Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 08:53:48 +0000
Subject: M-G: Poor Quality on Spoon


KARL CARLILE MESSAGE:

KARL: Having been subbed to one or more Spoon Mailing Lists for well 
over a year now I just wanT to make some commments.

I have found these lists of marginal value. Most of the time the 
quality of messages is rather poor. Particualrly poor in many caseS is 
the quality of discussion. In many cases discusssion somply reduces 
itself to nit-picking, point scoring and sometimes abuse. Rather 
than the development of  discussion being promoted through the 
exchange of posts the very opposite is the case.

Over the last two years or so I have been unable to develop out on
this list my thoguht and politics because of the impoversihed quality
of the exchanges i have been involved in. Usually the respondents
postings are so inpoverished that one is forced to argue at the most
rudimentary of levels. In short my discussion never gets off the
ground. I have tried hard to maintain a fairly high standard when
writing on Spoon but in large measure have found it gets no
where.

Some people take criticism of the substance of their messages in a 
personalized way. Constructive criticsim of one's views and politics is 
not a personal issue and should not been seen or experienced as so.

My view is that the Spoon Lists, although probably better than 
nothing, are achieving little positive in the form of the development 
of thought and politics. Their effect is to reinforce the same old 
sectarian thoughtless bigotry that I am so familiar with in the so 
called radical Left.

What is needed is calm rational discussion of issues in order to 
achieve correctness, clarity and development. I still believe it may 
be possible to achieve this. It is this very faint hope that keeps 
me, so far, participating on these lists even if in a rather marginal way. 

People on the lists can start now. They can now start to discuss 
issues in a calm rational way. In this way the Spoon lists can be 
developed and in that way socialist politics be developed. START NOW!

                                      




                                Yours etc.,
                                           Karl   


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