Re: [Leica] personal attacks: a solution

[Brian Reid <reid@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>]

> What if the policy of the list was modified with a clause prohibiting
> personal attacks? On many lists OT posts are not tolerated and
> offenders are removed from the list.

I'm fresh out of jack boots, and since at the moment I'm unemployed,
I'm not keen to buy new ones.

Many times in my life I have chaperoned large groups of 13-year-old
school students. I'm pretty good at it, and so the schools keep asking.
Several times in the last decade I have accompanied a group of about
100 young teenage children on a week-long 4000-km trip from California
to Washington, and I've taken groups of children that age to Europe.
Probably the most harrowing thing I've ever done in my life was to lead
a group of 50 13-year-old boys on a complex subway trip on a weekday. 

My strategy is always the same: to expect them to act like adults, to
reward them when they act like adults, to rely on them controlling
their own behavior, and to teach them to be able to detect when they
are misbehaving, by observing the way others react to them.

Those young teenagers always become adults, and sometimes even grow up.
I must confess that when I think about the thousand or so people who
make up the Leica Users group, my first mental image is of a swarm of
young teenagers waiting for the subway, each trying to decide whether
he will be aggressive or deferential when the train comes in with only
25 seats on it.

If your mothers didn't teach you not to attack other people in public,
and your middle-school chaperones didn't teach you not to attack other
people in public, then I don't stand a chance. If you would like to
learn by example, see how the Queen of England handled her desire to
criticize in public:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000664190365289&rtmo=0xbRbKRq&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/11/20/nhrh20.html

Kyle, April first is fast approaching. I'm expecting great things from
you that day. Let's all get back to our viewfinders.