Savagery on the Listserv

I was regularly involved in neighborhood politics and served as a steering committee member for my neighborhood association. I found the rather strict guidelines for no commercial content on the neighborhood’s Yahoo Group listserv rather stupid. In particular, the list’s moderator—who had the power to add or delete members—often took harsh stances to violators. After watching one poor woman, a neighborhood massage therapist, get booted from the list for posting her services, I decided to painstakingly create two fictional neighbors who get in a rather nasty dispute over commercial content. The spat caused the neighborhood association to discuss the situation and rules at length at its next meeting. The real names and other personal information have been changed to protect the guilty. But I’ll let you see if you can figure out who the “plants” were. You can read the whole sordid episode I created here.

Then read the following below…

What’s interesting to me is that the list admin ends up kicking Patty off the list for trying to sell, while the abusive language from her assailant gets no mention, and he remains on the list.