland the Road Buffalo'

In a message dated 5/28/02 1:44:22 PM, LISTSERV@GERRY.VANAGON.COM writes:

>Date:    Tue, 28 May 2002 14:19:40 -0400
>From:    David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
>Subject: Re: IS THE LIST GETTING SMALLER?
>
>At 01:07 PM 5/28/2002, developtrust wrote:
>>What a bogus posting. I say good riddance to anyone who would try to squelch
>>any kind of participation. Tom does a great job in my opinion.
>>
>>What an immature thing to attempt to blame the list member's content for
>a
>>reason for leaving. Another attempt at censorship.
>>
>>Tell the people you met who gave that bogus, childish and petty reason
>for
>>leaving to stay away if they are stupid enough to deny themselves the
>rich
>>content of this list.
>
>William, what you seem to be missing is that the people who leave are the
>ones with expertise and experience, who have given many hours of effort
>to
>assist others.  It is hardly censorship to remove oneself from an
>environment that has become unpleasant, and many people find blatant
>rudeness, hair-trigger squabbling, and endless pushing of
>politicosexualsociological philosophies quite unpleasant.  I count myself
>among them.  There is another group who may leave -- that is new members
>who have entered in the midst of a bout of incivility and have not had
>a
>chance yet to discover the value of the list.  I seem to remember a certain
>feller from California who a) left in a huff after being subscribed for
>roughly one day, and b) has proceeded since then to irritate a considerable
>fraction of the list membership in various ways including pushing various
>personal and political agendas unrelated to Vanagons.  He has in general
>been treated with considerable forbearance, and I must say that IMHO he's
>gotten a lot easier to live with in the last couple months as he absorbs
>some of the spirit of the list -- but he'd have done much better to be
>a
>lot quieter in the beginning.  Please forgive my not mincing words in this
>situation.
>
>
>>Furthermore, to attempt to lay a guilt trip is outright latent (and blatant)
>>manipulation. How childish. Really!!
>
>I beg to differ.  People have, I suppose, every right to be rude, although
>it certainly says a lot about them personally -- OTOH other people have
>an
>equal right to expect an atmosphere of  civility and to vote with their
>feet when it is missing.  If the people who leave are ?coincidentally?
>those who have the greatest experience and expertise, then I submit that
>the list is the poorer for it.
>
>On that basis I suggest that it pays to keep the old-timers happy, and
>that
>in the absence of self-control amongst list members it might indeed be
>worthwhile to have a little more active participation by some form of
>moderator (not necessarily the list-owner) who has/have the power to say
>"This thread is ended, take it private" and make it stick.
>
>>I hope the list IS getting smaller. I also hope those that want to leave
>>just do it and don't waste list band width telling us you are going to
>or
>>why you did it.
>
>Does this include everyone?  If Tom Carrington decides to leave the list
>would you want to know why?  And would you be prepared to take over the
>ownership of the list, house the machinery, provide the Internet connection
>for it and so on as he does?  You already know if you've read his postings
>that he's disappointed in the lack of self-control evidenced by various
>recent flareups.  If Dennis Haynes or Harold Nancy or Mark Drillock or
>Bob
>Donalds or Brent Christensen or Ken Wilford or Ron Salmon or Frank
>Condelli  or Joel Walker (to name just a few) leave would you like to know
>why?  I'll even venture an opinion that I myself give more to the list
>than
>I take from it -- if I get to the end of my tolerance would you care to
>know what made this place not worth the effort to me?
>
>regds,
>david
>
>
>--
>David Beierl - Providence, RI
>  http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
>'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage"
>'85 GL "Poor Relation"