A Message from Your Channel Founder:
Dear Gardeners,
The New Year is upon us, and Id like to take some time to reflect
upon the past, present and future of our little garden.
The garden rose from the wreckage of the CCN shipwreck and from the flameout
of Shoobys Café. Suddenly we small band of chatters found
ourselves without a home, and we formed the garden as a place to gather
and chat. We have fled from CNNnet to DalNet to Coolchat as we have tried
to find our home. We have had good times and bad times.
The fact that we have mostly stayed together through so many tribulations
is a testament to the fact that we are some sort of dysfunctional family.
It would be easy to disperse to the various other chatrooms to
EFnet #politics, to UnderNet #politics, etc. Yet, the fact that we do
not says that the garden embodies an atmosphere that we find attractive.
A place dedicated to mature, polite chat
a place where even the
most unpopular opinions can be expressed and discussed without the room
turning into a mosh pit of personal vituperation and hatred.
Or at least, that is the goal.
When we first fled to DalNet we pulled together towards that goal. We
kept that unity in #news_cafe because we were faced with a common enemy;
our own founder. When Shooby melted down and lashed out and closed the
café, we joined together as never before and created the garden.
We not only opened the room we created a stellar web page, we found
people to donate prizes to the quizzes, and we worked together.
But in the last few months I have seen the room fall away from those heady
days of early camaraderie and friendship. Often, when I have been inactive
for a while and review the logs of what happens when I am lurking, I see
a few chatters who are dedicated to the concept of the direct and indirect
insult. I see sniping and innuendo. I see discussion of personalities
and of chatters. I see endless deconstruction of each others words
and actions in an attempt to analyze the chatter instead of the topic.
This is not why we gather together. The room is NOT meant to be a target
rich environment. It is not meant to be a place where chatters feel
free to insult and attack other chatters. It is not meant to be a liberal
room or a conservative room. It is meant to be a neutral place where we
chat about many things including heated topics such as politics,
racism, religion, etc. And sometimes we wont agree.
SURE, it is frustrating when the other chatter doesnt see the overwhelming
clarity and wisdom of our ideas.
SURE, it is annoying when they continue to obstinately hold onto their
improper ideas even though we have shared the _truth_ with them.
SURE, our frustration can lead us to the tools of insult or satire or
sarcasm. BUT, If we allow that to happen
if we allow ourselves to
succumb to those temptations, even in anger or in revenge for what the
other chatter has said we diminish the room. We become more like
those rooms we eschew. Each time we insult another chatter, or lampoon
them, or satirize them, we lose some of what draws us here.
We also diminish ourselves.
I would like to ask each chatter to reflect on these ideas. I would like
to ask each chatter to resolve to recoup some of the camaraderie that
built the room in the first months and to eschew some of the behavior
that has caused us some problems in the recent months.
Let us resolve to work together:
· Let us exchange ideas and not insults
· Let us be friends and not foes
· Let us express respect and not revilement.
By doing so, I think that we will not only help weed out some anger and
hate from the garden, but I think each of us will better ourselves.
Im going to try
please join me and lets see what we can accomplish
together!
Da Rat
December 28, 2002
|