Kari and Eric

["Patrick G. Sobalvarro" <pgs@sobalvarro.org>]

Kari, Eric, I think the two of you are still fighting because each of you
feels wronged, that the other has misrepresented your views before the
group.  Personally, I stopped following your dispute a long time back, so I
have no idea who's said what about whom.  My guess is that many people on
this list, perhaps most, have also long since stopped following your
argument.  So please consider that winning the argument before the group
may no longer be possible.

There are of course exceptions, but I don't think that many people on the
list feel any animosity towards either of you.  Both of you post
interesting messages that the rest of us enjoy reading.  On your current
course, I don't see an ending to your argument that won't create more hard
feeling and possibly result in one of you leaving the list, which would be
a shame.

So can I ask that both of you just set this aside and move on?  You have to
realize that victory in a fight on a mailing list is an elusive thing,
perhaps unattainable in this case.  You can hope that the other party will
admit defeat, which is something neither of you seems likely to do, or you
can hope that the other people on the list will rise up in your support,
giving you some sort of consensus victory; but that's unlikely in a long
fight, because everyone else stops reading.  The real damage is that the
rest of us stop receiving the messages we enjoy from both of you because
you're too busy fighting.

- -Patrick