Keeping Them Honest: Poetry Listserve Division.

Cobalt Listers,

The Cobalt Poets lists exists primarily for the promotion of the
Cobalt Cafe Poetry Reading.

I've left it un-moderated to allow folks to feel free to promote
other projects, converse with each other and be mildly annoying, as
we all tend to be on e-mail lists, in our attempts to be humorous,
intelligent or clever. This has strayed, far too often, from far too
many people into the arena of pain causing personal attacks, slander,
insults, unpleasantly :'discussion', and generally an
atmosphere of embarrassment for me at being the host of such a thing
which has served more to damage community than foster it.

Any future posts here which, at my sole discretion, even hint at this
kind of unpleasantness again will cause the poster to me immediately
removed from this list, no second chances, thanks bye.

Rick
--August 27, 2006


Subscribe or unsubscribe to the Cobalt Poets e-mail list. Also sort through the message archive or join in the un-moderated fun by posting anything you want about anything at any time for any reason.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention Terry. That [subscribe or unsubscribe....] was written when the Cobalt Poets email list was created, when, as a naive poetry host I thought having an unmoderated list was possible and before, as you know, so many people, yourself included, used it as a bully pulpit. I'll be editing the description to remove the 'anything goes' implication of the text. More good work sir!

It's a tiny thing as poetry community matters/manners go, but the Cobalt listserve description seen after the reprint of the 8/27/06 message hasn't been changed to reflect the list proprietor's "evolved" viewpoints on acceptable speech/conduct/posting, as promised.  So it appears as if I was subjected to either an untruth or withering "you lesser being" sarcasm.http://poetrysuperhighway.com/cobalt/links.html

UPDATE: The proprietor, via Facebook, addressed this issue.  Here's a portion of his response:

 Regardless of the inaccurate leftover original descriptions on the website, there has been a consistent moderation on the list which has applied to everyone equally specifically designed to avoid the kind of harm that was caused previously and refocus the list on its intended purpose to support and provide information about the Cobalt reading.