Nobody forces you to read postings from anyone you don't want to.
And most modern mail reading programs (and even some web-based mail
services) allow you to sort mail based on sender. So you can let
the machine protect your rising blood pressure for you by routing
louts into folders where messages are deleted unread. (I use
procmail, which unfortunately only works on Unixoid systems, but
both Outlook and Netscape allow you to implement mail filters, too.)
It's an open list, so offensive and/or puerile posts are inevitable.
This isn't to excuse those posts -- we'd be a lot better off if
certain folks exercised a bit of self-discipline. But YOU can take
action and make the list a lot more pleasant for yourself by filtering
out those folks who rub you the wrong way. Saves time, saves stress,
and if more folks did this the more intelligent of offenders would
tone things down to avoid simply talking to themselves.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you might consider taking some
responsibility for your own reactions; it's a law of the schoolyard
that bullies prefer to pick on kids who complain ineffectively to
those who simply ignore them.
-Ed
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