Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> The magic word around here is tolerance.  Usually, as has been in the
> past even for me, people leave because the tolerance is knee deep.

There's another aspect that keeps lists civil and useful.  The latter being 
the most important.  Don't use the filters "right" and "wrong", "best" and 
"worst" as the default way of viewing anything said.  That leads to taking 
very 
impersonal things like peatmoss and dew personally.  Rather deal with ideas 
on 
homesteading as "If you do A you get the results of A, if you do B you get 
the 
results of B."   Plenty of room for new info, debate, and learning within 
that 
paradigm without getting people's feelings caught like fingers in a mousetrap.

Looniness is OK, so long as the other participants are free to say, "That's 
loonie!"  The trick is conducting the conversation so that what's said is 
"THAT's loonie" and not "YOU're loonie." .... the joint responsibility of 
both the 
writer and the reader.

James   </HTML>