I am playing Devil's advocate he

I find myself in the uncomfortable situation of defending bad manners and
rudeness, but the thing is that on 02/10/2004 I posted a polite response to
the first picture that Troy posted to both ABPO and RGO.
My response is archived in Google, Troy's picture is not because Google does
not archive picture posts.
URL:http://groups.google.com/groups?selm....gnilin k.net
So you see this is not a first time offense. Troy either did not read my
response, but I think it is more likely that Troy ignored my friendly
reprimand -- I replied to both abpo and rgo, so even if Troy did not
knowingly cross-post he should have seen the reply (unless like Al's server,
Troy's server swallows posts selectively). I must admit that I am also a bit
suspicious of Troy's claim that he did not know that his newsreader added
rec.gardens.orchids without his knowledge. I can't at this point say that
this is not possible, but I have my doubts. What newsreader would that be?
How does that happen?

If noone says anything when someone does something wrong, or if we only
reply with polite reminders of the netiquette, in the end I suspect more
people would ignore them. While I do not generally think that being rude is
a good solution, and thus am somewhat uncomfortable with the stance I am
taking here, still I think that sometimes even a polite group such as ours
needs to be shaken up. While I would hate to be at the receiving end of one
of Mick's rants myself (and there are times when I have deserved them if not
here then at abpo, where I have at times posted pictures of bad quality and
forgetting to size them down, and I have at least on one occasion posted a
message without thinking that caused someone grief or offense), however, the
truth is that it is very difficult to ignore Mick's rants, and thus while
unpleasant, his way may actually be effective in ensuring that people pay
attention.

Maybe we can find a middle way, something in between polite reminders and
chainsaws cutting off hands at picnic tables. However, as always each of us
is responsible for what we post, and the impression that we make to the
world. This is a free unmoderated forum. One of the downsides of it is that
we need to moderate it ourselves. Some of us are better at being polite than
others, but politeness is not always the highest virtue, and while I agree
that some of the things Mick spouted were too extreme, I suspect Troy and
the many readers throughout the world will get over the shock of reading his
posts, and if one does not want to be offended in the future, there is
always the option of not reading any posts written by Mick Fournier (and I
suspect he won't care if you decide to boycott him through selective reading
as well).

Joanna