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Subject: 
Re: When is it appropriate to "take it to email" and when isn't it?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Fri, 22 Jun 2001 05:16:52 GMT
Viewed: 
169 times
  
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
Here is the question to those that seem to advocate "taking it to email"
whenever one or more parties to a discussion seem to go out of the bounds of
normal discourse:

When is this not an appropriate thing to do? Can you, the advocates of that
course of action, come up with examples of when it isn't? Why isn't it in
those cases? (or, alternatively, are you saying that "taking it to email" is
ALWAYS the correct course no matter how bad the social transgression or how
one sided it might be?)

Interesting topic. I'd say there are a couple reasons to both keep it online
and to take it offline.

The reason to keep it online is it's a newsgroup. As long as the topic
pertains to the newsgroup, it MAY be of public interest to someone now or in
the future. People may be following a topic silently without commenting.
Also people may be interested later in doing research on whatever the issue
may be. And putting it in a public forum allows the information to be
available to people other than those immediately involved in the debate.

However, there are occasions when threads should be taken offline. The most
obvious one being when it gets personal. If you're revealing personal
information about the parties involved, it may (not definitely) become
"preferred" to be offline. The other time is when it begins to overpower a
newsgroup. When a "sufficient" percentage of posts are going back and forth
between several very distinct parties, it may become difficult to ignore for
other users. This doesn't happen often. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen
it. Maybe. I dunno. It's a very tough line to draw.

But going to this specific situation (when two parties are continuously
arguing back and forth and seemingly getting nowhere for an extended period
of time), while I don't necessarily feel that it's something that "should"
be taken offline, I would personally recommend just dropping it altogether.
But that's me. If I try and drive a point home continuously with no
progress, the wonderful scientific method tells me that I've got to either
change my method drastically or stop completely. And personally, 9 times out
of 10 when I've seen people be told "please take this off-line", I've
thought to myself instead "just give it up".

Anyway, $.02,

DaveE



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: When is it appropriate to "take it to email" and when isn't it?
 
(...) A large part of it seems to be the public performance -- if the only people who can see it are you and the person you're insulting, what's the point? But if you're caught in a cockfight it can be hard to back down without looking weaker, even (...) (23 years ago, 22-Jun-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

Message is in Reply To:
  When is it appropriate to "take it to email" and when isn't it?
 
(...) I would like to dig into this notion a bit more. I think there are situations where it is flatly incorrect to advocate this. I want to stay out of the particular situation that provoked the request and not use it as an example, but I would (...) (23 years ago, 22-Jun-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

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