From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 09 2003 - 00:49:34 GMT
All,
Squank said:
Does the forum know about your little personal correspondence you attempted to strike up with me when i joined a while ago? Does the forum know that in this very correspondence you vehemently insist that, and i quote, '...dmb must not have the last word.' Why don't you just piss off?
Matt:
I don't think I've ever seen worse etiquette.
Besides the fact that Squank is trying to again villify me, this time by using a personal letter I sent to him, he's used it quite unfairly, out of context, and in a blantant and unreproachable attempt at character assassination, which is fine for Republicans and neoconservatives, but not for philosophy forums.
This is what happened:
A while back in the midst of the latest DMB/Matt Battle, I became self-conscious of the fact that perhaps I was a major contributor to the stagnation of the Discussion Forum, that the hostility between DMB and I was effecting everyone. In an effort to gain some perspective on the situation, I asked some friends for their opinions and I asked someone I had never heard of before, one Mark from valuemetaphysics@aol.com. Well, here's what I wrote him (both letters I'm reprinting are verbatum, even with parts that aren't pertinent):
---------------------------------
Subject: The need for perspective
Hi Mark,
You popped up today and I don't remember you ever having posted before, meaning my guess is you are, usually, a lurker. The alternative is you just joined. I apologize for the private message if it annoys you, but I'm curious if you've been following the "discussions" I've been involved in lately. If you just joined the discussion group and have no idea what the battle being waged between myself and a few other major participants, then my apologies for bothering you.
If you have been following, I was wondering if you could provide me with a bit of perspective as a person who sits on the outside. In an average month, there are between 15 and 20 conversants who have more than 10 posts. There are usually five or six people, though, that amass 30, 40, sometimes 50 and change in a single month. This is a guesstimation based on a stat I heard once, but I have a feeling that there are upwards of 200 lurkers at any given time, some formerly major participants just waiting to for a good moment to jump in, some fulltime lurkers, but probably mostly just passerbys. This means there are a lot of people on the sidelines who don't get their voices heard. Granted, its pretty easy to have your voice heard, but given the hostility this site generates, I don't blame people for being reticent to stick their neck out. There are some really mean bullies out there.
The perspective I want is on how I'm conducting myself lately. Please, be brutally honest. If I'm just being a dick, let me know. Am I one of those bullies that discourages people from coming out and speaking their mind? What do you think about the debate between myself and DMB?
I just want to hear from someone who is watching.
And of course, feel free to ignore me. Don't feel any pressure to respond.
Or respond about something completely else. I always enjoy discussing stuff and, if you hadn't noticed, I've become quite aggravated with the discussion site of late.
Matt
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So, I get a letter back from Mark (which for some reason I can't find anymore, else I'd paste it for everyone to read). It was fairly short. And it was fairly obvious that Mark was also Squonk. The type of comments were nearly identical. The style impossible to mistake. Since that time, Mark has made no mention of his connection with the alias Squonk, but many, many other people have made that unmistakable connection. Why did Squonk drop the alias? Who knows, it hasn't made much difference until now.
But Squank just wrote publically, for everyone to read, "Does the forum know about your little personal correspondence you attempted to strike up with me when i joined a while ago?" When you joined a while ago? Squank is apparently trying pretend that he's a newcomer to the forum. Everyone knows its BS. Besides Squank's show of bad form, why would he pretend?
Well, I wasn't quite sure if it was Squonk yet, so I wrote back to "Mark":
-------------------------------
Mark,
No, don't feel dismayed, that's what I was asking for. Thank you for your insight. The part that ticks me off about this whole thing is that I feel like I've gotten pulled into being mean because I can't just let people like DMB have the last word. Its my own damn fault.
As for the essay you submitted, I can tell you from experience that the speed at which Horse works varies, depending on how much else he has going on in his life. My first two essays took 3 months to post, my third took something closer to 5 months, and my fourth took 3 weeks. It really just depends. Horse was on a hot streak for a while, updating the site every month or so, but.... My advice is if a good portion of time has gone by to just e-mail Horse a note and ask him what the status of your essay is. He's very good about getting back to people and I've always found him as helpful as he can be.
Thanks again,
Matt
------------------------------
Here's Squank's accusation again: "Does the forum know that in this very correspondence you vehemently insist that, and i quote, '...dmb must not have the last word.'"
Here's what I wrote again: "The part that ticks me off about this whole thing is that I feel like I've gotten pulled into being mean because I can't just let people like DMB have the last word. Its my own damn fault."
First, Squank uses a personal letter in a public forum without my permission, which I would think is bad form, particularly since is was basically entrapment. I didn't know that I was writing to my most insulting enemies.
Second, he displays "...dmb must not have the last word" as if it were a direct, verbatum quote. It is not.
Third, if we accept the "quote" as a paraphrase, it is completely out of context, doctored in a way that eliminates the original sense given to the portion of the letter that he is supposedly "quoting". I think its quite apparent that I was not saying "vehemently" that "dmb must not have the last word." Rather, I was exposing my own weakness as a human being, that I lamented the fact that, at that point, I had been unable to just stop talking to DMB.
I don't know. This is pretty bad stuff. Combine this clumsy attempt at character assassination with Squank's earlier clumsy attempt at plagarism and you get a very sorry looking conversant. (See the very short thread "Nifty Move" started by Squonk, Mar 25 of this year. The first post from Squonk sees him hacking a piece wholesale from a post I wrote a year and a half earlier. That's plagarism. Why would he do it? I don't know, but I forwarded some guesses in my quick reply.) Come to think of it, that plagarism from 6 months ago, I would think, should be grounds for dismissal from the forum. Plagarism is a pretty egregious faux pas no matter where you come from or what you are doing. And then there's this recent thing.... I don't know Squank, I think you're walking a fine line....
The funny thing is, through it all, I don't get that excited by Squank. The thing before, this thing, I don't get that excited because only a moron would take Squank's condemnations of me, Bo, John Beasley (wherever he may be), Scott, or anyone else, seriously. Maybe Squank's trying to be like Socrates and Rousseau, a critical thorn in our collective sides. But those two philosophical giants were intelligent interlocuters. Squank's messages hardly need to be replied to at all. They are so silly as to be bascially ignorable.
Matt
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