Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

About MonkeyJunkies and Evolt.Org

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:8/21/1999; 8:08:20 AM
Topic:About MonkeyJunkies and Evolt.Org
Msg #:9763
Prev/Next:9760 / 9764

I'm writing this off-line but saving it to the DG periodically, so if you refresh, you may see more writing. It's totally real-time, and it's the quickest way yet devised to write for the web when you're not using file sharing to write to the server's hard disk.

Anyway, to the topic of this message, I wanted to explain that I deleted a couple of messages this morning, exercising editorial priviledge, and with, I believe, good reason -- they got in the middle of a very interesting discussion between the Evolt.Org people and the WebMonkey people. Even though they have separated, they can still communicate, and discuss.userland.com is the place they have chosen to do that. This is an honor. I would like to feel that this site is always a place where people can come to intelligently and respectfully discuss their differences, and more important, to achieve resolution. Both sides here have done that. A lot of grace, and what a nice thing that is to see! This is, in my opinion, a leading-edge example of the Internet Spirit.

Sometimes people who are not involved choose to get in the middle. This is where I can add value, by keeping the conversation simple, by not letting it get more complicated by involving people who are just bystanders. You can't know what *really* went on here. We're just seeing a slice. Even the participants' views are colored by their own perspective.

We've had these kinds of differences and split-ups in the Frontier world. What's interesting about it is how when things split you can miss something important -- people often come back! Or even if they aren't working with you anymore, there's a kinship that connects you. A common starting place. When you see them, either in person or virtually, it's nice. I've just had a lot of experiences like that, reconnecting with people from the ThinkTank and MORE days. We all split up, but that turned out to be OK. We've all had interesting lives, and in some way those lives were formed by the experiences we shared many years ago.

Sometimes people have to have an argument in order to let them move on. We're trained that way, at least that's how my parents taught me. If I want to clear some private time, the surest way to do that is to start an argument. It works, but sometimes you can just skip the argument.

So this time I decided to exercise my power and do exactly that, and keep the conversation limited to the people who are directly involved. Let's keep a respectful distance.

Thanks for listening!™



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