>
> >Sometimes the moderators need moderation!


I'm happy to see people calling the moderators upon the carpet.  (Oops, for
our members for whom English is a second language, that is an English idiom
for finding fault with; expressing criticism of; or pointing out real or
perceived flaws).  (And my inclusion of that definition was to point out
just how careful a poster must be if he (or she) wishes to avoid being
misunderstood).

I hope for Bee-L to be a "safe" place for intelligent and informed
discussion of beekeeping issues, and to that end, moderation of this list
puts Bee-L a cut above unmoderated lists.

That said, I want to thank the Moderators for their time-consuming and
thankless work in reading a vast number of submissions, trying to make
sense of them all, and returning the inappropriate ones to the sender for
revision.

In the case of the post and response in question, the post was clearly
incoherently written, and it was obvious to me that the Moderator, who
having a long-time personal relationship and correspondence with the
Poster, was simply being humorous.  Unfortunately, it may have appeared to
those without knowledge of their history as being "improper."

One thing to keep in mind is that meaning in communication is often lost in
the context of brief written posts, due to the unfortunate lack of body
language, tone of voice, or facial expression.

I personally find that I have to force myself to be careful, as my own
face-to-face speaking style and humor sometimes comes off as very abrasive
in print--and I thank the Moderators for occasionally sending a post back
to me for editing.

One thing that would help, in this day of texting from handheld smartphones
while sitting at a traffic light, would be for all Posters to take a moment
to read over their posts prior to hitting "send."  I myself often reread
and edit a post three or four times, and if I'm getting into someone's face
(meaning strongly questioning them) I often delete verbiage that in
face-to-face debate would be "normal" humor or debating jabs.
-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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