Imagine that you're in a national park, and a park ranger comes to
your campsite and explains that the fire you have built is against
regulations. He helps you to put out the fire. Which of the
following would you do in response:

a) apologize for not knowing the rules.
b) ask for an explanation of the rules to make sure you don't break
them again.
c) try to find out more about the reasoning behind the rules and see
if you can go through normal administrative channels to change
those rules so that they seem more sensible to you.
d) tell the ranger he has no right to tell you what to do.
e) tell the ranger that you've seen other fires that were much worse
and he should go and bother those people who are really causing
trouble.
f) build another fire right next to where the old one was even though
you know the ranger is still watching you.
g) tell the ranger to go fuck himself.

In analogous situations over the last eight years, George Olshevsky
has chosen options d-g repeatedly. I don't recall him ever trying a,
b, or c (I'm not saying he never did; only that the times he chose the
latter options vastly overshadow any attempts he made at the former).
Over a shorter period of time, Tracy Ford behaved much the same way.

Tracy was thrown off the dinosaur list sooner than George mainly
because he had the "benefit" that my interactions with George
indicated that I wasn't doing anyone any favors by trying to be
lenient. If you want more insight into me and/or Tracy and our
interactions, please ask him for permission to receive copies of the
personal e-mail messages he and I exchanged as I tried to work with
him in gaining control over his volatile temper. (Whether or not he
has a volatile temper in real life is of no concern to me -- I'm
talking about how he behaves during electronic communications). I
wasted a lot of time trying to get Tracy to see the error of his ways,
but in the end, he still sees nothing but how wrongly he's been
treated.

After all of my attempts to get Tracy to rein himself in, he still
thought it was perfectly okay to write to the dinosaur list:

The Superintendent is either stupid, ignorant, foolish, or all
three.

"The Superintendent" is not me; the person's actual identity is
immaterial. Tracy had been repeatedly warned against attacking people
(as opposed to ideas, facts, opinions, etc. which are fair game.) And
yet he thought the above was okay. That was the last straw for me and
it ended my relationship with Tracy.

Oddly enough, the only e-mail I've sent to Tracy since telling him I'd
removed him from the dinosaur list was to explain to him that it is
okay for people to talk about him or his work on the dinosaur list.
What is not okay is for people to forward messages from banned
subscribers (not just Tracy) to the dinosaur list.

I think Tracy's banishment from the dinosaur list was more than
justified. Irrespective of whether or not anyone else agrees with
that decision, it is not up to others to try to perform end runs
around that decision by allowing Tracy to participate on the list via
proxy. Which brings us back to George.

George may very well have thought that by putting asterisks into
Tracy's name he was making his forwarded message acceptable. However,
he can't make the case that that was a reasonable conclusion based on
our past exchanges. Last October (after George had forwarded to the
dinosaur list comments from another banned subscriber) I wrote to
George directly:

Consider *this* message to be a warning that we're not going to
warn you again. Forward a message from Tracy or Kinman and you're
history as far as the DML is concerned.

We had a conversation that followed that message, so George cannot
claim he didn't get it (in the literal sense). In fact, in the
subsequent exchange I felt compelled to give a definition for
"forwarding" because George was unclear on what appears to be standard
useage to me:

Your action constituted the passing along of text to an address
when it was sent to you from another individual. That is called
forwarding. If you were unclear on what Mary and I meant by that
before, I hope you are clear on it now.

That was only part of my explanation, but it's sufficient to see that
George should have been able to realize that the text he sent to the
dinosaur list yesterday contained text forwarded from Tracy, and hence
left me only two options: leave him on the list and hence render my
prior threat empty, or live up to my word and forcibly remove him.

In this particular instance, George would have gotten by just fine if
he had written:

Tracy Ford and Dan Chure have a paper on this subject...

His actual message included text that was clearly written by Tracy as
indicated by the personal pronoun "I" in:

Dan Chure and I sank Dinotyrannus and Stygivenator into
Tyrannosaurus rex in (not that ANYBODY knows this...)...

F**d, T. L., and Chure, D. J., 2002, "Aublysodon" teeth from the El
[...]

If it had been anyone else in the world, Mary and or I would have
cautioned them not to forward messages from Tracy Ford. Had it been
anyone else in the world, I probably would have thought, "what the
hell, it's a minor infraction...". But George is always dancing on
the edge of obnoxiousness and he has repeatedly broken dinosaur list
rules without showing remorse or any indication that there was a
possibility that people could (or should) reasonably conclude that any
behavior of his was unacceptable (Tracy at least did occasionally
express regrets and remorse, but unfortunately, Tracy has chosen
George as one of his chief confidantes. The two reinforce each
other's worst qualities from what I can tell...) Removing George for
this particular infraction feels to me like nailing Al Capone on
income tax evasion. You'd much rather he were put away for
orchestrating torture, murders, etc., but if you want society to live
by rules, you've got to try to make the rules clear and the violations
inarguable.

Rodlox (author of, "don't worry, we won't ban you here; we're your
friends."), you might want to spend a little more time getting
acquainted with facts before charging in with accusations. You are
correct that Tracy will not be banned from *this* list. However, *I*
own this list as well, and he will not be banned here because it is
*my* policy that this list is to be run completely free of any
regulations on behavior. *We* (Mary and I) did not say that Tracy's
work cannot be discussed on the dinosaur list. *We* have repeatedly
told both Tracy and George that that is not the case. *They* have not
been able to learn the rules. *You* should do better than to believe
what they write at face value. Feel free to name monsters after Mary
and/or me. We find that sort of thing amusing.

I doubt anyone really cares for more detail. But if you want it, feel
free to ask for it publicly here or privately to me. I hope you'll
also feel free to ask George and Tracy for more on their perspectives
(caveat emptor). As always, discussion of dinosaur list policy is
forbidden on the dinosaur list until and unless you've aired your
grievances with the list owners and we've agreed that it makes sense
to solicit the opinions of other subscribers. On the other hand, you
are free to say anything you want about me, Mary, or the dinosaur list
here. The worst thing that might happen to you in response is that we
might respond.

--
Mickey Rowe (rowe@...)