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<br><div><div>On May 2, 2014, at 2:07 PM, John Paul Ito wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div><div><div style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; "><br></div><div><div style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; ">- emails have been sent off-list (i.e. without moderation), directly to posters, that challenge them or in some way comment negatively on a highly sensitive topic. This sounds to me a lot like harassment. It's an oversimplification to speak of "sides" in this issue, but people on both "sides" of the discussion have received these emails.</div><div style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; "><br></div></div></div></div></blockquote><br></div><div>Given your opinion that "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; ">significant numbers of people . . . feel that an SMT-sponsored discussion is not a safe space," your choice to use language reasonably interpreted as inflammatory </span>("This sounds to me a lot like harassment") seems ill-considered <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">—</span> unless you have made all reasonable efforts to verify that the off-list communications in question were made intentionally. After all, and as you have noted, the default reply command on this list sends private messages, a thoroughly counterintuitive result potential posters will have been unlikely to encounter anywhere else on the web. This is especially important in cases like the present one because "hot-button topics" are likely to elicit responses from members who post infrequently. Before today I hadn't posted for quite a while and I very nearly sent a couple of private messages by accident. </div><div><br></div><div>Gregory Karl</div><div>Jay NY</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; "><br></span></span></div><div><br></div></body></html>