[Tango-L] Truth in stereotypes

[Huck Kennedy]

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Charles Roques <c.roques at mchsi.com> wrote:
>
> In fact they [men] tend to dominate the discussions on Tango-L as well.
>  I think Sherrie has a valid point.

       Perhaps more men choose to post than women, but that is not the
same as dominating the discussion in the sense that it is preventing
anyone else from contributing.

       It is easy to see how someone (male or female) could dominate a
live in-person discussion by interrupting, talking in a loud voice,
not letting others get a word in edgewise, etc.  But I'm having a hard
time understanding how that translates to a mailing list, especially a
mailing list like Tango-L that's heavily moderated to eliminate rude
responses.

       If anyone has something to say, as long as they follow the
rules, what's stopping them?

       One of the most frequent posters to Tango-L is Trini.  I wonder
if she feels "cut off or ignored."   I doubt it would even occur to
her to think that--if she has something to say, she just posts it and
is not particularly concerned about whether or not someone responds.

       How can one really tell if what you write is being ignored
anyway?  As I mentioned before, more often than not people reply to a
posting to disagree with something contained it it.  If nobody
responds to a posting, the reason could easily be that everyone agrees
with it--so no news is good news, as it were.  Also, one of the rules
of the mailing list is that postings that say nothing but "I agree
with this poster" are not allowed, so unlike in a live discussion, you
are not going to get a lot of feedback like, "Yeah!", or "That's so
right, I agree."  Perhaps in private email, but not posted to the
group.

        I've posted things to this group that got zero response, and
then even years later met someone for the first time who tells me, "Oh
I remember you, you wrote about <such-and-such> on Tango-L, and I
liked what you said."   So you can never assume you are being ignored
just because you don't see a response on the mailing list.

Huck